Mexico - iNaturalist World Tour
The second most active country on iNaturalist is Mexico. This is due to the efforts of CONABIO who were the founding members of the iNaturalist Network with Naturalista.mx.
While growth has been steady since 2013, Mexico saw a huge bump April 2019 from the Mexico Reto Naturalista Urbano organized in conjunction with the 2019 City Nature Challenge.
Compared to the United States, there's a slightly larger proportion of bird and herp observations and slightly fewer insects and fungi.
We’ll be back tomorrow with Canada!
@momoto-erick @francisco3_tutor @juancarlosgarciamorales1 @blakesito @najera_tutor @ivanresendizcruz @alexiz @poncho @aztekium_tutor @pioleon
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The most biodioverse regions in Mexico are underrepresented in number of observations because fortunately they are under protection.
I have been identifying all of the fungi that come across iNaturalist in Mexico.
@alan_rockefeller I want to use this opportunity to thank you for all the great work of identifying fungi. Most of the fungi I uploaded have been identified only by you.
Many thanks to @carlos2 who is the main point of contact for Natuarlista.mx with CONABIO!
@langlands are your protected areas remote, rugged or not accessible? Why would they be under-represented? I am willing to bet that our protected areas in South Africa will be among the most represented in numbers. But I have to wait a few more days to find out ...
@tonyrebelo Yes, they are not easy to access (remote and arid in the north and rugged and protected in the rainy south) and that's why they haven't been damaged as the rest of the country. I guess for South Africa biodiversity has kept up more or less better than Mexico against human populations even in not hard to access regions since it has co-evolved with hominids for millions of years :)
Wow, what is most noticeable about Mexico is the large number of high bird observations. Although there are lots of plant observations, the number of observations per species is totally dominated by birds.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6793&subview=grid&view=species
Of the top 50 most recorded species in Mexico, 2 are insects, 2 are mammals and 2 are reptiles :: the rest - 44 species - are ALL birds!
I dont have anything to compare it with yet, but 4 of the top 50 are invasive species (the Honeybee and House Sparrow shared with USA).
Neat to see the seasonality of observations "flatten out" compared to the US. I imagine that pattern holds true across latitudes.
@tonyrebelo Good point. A factor contributing to this is (if I made my queries correct):
in Mexico 30% of plants observations are at genus level (compared to 21% in USA and SA)
in Mexico 11% of plants observations are only at family level (compared to 7% in USA and 5% and SA)
@langlands ".. South Africa biodiversity has kept up ... against human populations ... since it has co-evolved with hominids for millions of years :)"
If only that were true! In Cape Town all mammals larger than 50kg were shot out within 50 years of permanent European settlement for 200km from Cape Town - by 1700. Evolving with humans is not evolving with rifles!
What saved our large mammals were Mosquitoes (Malaria) and Tsetse Flies (Sleeping Sickness). In areas free of these diseases we lost the Cape Warthog by 1850, the Bluebuck, the Quagga (as a species or subspecies: take your pick) by 1870, and we almost lost the Bontebuck (another subspecies), the Cape Mountain Zebra (as) and several more. Fortunately our big game reserves were established before the West discovered DDT about WWII time, which cleared Mossies and Tsetses from the lowveld, opening the non-proclaimed areas up to cattle and people. Had DDT been discovered 50 years earlier, we would have lost the last of, and all our game, and the lowveld wasteland would have been prime estate that conservation would have been unable to afford..
WOW!, Ha sido un trabajo arduo, y todo gracias al apoyo de CONABIO y el equipo de @carlos2, entre ellos @negronahual @roberto_arreola @elizatorres @brizel ! Gracias a todos por el trabajo de tantos años!
Esperemos tener muchos años por delante para continuar con la labor de predicar la palabra de Naturalista aquí en México y el resto del mundo!
Amigos!, vengan a visitar Mexico y documentar su gran diversidad biológica!
@tonyrebelo that's worst than I imagined :( Regarding the point, I was mainly comparing it to Mexico in terms of why only the hard to access areas haven't suffered big extinctions. And particularly referring to the extinctions events that hit almost all the Americas-only big mammals, which was very likely caused by the irruption of the first migration wave of humans. And later, in the last century, the clearance of most of the easy to access rainforests
Excelente nota, continuaremos con el aporte para seguir siendo uno de los países mas activos. Todo esto es gracias a los compañeros y amigos que apoyan la plataforma junto con el equipo de CONABIO, enterarme de esto, simplemente me emociona y espero continuar por mucho tiempo mas. Saludos a todos.
Many people are very excited and happy about the result of Mexico. It has been a great success despite many setbacks. And we learned many great lessons about what can be done with naturalist and how people can unite for a good cause. And this is just the beginning, because they are already waiting for the next one and we have many other plans for Mexico naturalist.
Greetings and hugs
Un gran reconocimiento para Alexis por el excelente impulso a las identificaciones. Y a todos los participantes por sumarse a este gran logro.
Although, I'm not living in Mexico anymore, I'm still connected via iNaturalist.
Así es annemirdl!, muchas gracias por tu apoyo.
I posted some questions about Mexican States/Districts and Common Names here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/mexico-inaturalist-world-tour/4509 would appreciate any insight from people with knowledge about these topics - thanks!
Septiembre 7 del 2013. Día en que di un click en mi computadora y cambió mi vida. Encontré a personas maravillosas dentro de un proyecto maravilloso alrededor del mundo. SOY NATURALISTA!!!
Vamos x más! y mejor! Gracias iNaturalist Network!!!
Cheers, Carlos
@langlands
Key phrase there:
"permanent European settlement"
Greetings from the former mexican state of Texas!
As far as common names for species, yall have the best translation list that I'm aware of. If you're trying to improve it, the question might be Who else has a good list, that could be consolidated. Educational institutions in the border states and tribal lands, places and people like that.
Locally, I'm in an area with a lot of mexicans, as well as central americans. Probably most of the parents of our schoolchildren. Folks may know the plant or animal, or a related species, because they grew up with it, but they don't have a scientific name. Having a name and photo on the Naturalista platform is helpful to put them in a position of being knowledgeable about nature, not ignorant about english.
¡Gracias a CONABIO y todos ustedes por su trabajo!
Estos resultados han sido posible gracias a la red de colaboradores de NaturaLista, tutores, curadores, espacios multiplicadores, el equipo de CONABIO y la comunidad de entusiastas y aficionados NaturaListas en México. Un reconocimiento a tod@s ell@s!!
Just checking: we know where the observers are based, but where are the top IDentifiers from?
5: USA (fungi, mammals, other, molluscs, fish)
4: Mexico
Germany (insects)
I lived in Mexico for a couple of years and I moved back to Germany. However my sources for IDs of insects come mainly from USA (Butterflies of America, Bugguide etc.) There are almost no Mexican online resources. I also did quite a lot of coarser IDs of unknowns into Heteroptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera and Odonata, so some experts (mostly non Mexicans, too) could find them.
Public thanks to @wongun and @borisb for the substantial and impressive Ids to Hemiptera and Coleoptera respectively, even when they are quite far from Mexico
¡Muchas felicidades para todos! Un gusto colaborar, compartir y aprender de la gran diversidad de especies en el estado mexicano de Veracruz, dónde vivo y mi país México.
Saludos para todos.
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