Archivos de diario de enero 2020

16 de enero de 2020

Gaborone City Nature Challenge 2020

Over 250 cities around the globe are taking part in the 2020 City nature Challenge.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020

Publicado el 16 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 4 comentarios | Deja un comentario

26 de enero de 2020

Who is planting trees in Botswana ?

Individuals and organisation planting trees in Botswana are invited to post links to Facebook and other social media pages and their websites here in this journal.

One purpose of this project is to advertise and encourage the organisations and individuals which are active in tree planting and nurturing their trees.

In this journal, please describe some of the aims and activities that you or your organisation has.

Please describes successes and failures that you have with tree planting and caring !

Please message me for more information or to give ideas how this project could be improved.

Thanks so much

Botswanabugs (aka Tony Benn)

Publicado el 26 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 2 comentarios | Deja un comentario

27 de enero de 2020

City Nature Challenge 2020 Gaborone

Dear Gaboronians, Mochudians, Ramotswans, Molopolians and Oodians

Get ready for the Gaborone area entry in the City Nature Challenge 2020. Despite Covid this International competition continues in 200 cities around the World, many under Lockdown.

Gaborone NEEDS YOU !

Please do your best to encourage others to be iNatters in the Gaborone area and get involved in this amazing, fun-packed competition.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-gaborone

Tony Benn ( aka botswanabugs

Publicado el 27 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario

City Nature Challenge 2020 Gaborone

Please get ready for Gaborone's entry in the City Nature Challenge 2020.
If you are not in the Gaborone/Molepolole/Mochudi/Ramotswa area April 24-27, you can still take part as an Identifier.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-gaborone

Botswanabugs (aka Tony Benn)

Publicado el 27 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

28 de enero de 2020

CNC 2020 Gaborone FAQs

Frequently asked questions:

Q? Do planted/captive organisms (excluding dogs and cats) count?
• Yes, all living organisms count. But the focus is on wild and natural organisms. Please mark any observations that you definitely know are planted or captive as such. Note that aliens and weeds are wild !

Q? What happens if my plant/goggo cannot be identified ?
• Observations that cannot be identified to species level wont add to the species tally, but will still count to the number of observations score. It is important though to take several pictures of different features from different angles, with some closeups. This will help get precise identifications.
• We hope to get experts in many groups to help us with identifications. So with luck , most of your observations will be identified to species level.

Q? Do the insects in my garden count to the totals?
• Most definitely. As do the plants and other animals that they are feeding on or associated with.the garden plants. Please include plant diseases on your plants.
So do animals and fungi in your house: the ants, moths and other visitors also count. Please record them all. If you know that your garden or street trees are planted, please mark them as such.

Q? Do I have to register to participate, or is joining iNaturalist enough?

• All you have to do is join iNaturalist and make observations during the four days of the City Nature Challenge (24-27 April 2020) within the City of Cape Town limits - from Bokbaai to Kogelbaai and from Cape Point to Helderberg and Atlantis, and upload them on or before the 3rd of May 2020 .
• Some groups have special projects we are requesting them to use. So Scouts will add their Scouting project, CREW volunteers will add the Habitat project, and so forth. if you would like to add your own tags or notes you are most welcome.
• At the same time as contributing to the City Nature Challenge, observations will also automatically be contributing to the Nature Reserve, Greenbelt, and other places, checklists and projects. The iNaturalist website will handle that all automatically. All you have to do is photograph and upload with the iNaturalist app.

Q? What happens if the weather turns ugly and we cannot get out on those days?
• There are four days (24-27 April 2020). We will just have to try harder on the best days.

Q? Why are we having it in autumn, instead of spring and Summer when things are happening?
• A very good question. Some say we should organize our own southern hemisphere City Nature Challenge in our austral spring, rather than during the northern spring. Still we have enough biodiversity around Gaborone to match any northern city in spring during our autumn.

Q? Who will identify my observations?
• We will have teams to help make identifications after the data collection period of the City Nature Challenge. So your observations will be identified over the next few days from 28 April until 3 May 2019.
• However, it will help if your observation contains good closeups of features, such as heads, legs, wings, and bodies of animals, and flowers, bracts, leaves and stems of plants, and views of the gills or undersides of fungi. Several pictures of different parts from different angles will help considerably with making an accurate identification.
• If you can help with identification, it will be appreciated. We need both experts who know all the local species in a group, as well as those who can help to put observations into families or genera. . Identifiers can be from all around the world, so please rope in your relatives overseas if they can help!

Q? By when must observations made during the 4 days be uploaded?
• After the four days (24-27 April 2020) are up there are a few days grace (until 4 May) to upload. However, we do need to identify the organisms, so as soon as is possible please - aim for the 3rd May at the latest..

Q? Can I photograph dead things or do the animals and plants have to be living ?
YES ! Photos of bones, fossils, roadkills, horns seeds, dry pods, bulbs and tubers can be uploaded as observations. But not bones from a butchery !
Nests and eggs are observations but inaturalist very strongly discourages disturbance of nests and taking of eggs.

Q? I would like to photograph small things! How do I get good photographs?
• It helps to zoom in. Enlarge the image on your screen before taking the photograph. If you desire, you can use a magnifying glass in front of your smartphone lens.
• One can also buy magnifying accessories at many smartphone stores, that clip onto your phone and can make minute ants look huge. if you can get hold of one and focus on our really small life, it would be really cool!
Alternatively, if you have a macro lens, that would be perfect.

Q? How can I track progress during the challenge to see how many observations and species and participants there are?
• Visit this project, or bookmark this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-Gaborone. It will continuously update as the challenge progresses.
Check out the competition here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020 - this is continuously updated, so you can monitor progress. Remember that we are near GMT, so almost half the world is ahead of us (starting with New Zealand 10 hours ahead) and half behind (ending with Hawaii 14 hours behind).

Q? How do I find out where a species has been recorded in the city?
• On the iNaturalist web page, choose "Explore", and add in the organism name (you can use common names) and the place (Gaborone) and you can look at the map, observations, species (if you have chosen a genus or family), and the observers and identifiers in the area.

Q? I am stuck at home and cannot get out What can I do?
• Your garden is a perfect biodiversity enclave. Record the visitors: bees, flies, butterflies, birds. Also your pests: aphids, millipedes, snails and caterpillars. Why not look for chameleons and lizards as well? And don't forget to include your garden plants, especially if they interact with pollinators, or fruit dispersing birds or are a food source for other wildlife. Even your pot plants: just mark them as 'planted'.

Q? Can several people take pictures of the same plant? Will it be useful if they did, or rather a waste of time? I guess it would add to the total observations but not to the total species observed.
• It is better if they dont. Why should they? There are lots of plants. Rather send your friends to find other plants.
Of course it will happen that several observers may photograph the same species on your excursion. If they are more than a few hundred metres away then the distribution information is useful. If they are less, then it is still useful information. But please discourage an entire class photographing the same bush.
Inevitably it will happen that a really special plant/goggo/bird/etc. is found. And everyone wants to record it to add to their life list. These things happen, and should not be discouraged. Not only will everyone want to photograph it, but some will want to come back and photograph it again. That is also OK, as it contributes to the phenology data - growth, flowering, fruiting, even flowering times during the day (or night): the data are always useful.

Q? If I photograph a plant and then see another of the same species nearby, should I photograph it? How far away should these be to qualify as different observations? (1m, or 5m, or 20m,..?)
• If you are going to photograph each species every 1m, then after 5 hours you will have crawled 50m and be exhausted. A rule of thumb is to think population-wise: try and get every population. So for some trees it will be 5km away. For some rare post-fire herbs, every 50m should be adequate. If it is rare, record every clump. if it is common, select a few places along your route.

For monitoring trees for Polyphagous Shothole Borer Beetle infestation each tree is permissible. Remember to add the project and record the level of infestation (or null if there is no sign of attack).

Q? If I photograph a plant non-indigenous to our area (ie planted), how should this be labelled? A thumbs-down to "Organism is wild"?
• Yes, this is the correct thing to do. On the app, just click not wild. Note that if it is a special plant and you want confirmation of the ID, it might be wise to hold back marking it as planted until you get confirmation of the ID, because observations marked "not wild" go out of the "Needs ID" queue. For the CNC, this does not matter as one ID is enough for our purposes.
• Dont confuse "not wild" with "not indigenous": lots of alien and near-alien species are very wild! Not wild is for those plants that you know were planted, and those animals still captive.

Q? Identification - I assume this is needed to species level - genus level is not enough? What about common names - are they good enough?
• Identification. Our southern African common names are still not all yet on iNaturalist . INaturalist has many Setswana names for trees already in the system. Otherwise the common name would give you the scientific name automatically (unless there were complications - like several species with the same name).
• For purposes of posting the ID, dont worry. Just add the name that you know (common, vernacular, scientific, pet name). The identification teams will mop up afterwards. Get the observation in the bag, and don't worry about identification during the four days of the challenge.

Q? Who determines whether the plant is correctly identified?
• We do. You and I, and everyone else. If you see an incorrectly named observation, please provide a correct ID. Even if you dont know what it is, if you know that it isnt that, then make an ID to a higher level.
An example. Someone posts an ant and uses the Image Recognition System to make an ID. All our southern African ants will be misidentified by this as North American species. If you notice this, just ID it as "Ant" (iNat will make it Formicidae - Ants) and choose, "I don't know, but it is definitely not North American Ant". The Ant team will then mop these up. If we don't have time during the challenge, we will work through them more leisurely afterwards.

• Note that anyone can help. We will need people to ID plants to families or genera to help the expert teams make species-level IDs.

Q? When getting the total score for each city, what weight is given to the three criteria: number of species, number of observations, number of observers? Surely the number of species should count much more than the others if they want to find the most biodiverse city?
• The challenge is much more than that. There are three separate criteria, and they are not merged. The winning city is for each category, and if a particular city wins more than one of these, then it is the overall winner.
• There are also other criteria reported on, but not on the challenge per se. These are the proportion and number of observations identified, and identified to species. And obvious additional criterion could be the number of identifiers, but these tend to be worldwide and not specific to the City involved. And then of course there are other possible criteria, like taxa (e.g. birds, mammals, insects plants (note that it is unlikely to be to families), fungi (ditto). And also marine vs terrestrial. And also wild versus planted. And additional perhaps: identified to research grade. Then there will be summaries by climate zone, by the area of the city and the number of people in it.
And we will probably look at additional criteria in the post-challenge evaluation. But we will summarize these here.

Q? So anything wild goes. Or invasive. Cool
But what about: Anything planted if in a park or Nature Reserve? I think of moringa, jacaranda, orange, palm trees and mango trees to name a few !
Or trees at Gaborone Botanical Garden and the urban open spaces? Mostly planted.

• All count. Just mark them as planted. This will present a problem for the ID process as they wont be "Needs ID" if marked as planted. But we will get around that.
Not only do these count, they are part of our urban biodiversity and must be recorded. Please dont skimp on them. There is no ways we will meet our targets if we only do indigenous plants For now, we need all our urban trees and weeds.
So yes. Indigenous - tick! Aliens - tick! Urban plants - tick! Plants planted to beautify our reserves, verges, and parkscapes - tick! (and ditto the animals and fungi!). Remember to mark planted (if you are 100% certain it is planted and has not escaped).

Q? How does the counting work? If I see a chameleon, sunbird, lizard, whatever each of the 4 days in my own garden and post an obs thereof each day. How would that count/work? Or for that matter a dove on the side walk each day!
• That would strictly be cheating. The same chameleon (or even another) in your garden over a few days should count as one observation. But those in your aunt's, or niece's gardens would count as different observations. Similarly if you saw the dove in a different block or park or suburb, then those are definitely different observations and can (and should!) be posted. Within a nature reserve a few hundred metres would suffice: unless you were monitoring "clumps", in which case each clump would be acceptable. Use your discretion: - distances to a new observation will be much smaller for a millipede than an eagle. .

Q? Hidden localities! We have some Red List species in Gaborone. If iNat obscures these, then they wont show up and count to the city, and that will put us at a considerable disadvantage? What should we do?

More FAQs will be added as questioning people ask question !

Publicado el 28 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

29 de enero de 2020

Gaborone City Nature Challenge 2020

A FUN EVENT !
The Gaborone Area took part in the City Nature Challenge 2020 April 24-27.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-gaborone
http://citynaturechallenge.org/

Though highly hampered by the Covid-19 Lockdown Gaborone managed to be position 128 out of 240 cities that took part and managed to beat some giants like Tshwane, Tokyo, Montreal and Lisbon.

GET READY for the next competition in 2021 ! This should be annual event for the Gaborone area which includes Mochudi, Molepolole and Ramotswa. Maun, Francistown, Kasane, Serowe should have a go in 2021 ! Organisers are needed !

From Gaborone iNaturalists

Publicado el 29 de enero de 2020 por botswanabugs botswanabugs | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario

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