July challenge: ID G. cancriformis across the Americas
Final update: GREAT work everybody -- in July we managed to get approximately 120 observations of G. cancriformis across the Americas to Research Grade! And we learned a lot along the way. Thanks to @tigerbb @claggy @wildcarrot @thebals @michelotto @jgw_atx and others who contributed!
*** Update: Any of you G. cancriformis fans up for some weekend IDing? @tigerbb @claggy @wildcarrot @thebals @michelotto? :) ***
There are currently about 150 Gasteracantha observations from across the Americas in iNaturalist that have not yet attained Research Grade for various reasons.
Here's a link to view and ID them: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?taxon_id=49541&place_id=66741
Can we get at least 100 of them identified during the month of July?
Currently, only one species (Gasteracantha cancriformis) is considered to occur in the Americas, though this will likely change in the future when revisions to the genus are published. @claggy created an Observation Field to help track some of the more distinctive (and likely to be split) forms, so take advantage of that field as you go, and let Matt know if you need other values added to the field: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/spiny-orbweavers-gasteracantha-and-kin/journal/22949-new-observation-field-for-g-cancriformis-synonyms.
Many observers are confused by the color polymorphism of the G. cancriformis and will identify black-and-white individuals as the Asian G. kuhli, for example, or red and orange forms as various other species from Asia.
Some observations are not identifiable -- the pictures are too low-quality, etc. But many are -- let's see how many we can get confirmed. There are all kinds of weird and beautiful forms across the Americas -- check them out and have fun!
Here's the link again: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?taxon_id=49541&place_id=66741
P.S. Note that both G. cancriformis and Thelacantha brevispina have been introduced into Hawaii. Their convoluted nomenclatural history has resulted in some lingering confusion, but adult females are easily identifiable. I'm not sure about egg cases, however -- if anyone has insight there, that'd be great.
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Here's a dissertation about the polycromatism in G. cancriformis, with 8 different patterns (page 26), just in a city.
It's in portuguese, but worth the translation:
http://repositorio.unb.br/bitstream/10482/2370/1/2007_FelipeMalheirosGawryszewski.pdf
Just amazing, @michelotto -- thanks for sharing, and thanks to you and @wildcarrot for tackling some IDs today. Looks like we got about 50 observations up to Research Grade, and some of the stubborn ones moved farther along.
I'll keep jumping in as often as I can! It's definitely a learning experience as I'm only currently familiar with those in the contig. US & Hawaii.
Quick question, is there a specific site that you guys use for translating papers? I unfortunately can only read in english and a bit of spanish. Thanks!
Google Translate (http://translate.google.com) -- it does pretty well between English and major European languages, though sometimes the biological and anatomical terms are a little challenging (but these are often cognates in English and the Romance languages anyway because of the traditional use of Latin in science and because of French influence on English in the Middle Ages). Another issue is that if you are copying and pasting text out of PDFs of old, scanned documents, the characters can be a little off, so you sometimes have to fix certain words and characters in order to get it to translate right (e.g., 'e' vs. 'c').
Google Translate cannot translate Latin into English though.
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