Joe MDO Curator

Joined: Oct 12, 2016 Last Active: Mar 19, 2024 iNaturalist Monthly Supporter since December 2020

I see iNaturalist as a phenomenal resource for learning about nature. Having a community of experts, enthusiasts and newbies all interested in documenting and learning about nature is something I really cherish! I have spent countless hours looking through this amazing database (via the website, inaturalist.org) along with other indispensable resources like bugguide.net and the Florida Plant Atlas to get comfortable IDing a fair percentage of the organisms around me in Miami-Dade County (at least the ones that are visible to the naked eye!) The iNat community has played an enormous part in encouraging me to pay more attention to organisms I would've otherwise ignored, so I am immensely grateful for all the help I have received.

I highly encourage anyone new to iNaturalist to click around the database we all contribute to. This is best done through the website and not the iNaturalist app. Tinkering with the searches and filters is a great way to see how everything works and how your observations are incredibly useful to the general public and even biologists and taxonomists. Here are the observations from South Florida, for example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2345

If you are interested in learning more about how to use iNaturalist, I am available to answer questions and also provide tips and advice. Just get in touch with me at joemdo.inaturalist@gmail.com with your availability and we can coordinate an online meeting via Zoom. I am happy to meet with organizations, groups or one-on-one.

You can also check out an overview of how to use iNaturalist at the link below. It includes plenty of examples of organisms you can find in South Florida:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bqiz6b1QgJr6wVIA2F906U-5txKsvdSu/view?usp=sharing

About me:
I spend the majority of my free time exploring Miami-Dade County and documenting the biodiversity I come across. In the past couple years I have also committed a lot more time to adding identifications here on iNaturalist in Dade and the surrounding counties. I am always really grateful when I get help from the iNat community and the dopamine hit from finding out what you saw is much greater than anything social media can provide so I try to help whenever I can!

I consider myself a generalist when it comes to nature. In other words, I know a little bit about many different groups of organisms found in South Florida but I'm not an expert in any specific group. Although I don't have a formal education in biology, I have explored many different habitats in South Florida, usually with the goal of finding organisms that are new to me, but also painting a good picture of the common organisms in the area.

I teach Portuguese and Italian at a high school in Miami but also have a part time job completing plant monitoring in the "Hole-in-the-Donut" in Everglades National Park with one of the best botanists in South Florida (thanks Steve!) The "HID" is an enormous restoration area that has successfully been transformed from an old agricultural area that was taken over by Brazilian pepper into a wetland dominated by native species. More info about the HID here: https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/hidprogram.htm

Thanks for reading and happy iNatting!

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