Common names, 2100 observations and other developments
Hello fellow observers and identifiers! If you've been watching this project grow in 2020, you might have noticed that we have shot past 2000 observations now, and are creeping towards 350 species (we're at 343 today). My own sighting contributions have slowed, as I now focus on sharing observations of less commonly reported species only, or observations where the image quality is higher than existing records for a species (in the project).
I've also been doing some desktop admin on iNat's database, most recently adding a number of common names to invertebrate species which appear in the project to make it more user-friendly to newcomers. These have mostly been common names for some ascidians and molluscs. More work remains to be done on this front, but you'll now see as you scroll down the species list that many more species have a common names in place.
Species recently added to the project have come from a range of taxa, from small crustaceans (nod to @mtank ) to some more conspicuous invertebrates (like Pentagonaster duebeni, or as I like to call it, the bath-toy sea star) and a large barnacle, and even some fishes. The white-barred boxfish had me scratching my head, as it had some features common to Shaw's cowfish, but I eventually solved the riddle and identified it. It's interesting to note that the white-barred boxfish is one of a few species found at Edithburgh that have also been observed at Port Noarlunga, but no further north in Gulf St Vincent.
Our collective coverage of the project area has improved greatly in the past six months, and I wish to thank you all for your many and varied contributions, as always.
