My family and I keep a register of the biodiversity in our land, recording all animal, plants, fungi we find, we also make follow ups of the things we observe like nests or growth.
Today we reached 1000 observations and +400 species.
Any type of recomendation for us to make the project as useful as it can be for inat?
Nice! Most of your observations are just in 1 hectare!
I would love to see some kind of map with “density” of species. I have a similar situation, with almost 700 species on the property (although much bigger). Maybe identify global “diversity hotspots”? 400 species in 1 hectare is really impressive.
Oh, I am sorry Susanne, I didnt provide much information
My family and I work in our property reporting all that we see
You can search my location like this (sorry I dont know a better way)
go to search, put this location
Manaure, Cesar, Colombia
then on the map go where the orange square is in this map.
About the DENSITY.
I was actually trying to figure out a way to report species density, one way I thought is report an specie at least a month, that way the year/month chart can be reported on the inat species profile. Because I have noticed some species dont have reports in some parts of the year. Maybe some due to migration, but the others?
I had this idea after I stopped seing this moth specifically, Observations · iNaturalist
I saw a few of them around my house in the trimester of the year, but I dont longer see them around. And I kind of wish now I had reported every single one of them, because I didnt… and now I dont longer see them.
If you have any other idea on how to make the density map share with me please.
Have you tried using the Annotations? I like adding flowers and fruits to plants. Then on the species page you can see a graph of the phenology through the year. You can also search for photos of plants that have flowers or fruit, which is helpful for identification.
If you want to go beyond basic annotations, you can use the custom Observation Fields. On the Observation page you can find the Observation Fields on the right under Annotations, Projects, People. Just start typing and then choose the Field you want. You can search for these fields too, but you have to use custom URLs.
400 species on a property even as small as that in Columbia is just the tip of the iceberg. You can probably find 4,000 or more with time and some knowledge (and maybe better camera or macro adapter for phone for the smaller arthropods).
If you find yourself getting more serious, invest in a better camera to get better photos of the smaller things. Keep learning about what photographic angles and features of the organisms are best for identification–to help increase the chance that you’re observations can be identified to species.
…which will then take you to Explore, where you can then narrow it down further in the filters (so, if I wanted to annotate, say, leaf miner hosts, I’d set “Your Observations” to true, taxa to “Insects”)… you can also then open Identify, where you can quickly go through all those observations without (there the Observation Fields menu here is under the “Annotations” tab). Very useful for adding them to many observations at a time!
Light traps are a good way to see lots of moths and other insects, but I wouldn’t use them if you want to know what is living on your hectare. Many of the insects a light trap attracts will have been drawn in from the surrounding area. The trap basically messes with flying moths’ navigation. So what ends up in the trap will be partly from your patch of habitat and partly not.
To reach that number in Colombia I’m guessing you’ve found a lot of birds, plants, insects, etc. Impressive!
I imagine in such a biodiverse country there are probably still hundreds of species to be found, but many may not be well studied enough for identification… have identifiers told you of any undescribed species that you’ve found?
In addition to moth lights, another avenue for more obscure species would be micro-organisms. If you have a microscope, there’s a whole other world of organisms to explore out there.
If an insect can see the light from the adjacent property, then they are certainly at least flying around in the airspace above the property to be surveyed at one point or another. I think that’s getting a bit too particular.
A property also (generally) isn’t a hermetically sealed-off space – the borders are permeable, with organisms coming and going, and a certain percentage of the organisms seen on-site are likely passing through rather than permanent residents. I wouldn’t consider light traps to be inherently different than, say, a bird feeder, which I think most people would be more than willing to include in a property species count.
Attracting birds with feeders is on the slippery slope away from what occurs there naturally, but the birds have chosen to go there and are getting some resources from the property, so the site is forming part of their habitat. Moths in a light trap have just been lured away from what they would otherwise have done.
The bigger the property, the more useful the trap records. Moth traps are fine if you are wanting to know what is in your county (unless you live a few 100 metres from the county boundary). But you find people claiming their garden is good for moths because of what they trap there. More likely they catch a lot of moths because their moth trap can be seen from a long way away.
We’re drifting off topic, but I find this interesting. I live in a suburban area with streetlights, exterior lights on neighboring homes, and plenty of light pollution from the urban core. Is my 1 LED lamp in the driveway actually bringing in insects from afar?
It is hard to say. If it is competing with much other light pollution, yours may not be having much effect. Different bulbs give off different spectra and I think moths tend to be attracted to the ultra-violet end, and it also depends on the brightness. I’m sure there has been much research on the topic but I don’t know it.
There was a move last year to increase the value of UK biological records by making them more precise, and one of the suggestions was to persuade moth trappers to use much less powerful lights so that there was more chance that the catch had come from the immediate surroundings of the trap. I can’t remember who proposed it and I haven’t heard any more about it. I suspect asking moth trappers to adopt traps that catch less is not going to be an easy win.