Christmas has come early!
Today we hit an incredible milestone: 7000 Christmas beetle sightings! Thank you all for your help!!
The beetles have appeared early this year so keep a lookout from now until March.
Your sightings are already helping us understand our beloved Christmas beetles. Last year we recorded sightings of species that had not formally been sighted in decades including:
Anoplognathus multiseriatus - last reported in 1970s
Anoplognathus rhinastus - last reported in 1999
Anoplognathus vietor - previously reported from a single male specimen in 1986.
We have lots of great content planned for this season, so stay tuned for updates!
Happy beetle hunting!
-The Christmas Beetle Count Team
Comments
How do I upload my photos and put in the data ?
Hi @charmaine46907 ,
All you need to do is upload your sighting via the phone or desktop iNaturalist app. The app will run an algorithm that will try to identify your sighting, It has gotten very good at correctly identifying Christmas beetles. Once you upload the sighting, all Christmas beetles will automatically be included in our project- you don't need to tag us or do anything else.
For a step-by-step guide to uploading data to our project, please check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8bEVYc3bjc
Written steps for uploading from your phone
Open the app.
Touch the camera icon at the bottom of your screen
Touch the 'camera' icon if you want to take a picture, or the 'photo library' icon if you want to upload from your photo library.
Click the 'what did you see' button. iNaturalist will now run an algorithm to attempt to identify your sighting. It may take a few seconds.
iNaturalist will give you a list of suggestions, in order of its confidence level. It is very good at picking out Christmas beetles, so if you don't see "Christmas beetle" listed as a top suggestion, you may have a look-a-like beetle. Click on the appropriate identification.
If you took the picture in a sensitive location such as on private property or you concerned about privacy, change the geoprivacy setting to 'Obscured'. Otherwise, please use the 'Open' setting.
Click 'Share'
That's it! If you're sighting was a Christmas beetle, it will automatically be included in our project. Don't worry if it wasn't a Christmas beetle, as iNaturalist collects all biodiversity sightings. Every sighting helps us build a better picture of Australia's biodiversity.
I hope this has helped! Thank you or supporting our project!
Cheers
Tanya
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