Looking for new ideas related to iNaturalist? Part I: Explore indoors

It is 6am, the sun isn’t up yet, and it is very dark outside. I am spending a few days at our cottage and early mornings here are very peaceful - the fire is glowing nicely, and I have few lights on as I upload observations to iNaturalist. But I know that I am not alone – I can hear the resident mouse as he is rustling around in the bin of kindling in the corner by the wood stove…

Yesterday I found a weird (i.e. new to me) ‘bug’ in the bathtub. I knew that it wasn’t a spider nor was it a tick. To help figure out what it might be of course I took a photo…and posted this to iNaturalist.

After a couple of cups of coffee my mind started to spin, and this lead me down a new rabbit hole which has led to this blog.

I fired off the following question to an iNat City Nature Challenge group: ‘If a beetle/spider/insect is found indoors should it be flagged as 'captive?' (We have lots of bugs inside as we bring in wood for the fireplace…)

I received the following reply: ‘species are still considered wild unless we intentionally bring them indoors.’

I was also sent a link to a very relevant iNat project: Never Home Alone: The Wild Life of Homes.
Info on this site incudes a great video where they explore someone’s house looking for spiders, etc. I quite enjoyed it – it did help knowing that the video was created in the States and our Canadian homes are less likely to have quite so many spiders… To view the movie click here.

Last evening, I went off to explore our basement…bad timing as the cottage had just been vacuumed earlier in the day but I did find a couple of spiders!

If from time to time you find critters indoors and you upload your observations to iNaturalist then consider joining the ‘Never home alone’ project. This iNat project does require that observations are Research Grade so you will have to put in a bit of effort to get your observation identified.

Below are a few recommendations if you post ‘indoor’ content.

1. Add an observation field: ‘Habitat’ and then populate this field with ‘dwelling’. (It will indicate that they were not observed outdoors in a natural setting.)
2. Add a tag: ‘indoors’ (This will facilitate filtering out this collection of critters – useful for identifiers)
3. Add observation to the Never home alone project (you must join this project first and then your observation must be Research Grade)
4. Encourage spider/insect/bug experts to monitor iNat and assist with the identification process.
5. Encourage others to explore indoors!

Here is a link to a few of my iNat indoor observations – if you recognize any please help identify!
href="https://inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=any&q=indoors&user_id=mkkennedy&verifiable=any"> .

Posted on January 24, 2020 04:40 PM by mkkennedy