📜 EwA Weekly Highlights: Violet Fungus, 6666 Species (& Counting), Great Events and Kathy's Recap of an EwA Field Orientation...

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Claire O'Neill

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Aug 15, 2021, 3:49:01 PM8/15/21
to Earthwise Aware Discussion Group

Here's the recap of another busy week at EwA and a few highlights of what's coming...

📸  Many wonderful new records made it into the EwA Biodiversity projects this week again. One favorite: a beautiful violet coral fungus recorded by Matt this week. Now, here is a question: the iNaturalist community identified that record as a Clavaria zollingeri (a species classified as vulnerable). However if one looks at the distribution of the species on the IUCN red list, it does not seem to be occurring in our area. Digging further, note that North America and Australian specimens are excluded from the IUCN distribution as being probably other species–meaning that one might encounter a species in the US identified as a Clavaria zollingeri, but for the IUCN it's not. The next question is what would it be then? I haven't found the answer to that question yet.   

One note for our iNaturalists: At this time, fungi are often misidentified on the platform for a combination of reasons: (1) not enough experts are part of the iNat community assessing records, and (2) many photo records can't lead to positive identification (at the species level) quite yet as a spore print and microscope-analysis are needed for many species. With time, this will change. With the success of the platform worldwide, and the ever-increasing number of experts and records getting in, as well as thanks to both imaging and machine learning, then the underlying algorithms are likely to improve radically very soon. It just takes time. As for that record, we'll have to check what our mycology friends and experts think about it :-)

📊  Thanks to all for incredible biodiversity records this week! 668 observations total over 355 species! Curious about the records that have been validated by the iNat community so far? > here.

Running tally: To date, we recorded 78,690 observations of 6,666 distinct species! Check our EwA umbrella project and see the details per site/observer & more... > here

📅  EwA Coming Events

It was a busy outreach week with 3 public events (2 field orientation sessions, one biodiversity walk). All were a success! Our guests were curious, enthusiastic, and super engaged. We just love it! It feels so good to see that we have a positive impact in our communities. If you want to get a feel of what an EwA field orientation session is like, read Kathy's field log about this past Wed field session > here

Field Events » Check our public field events on the EwA Calendar: [ Events details & registration »Don't miss great opportunities to follow the rhythm of the season on our local habitats and wildlife!Space is limited for all our field events. Wildlife ethics is important to us and we seek to avoid putting pressure on natural habitats that large gatherings unavoidably do. We are asking our audience to register-and-commit to avoid no-shows (or cancel when you know you can't come)

■ EwA Fieldwork (& Resources)

We are monitoring phenology and entomofauna weekly at all sites. Our biodiversity and habitat documentation fieldwork is also as healthy as ever thanks to our group of core citizen scientists who simply rock! 

🗺️  EwA Sites Map | 🌱  Site Protocols and Guides - Field Rosters - Field Notes > All here! | ℹ️  More About EwA Citizen Science Program » here

Any questions Don't be shy. Just email me or reply to this thread.

Thanks and have a great week! - Claire

🧡  Make an impact - Help our #ScienceForAll program.

Become an EwA Ambassador today! » https://www.earthwiseaware.org/donate/ 



Photo: a violet coral fungus? | iNaturalist record © Matthew Gage

 

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