LACANASTAR & INATURLIST
Project Summary:
* iNaturalist Australia observations are submitted, added to the global iNaturalist database, and shared with Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. It is a simple tool that allows citizens to contribute to science. This project aims to define East Gippsland Landcare Group areas on the iNaturalist platform and train people in its use. It also encourages passive competition between groups. For example, we might ask, “Which group or individual can make the most Red Robin recordings for July?”
The entire project is aimed at engaging and involving groups and the broader community in connecting to nature and participating in adding to our knowledge of our living environment. Landcare Networks or Groups can then encourage passive competition at various times.
This project has engaged an experienced contractor to support all interested East Gippsland Landcare Groups to map their Lacanaster on iNaturalist and then train them to use the iNaturalist program.
The project for each participating group will go ‘live’ simultaneously with a celebration of various results over the application of the program.
Jarrahmond Landcare Group developed the Lacanastar acronym and concept during Covid and is iNaturalist and is now very active.
LONG HORN BEETLE
The Members of Jarrahmond are always thrilled to make observations, things that are unusual and little recorded and so far made half a dozen observations of living things which have 5 or fewer records in iNaturalist globally. The observation of Pempsamacra condita Longhorn Beetle (Made By Vik from the group, in January 2022. He put it on iNaturalist the same day as a Round-necked Longhorn Beetles (Cerambycinae), not knowing exactly what it was. Before long, two experts confirmed it as a Round-necked Longhorn Beetle, the first observation of the species on iNaturalist. Having achieved a research grade, the observation was added to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, becoming the third recorded observation in the GBIF, and the first recorded observation there of a live specimen.
The website Encyclopedia of Life, hosted by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Has this photograph taken in a Jarrahmond garden. The other two are preserved specimens in Western Australian and Queensland Museums. Both of these were located in NSW. One is 100 years old and the other doesn’t have a date, suggesting that it is also old, over 90 years old. This observation provides the only known photographs of a living specimen and they are the only photographs for the species. The observation was made when the beetle was spotted in a rose flower in a Jarrahmond country garden.
You never know what you might find when you look, especially in Jarrahmond. But it may help people to look for strange or amazing critters. We don’t know what we don’t know. Be inspired by nature
