Caterpillars of Ontario's Journal

Just an update that the iNat team rolled out today changes to the collection project model which support using annotations in the collection project model. This means that a collection project can be set up to automatically find all records where the life stage is set to larva.

I have converted the project over to a collection project and added this 'Life Stage = Larva' rule which now means all records submitted to iNaturalist of lepidoptera in Ontario which are marked as larva will automatically be added to the project. This means no need to add records to the project manually any longer.

If you are a member of the project, any records will show their belonging to the project on their observation page.

Just in time for the end of lep season 😒

Although I guess we could be in Calgary and under 30 centimeters of snow.

Since I saw my first caterpillar of the year yesterday, I was inspired to do an update there.

Firstly, thanks to those who have joined and added records, feel free to spread the message about the project. As odd as it may seem to say this as a project co-ordinator, but just a note that actually adding records to the project right now may not be an immediate priority (dont let this stop you though). It seems there are some changes coming to iNat projects soon that will allow it to happen automatically.

So until those change are done, there are 2 things that can really help get the project going:

• be sure to mark any caterpillar photos you have (or even any you see) under the Life Stage = Larva on the Annotations section of the observation. This is off to the right side of the page on you observation record if you are not familiar with it.
• feel free to review the accompanying guide ( http://inaturalist.ca/guides/6734?sort=alphaname ). It is a work in progress, but if you know species for which caterpillar records are available and is not in the guide, send me a note, and I will add it in.

Cheers.