#IdentiFriday is the happiest day of the week

OK. Thanks for the explanation.

It’s not Friday, but I can’t wait to share this week’s highlight. I was reviewing some observations using the Disagreements filter, when I came across one that had been uploaded by the observer without an ID. Identifiers began posting IDs for the plant in the photo, then attention shifted to a small bug visible in the photo, with a distinctive red and black color pattern. I realized it wasn’t what had been suggested, but what was it?

A new addition to my ID repertoire: the European Firebug (Pyrrhocoris apterus). This is a common insect in Europe and western Asia. It has now become introduced in North America, with observations primarily in two areas: between Salt Lake City, Utah and Boise, Idaho, and around Toronto, Ontario. It will likely continue to spread and become familiar to more of us in the coming years.

This insect has also been introduced to Melbourne, Australia. I found a paper (which I added to the wiki, earlier this week) which used iNaturalist data to track its spread:

Mata, L., Vogel, B., Palma, E., & Malipatil, M. (2022). The arrival and spread of the European firebug (Pyrrhocoris apterus) in Australia as documented by citizen scientists. Urban Naturalist Notes. 9(3): 1-7.

The About page (from Wikipedia) for this species includes a report of an attempt to rear these insects in the United States, as had been done successfully in Prague. This attempt had a bizarre result, which was traced to the use of paper towels. American paper towels.

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I like this species as they are beautyful, show interesting behaviour and can be observed year round on mild days at the food of Tilia trees (I have observations from almost all mobths, except August and November.. maybe my aim this year to fill this gap :laughing:)

I did not know they are spreading abroad, which of course is a pitty… :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

Will read this paper, thanks for the tip.

I mayself have neen heavily active IDing lycosidae in Texas to genus or species this week and will probably be busy with that for another week

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Just learned bird of paradise flowers are part of a banana-looking tree. “The more you knooooow :rainbow::star:

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There are a few sp - with these in pots at the Conservatory entrance to Kirstenbosch. The ‘tree’ has blue and white flowers. The orange, blue and white florist / horticulture one is S. reginae - that is about waist high, with sturdy leaves.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/480199-Strelitzia-juncea

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For anyone IDing Unknowns or high level plant IDs, if you come across a tree that you don’t know, you can add it to the project Trees That Need IDs

About
A place to add observations of trees stuck at a high ranking community taxon so that tree identifiers can use this project to find them. Please do not add observations to this project if the community taxon is a lower rank that includes only or mostly trees such as oaks, pines, palms, etc. If the observation is in southern Africa, please use this project instead: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/trees-of-southern-africa-id less

Examples:
I know this tree is an oak of some sort so I did not add it to the project
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/336870579
I only know that this tree is a Dicot so I added it to the project
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/337217652

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The whole week seemed to be a @jeanphilippeb praising week for me :star_struck:

It started with him mentioning in some thread on the forums that his pre-mavericks where updated, so I went into the project and pushed some spiders along… on some observation an discussion emerged about some taxa that are found en masse in those pre-mavericks after an unfortunate taxon-change and that there are surely much more with only one disagreement not showing up in the project and jeanphlip once again came to the rescue and provided us with an url-filter that we are now going crazy about going up and down different taxa.

Thanks so much! That is such an efficient way to clean this needs-ID pile a bit more!

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Thanks for the reminder about the Pre-maverick project! A light bulb went off in my head, and I realized I could filter for that when identifying, instead of just filtering for “disagreements,” which I usually do. Oh, it’s so much more satisfying! And less overwhelming, because there are fewer pages if them. (I also filter by region, and flowering plants, and only for the months when things are actually green, so I won’t see dead brown plants and bare twigs.)

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