What is your Favorite Lifer from this week?

I’m going to go with this little dude - Aureoboletus roxanae, Roxane’s Bolete. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178605553

I feel this is a good one to illustrate how finicky mushroom identification can be when it comes to getting there right pictures, because there are a lot of boletes that look incredibly similar to this one, and I bet it isn’t as uncommon as the number of observation on iNat would make it seem, simply because the pictures provided just aren’t always enough to narrow it down.

The first, and probably most, important identification feature is this picture right here - it shows off the vertical striations that aren’t quite reticulated, the yellow stem, and the distinctive orange band near the pores that this species has.

The second, is that this shows the scratches I made in the pores to bruise them to see if there was any staining effect. There was minimal, in this case, but even if there was bruising this species bruises cinnamon brown, not the blue that is usually more common with red & yellow boletes, and you can see hints of some cinnamon color around come of the pores.

But if I had just posted the first picture, personally I wouldn’t be confident in narrowing it down, because there are several other species that it could also be at first glance.

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Tuesday was a holiday here and I went snorkelling to Almuñécar (province Granada). There I found my first coral! :-)
Astroides calycularis - and what a colour! By the way, it still needs confirmation, but I think there is nothing similar.


https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178674230

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This past Wednesday I went on a lunch break and walked down to the rocky shore about 5-10 minutes from the office building I work in. I decided to go down onto the rocks and see what I could find.

There, I found several new lifers, which I think are very neat! Pics below (all of which were taken with my terrible phone camera)

This beautiful sea star was the first to really catch my eye!

I continued to find more denizens of the rock pools, including the usual sea snails, Parvulastra starfish, mussels and limpets, small klipfish, a sea urchin, several stunningly beautiful sea anemones including this beauty, when I saw this oblong little shape and couldn’t believe my eyes - it was my very first chiton in my life ever!

chiton

I had heard about chitons once or twice before, but to see one for the first time was an awesome experience. Very different from anything I’ve seen before.

Finally, I saw these fronds of coralline algae, also unlike anything I had seen before in real life. Something I was all to happy to snap a pic of and add to my life list!

coralline

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One thing about the Southeast that I’m still not used to is the diversity of unobtrusively tiny lawn flowers. I have been trying to make a point of noticing them. So, I was examining this flower, less than 1cm across, on a plant just a few cm tall, barely noticeable among the grass.

I was trying to get an idea of the initial ID based on the bilateral symmetry and opposite leaves – thinking maybe mint or plantain family – when suddenly the gardener in me made a connection and I thought, “It looks like Wishbone Flower! Only very tiny!”

Turns out it is – or at least in the same genus.


Torenia crustacea. Tiny cousin to the showy, horticultural Torenia fournieri, and you can definitely see the familial resemblance. And with that, I have added a plant family I hadn’t even heard of, Linderniaceae. Okay, so it isn’t native; but I don’t think that invasive is the right word for a plant that stays in the mowed lawns.

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Today I found a really cool stem gall in the genus Neolasioptera on the host plant Erechtites hieraciifolius (a.k.a. American Burnweed). What makes it especially cool is that the species that infects this plant is an undescribed species, the first undescribed species I’ve found that I know of at least. Its amazing what sorts of amazing and unknown to science creatures we may walk by every day without knowing!

Links to sources from my research:
https://www.gallformers.org/gall/3210
https://bugguide.net/node/view/742434

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I live in an area with a long history of industry and mining (brown coal/potash) and I’ve been exploring some of the post-industrial landscapes and the interesting niche habitats they have created for various organisms – including a couple of bee species that aren’t found anywhere else in Germany.

But this week, among a number of notable lifers, I think my favorite may be the discovery of a plant long familiar to me from my childhood in Colorado, established here locally in a few small, scattered populations so far from its native range. So it’s a lifer only in the iNat sense: seen countless times but never personally documented.

sticky gumweed – Grindelia squarrosa

(Shown here with a pair of Heriades tumbling around on the flower, blithely unaware of the incongruity of its presence here, but clearly recognizing its similarity to the native daisy-type flowers on which they collect pollen.)

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This large mouth bass was in an artificial lake, which doesn’t allow any fishing.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178717939

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@krismunk, I am really interested to hear a bit more about your spectacular lifer - when, where, did you go searching for it or was it by chance, species…

Thanks for asking :-)

I live in Copenhagen. Back in the days, Atlantic bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, were regular summer visitors to the northern parts of the Sound, the narrow strait separating the Danish island of Zealand from Sweden, where they would gorge themselves on garfish, mackerel & herring before returning to their winter grounds in the Mediterranean. Alas, due to extreme over fishing, some 60 years ago the global population imploded, and the species disappeared from Danish waters.

Subsequently, and just in time, restrictions on fishing were put in place, and, slowly but steadily, the global population rebounded to the point where, some 10 years ago, they started to return to these same Danish waters. Since then, year by year, tuna numbers in the Sound have continually increased.

I have, for a number of years after their return, nurtured a strong desire to see these magnificent creatures, yet until today, I never got around to doing anything about it. The narrow waters of the Sound offer unique conditions to see them hunting, as they will chase schools of primarily garfish from below, forcing them to the surface and launching attacks at speeds up to 50 mph, causing them to break up to 10 feet clear of the surface, landing with immense splashes as 500 - 1100 lbs of explosive muscle (only adults make the journey this far north) reenter the water.

It is possible to view this spectacle from the shore, yet chances are somewhat slim and you won’t get close, so I had never made a dedicated effort, though the drive to Elsinore (yes, the town of Kronborg, and hence Hamlet) is but a short one, and I don’t own a boat so I would need to make arrangements with a friend, or go on a powerboat tour with local aquarium, run by the biology department at the University of Copenhagen.

I have never been one to appreciate guided tours of any sort, so I held back, thinking I would find a way by myself, but eventually I gave in, and booked the trip. We had a wonderful couple of hours on the water in the company of seals, porpoises, and lots and lots of tuna, with over 160 instances of one breaking the surface seen within just a couple of hours, most just rolling in the surface, but several jumping clear of it, most quite far off in the distance, yet a few as close as maybe 15-20 feet from the boat.

Photographing these, however, seemed basically impossible, at least for some one with my (lack of) skill and gear, but somehow I got somewhat lucky on at least one occasion

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Never seen one of those things opened up. Cool!

I saw this gorgeous Buff-breasted Sandpiper this morning! Digiscoped photo.

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August 19th 2023

The Asian Mud-dauber Wasp found drowned in my local city swimming pool:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/179212481

August 16th 2023

A cute little wasp found on weeds near where I live.

Brachymeria podagrica

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178746046

A new moth the Corn Earworm moth, found dead in the swimming pool on Aug 21st 2023:

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/118492-Helicoverpa-zea

A new salticid, Putnam’s Jumping Spider, found in Carl Schurz Park on Aug 23rd 2023

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/179880100

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I figure if it wasn’t for the pandemic I never would have discovered iNaturalist and all the wonders that has brought me.

Thank you Covid 19. It took you long enough to get here but I’m also grateful for that. Humble human moments are in a lot of ways, blessings as well.

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Colombia trip week 2 top 5


Variable clown frog?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178900426


Widespread eighty-eight (Didnt know of 88s before this, looks like more of a 08 though)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178424381


Yellow-banded Pinktoe Tarantula
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178226810

Common Pauraque
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178900429


Waxy-Monkey Treefrog
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178900430

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This lifer (in the iNat sense) is from May and I didn’t post it, because I was travelling. I saw harbour porpoises before iNat times, because we used to have a traditional sailing vessel and made cruises often in Danish waters. This one I saw in May when I was visiting friends with a ship and we made a day trip in the Flensburg Firth close to the okseøer- no sailing weather, but the right weather to see them. It made me especially happy that it is now on my “official” life list. I have to tell my friends to look out for tuna, though! I tried to find your observation in iNat, but couldn’t even find you - or do you have a different name?


https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/164094450

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Not a rare plant but I was happy to get to see a Linnaea borealis (Linnaeus’ favorite plant): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178579289

They are normally a much more northern species (like Canada or Scandinavia) - but there is a valley in Austria where they survived as a glacial relict species. We drove to the end of the valley to hike up a mountain, but on the way back the road was blocked by a landslide and there was a long line of cars waiting for them to clear the road. So while waiting there for 4 hours I walked into the forest next to the road for a bit and that’s where I found a few big boulders overgrown with them!

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As far as I recall, this is the first time I’ve observed a spider carrying her young on her abdomen:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/179838088

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Such a good Mom!

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Isn´t this lovely? They are amazing… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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