 Today, we'll be exploring the incredible world of iNaturalist, a powerful platform that connects people with nature and fosters a community of nature enthusiasts like you. In this video, we'll cover the basics of getting started on iNaturalist and primarily focus on submitting observations through both the app and on the web. We'll also look at how you can connect with a community of iNaturalist users and have your observations contribute to ongoing or future projects. This pine elephant you've been watching is a good place to start. This is a video I took a few years ago on my phone of a butterfly that happened to catch my eye in the parking lot as I was walking to my car. We probably all have photos like this on our phones right now, and that is actually a valuable piece of information that can fill in gaps in the known distribution or timing of plants, animals, or fungus all around the world. Our goal is to get that information into the iNaturalist database. The key components of each record are knowing what species is being reported, when it was encountered, and where. Let's skip ahead for one second and look at this eastern pine elephant record on iNaturalist.org. By clicking on the species name, we're brought to the overview page for this species and we can see what all of our observations are contributing to. There are nearly 3,000 records contributed, showing us things like the phonology or seasonal distribution of those records, and I especially want to point out the geographic distribution by looking at the map. This really illustrates the power of a contributory science project like this. Thanks to people like you and me, researchers can access real-time data on the distribution of any living thing and in much larger quantities than they'd ever be able to do by themselves. While I won't focus on it in this video, you should know that there are lots of tools that you can get out of iNaturalist, like it keeping track of all the things that you've seen and organizing the photos that you've contributed. Let's focus on getting started. You can use iNaturalist either on the web or as an app on your smartphone. We'll start by looking at downloading the app. Here's a screen recording of the Apple App Store, and by searching for iNaturalist, you'll see it comes up as a top option. There are plenty of other apps that will identify things for you, but this is the one to make your observations useful to researchers. Once downloaded, you'll swipe through an overview, which is much of what we'll be covering in depth next, and you'll eventually get to a sign-up page where you'll create a username and provide an email address. This is the same process that you'll go through if you use a web browser. Go to iNaturalist.org and click Sign Up. Now let's look at how to submit an observation on the app. With the app open on your phone, you'll click Observe at the bottom of the screen, then select your camera. Let's switch over to that perspective for easier viewing. Find your subject and snap a shot. When you tap Use Photo, it'll open to the share screen, where your phone will automatically add the date and time, as well as the location thanks to the phone's connection with GPS satellites. This is worth noting that it is pulling information from your phone's GPS, not through cell towers, so it should work even if you don't have service. Next, we'll tap on the What Did You See area, which will use a photo recognition software to suggest an identification. Here it suggests a couple of species of meadowhawks, but we can also submit a just a member of the genus Sympetrum. I recommend always being conservative in using a higher taxonomic classification if you are unsure of the ID. Tap on Share at the bottom, and your observation will be uploaded. I want to take a quick pause to acknowledge anyone feeling hesitant to use this. I often hear from new users that they are nervous they'll do something wrong or break something, and let me just give you the encouragement that everything will be fine. iNaturalists just crossed the 150 million observations mark, and your contributions will only make this grow. Even just here in Maine, over 28,000 people have shared over 640,000 observations. Let's do one more quick one. We'll tap on Observe, and select the camera. Find and photograph your subject. Once the suggestions have loaded, we can compare a couple of these. I know this is some type of dock growing in my yard, and I can tap on Broadleaf Dock to see more information on it, including seeing more photos. I want to see what the basil leaves look like, so I can compare it to Curly Dock, a species that I've seen before. It definitely looked like broadleafed, so I'll select that, and I can even tap the plus button in the top left and add another photo. This is kind of extra credit, but it will make for a better record if it includes diagnostic photos. Speaking of using good photos, here's a quick example of how iNaturalist is only as good as the information you give it. The first example is a plant with pretty distinctive leaves. You may even recognize it before it pops up. It is jewelweed, or you may know it as spotted touch-me-not. The next example is less distinct, and while it does suggest daylily, also note that daylily leaf miner is at the top of the list. So the software can't quite tell if we're talking about the plant or possible insect inside the plant. And this last one, just a shot of some bark, iNaturalist misidentifies this sugar maple as some oak, even suggesting species of moths that are often photographed against bark, or yellow-bellied sap sucker, because people upload photos of their sap wells that are drilled into that bark. It's always good to be critical of the suggestions that it gives you, and think about what else you can include to get a proper identification. This is where the iNaturalist community comes into play. After you've submitted observations, others will have an opportunity to contribute to them as well. Here's what that looks like. When I go to iNaturalist.org, I'll get a notification if anyone has interacted with my observations. Here was a margin tiger beetle record that I submitted that now has had two other people agree with the identification. When the community has reached consensus on an observation, it gets tagged as research grade, which is a higher data quality indicator for researchers using these data. You can also see these comments and ID suggestions on the mobile app. Here's another example of a butterfly uploaded. Out in the field, without any guides, I didn't remember what species it was and decided to submit it at the genus level. By the next time I went on iNaturalist, Dr. Herb Wilson, a Colby College professor and coordinator of the main butterfly survey, had suggested it was an Atlantis Fritillary and even wrote great notes on how to tell it from Aphrodite or Great Spangled. I updated my ID and Bill Sheehan, another Maine expert from Marusta County, chimed in, bumping this up to research grade. You too can suggest identifications if there are families or species you know well. By clicking on the explore tab, I can filter the observations to only those from Maine and I want to just see birds. Here's one. A gull-only ID at the genus level, Loris, which are all the large white-headed gulls. I know this is a juvenile ring-billed gull, so I can suggest that here. Notice that changes the ID, but not enough people have agreed on the ID to make it research grade yet. The next one I see here is a mallard. And yep, that is a photo of a female mallard, so I can click agree and you'll see that with community consensus it has bumped up to research grade. I'll just go down to this bird. ID does a great cormorant. This is a tricky ID and if we zoom in it does look more like a double crested cormorant to me. So I can suggest that and since it differs from what is already there, I'll try to be helpful and include some notes on why I disagree. Now notice that bumped this down from species level to a family level and will require more consensus on an ID to get it back up. There are many more features under the community tab, including seeing top observers and top identifiers for each month and various projects set up on iNaturalist, which is a nice segue to talking about how your observations are contributing to science and conservation. I'll share the story of the first time I had a researcher contact me about my sightings. This was a ribbon snake I photographed years ago at my parents' house, and shortly after submitting it I was contacted by one of the coordinators of the main amphibian and reptile atlas project. I sent a quick description of how I could have that contributing to their project on iNaturalist. Fast forward a couple years and I heard from them again after finding another ribbon snake in the next town over, and now they pointed out how those observations are being used on the main inland fisheries and wildlife page and will be used in the maps from the forthcoming third edition of the Reptiles and Amphibians book. I do want to emphasize that all observations of any species, even very common ones, are just as important to these projects. You never know what questions someone might have in the future, so these virtual specimens may hold more value than we know. We can see an overview of the main amphibian and reptile atlas project on iNaturalist. It is pretty amazing that there are nearly 20,000 records submitted just to this project. At Main Audubon, we have set up projects at most of our sanctuaries, mostly focusing on documenting the biodiversity at each site. Here is a map of all the observations around our nature center at the Scarborough Marsh. We hold yearly bioblitz, bringing in experts and targeting volunteer efforts to take snapshots of the wildlife in the marsh. Before wrapping up, it is important to acknowledge the need to put the welfare of any plants or animals first. iNaturalist does have safeguards to help protect species that are threatened or endangered. With this New England Cottontail Record, if I switch out of my own account, you can see how the date and location are obscured from public view, since this is an endangered species. One more example is with these Ramshead lady slippers. These are rare and the data are obscured in Main, but a more common species, like these yellow lady slippers, will show all their data. However, you, as the observer, do have the option to change the geo-privacy and obscure that information if you'd like. In closing, there are lots of great tools on the iNaturalist website to answer your questions and help you get started. Click on the More tab and you'll find a Help section and more video tutorials. I hope this helps, and I look forward to seeing your observations on iNaturalist.