During a nighttime wildlife tour in Ecuador's Amazon, guide Alexander Bentley turned over a leaf to point out a parasitic fungus to his group — the kind that hijacks and kills its hosts. In this case, that host was a spider, and at first, it appeared fully infected and dead. But when he poked the “fungus-riddled” spider, it moved.
He photographed the spider and shared it on iNaturalist. Community members quickly realized that the spider wasn’t being taken over by fungus at all — it was a spider mimicking the fungus. Specifically the fungus Gibellula, which colonizes spiders and sprouts pale, tendril-like growths from their bodies. This spider had evolved to resemble the very thing that destroys its kind, possibly as camouflage.
Researchers formally described this spider as a new species, Taczanowskia waska, in a peer-reviewed paper published earlier this year. "Everyone can contribute to scientific knowledge using something as simple as a mobile phone,” said David Ricardo Díaz-Guevara, one of the paper's authors. “Even a single well-documented record can become scientifically valuable."
Learn more about this new spider via The New York Times, and read on for more stories and discoveries like this one! | ☀️ Psst, did you catch iNaturalist on CBS Sunday Morning with David Pogue and Martha Stewart? |
What term describes the study of the timing of biological events — like when flowers bloom or birds migrate? |
A. Phylogeography B. Phenology C. Paleoecology D. Biochronology Scroll to the end for the answer! |
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Possum found alive after thousands of years |
Two marsupials thought extinct for thousands of years are alive in New Guinea — and an iNaturalist observation helped prove it. iNaturalist community member carlosbocos was the first to post photos of the pygmy long-fingered possum on the platform, which became key evidence toward the species' confirmed survival. That photo, along with museum specimens and longtime knowledge from local Indigenous communities, led to a recently published scientific paper. Since then, there have been several more sightings of this species!
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Tiny hummingbird in a brand-new place |
The world's smallest long-distance migratory bird showed up somewhere unexpected. When iNaturalist community member danieltapaya noticed a hummingbird in Monterrey that didn't quite match any of the 11 species he knew from the area, he uploaded it to iNaturalist to find out what it was. With help from the community, it was confirmed as a Calliope Hummingbird (Selasphorus calliope) — the first ever documented in Nuevo León.
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Over the years, the little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) has quietly spread across much of the globe outside its native range — but mapping exactly where it's established has been a challenge. But recently, researchers turned to over 1,500 iNaturalist observations validated against museum records and scientific papers to build an updated global distribution map and found the species in several new places. Finding out where a tiny ant has been gets a lot easier when millions of people are watching!
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One excursion, two surprising new iNat records |
In March, iNaturalist ambassadors Carlos Velazco (aztekium) and Mave Mohamed (mave01) led a scouting trip into Sierra Corral de los Bandidos, a protected desert area in Nuevo León, Mexico. Joining them: four young community members learning to identify cacti and desert plants. What they found exceeded expectations — the group documented Acharagma roseanum, a cactus not recorded in the region for nearly a decade, and they also turned up a first state record for the butterfly Callophrys mcfarlandi. Four hours in the field, two exciting new records for iNaturalist!
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Queer Hike San Diego hits the trail (and brings iNat along) |
Daniel Hetzel (thesafarihiker), an iNaturalist ambassador, leads hikes for Queer Hike San Diego, a group creating safe outdoor spaces for LGBTQ+ community members to connect with nature. On a recent outing at Black Mountain Open Space Park, Daniel wove in notes about native plants and traditional ecological knowledge — and gave a brief intro to iNaturalist at the snack break! More hikes are already in the works. |
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ANSWER: B. Phenology is the study of seasonal natural phenomena! As climates shift, phenological timing is changing, too — and iNaturalist observations are helping scientists track those changes in real time. Every observation you log with a date, location, and annotation could potentially become a data point for phenology. |
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Naturalist is an independent, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization based in the United States of America (EIN/Tax ID: 92-1296468).
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