January 29
Today I contributed to biodiversity science by posting my first observation on iNaturalist!
I am so chuffed! Since I did my post on signing up for the Frog ID app, I’ve been urged by many friends to sign up for iNaturalist as well. Well, today, the motivation finally arrived on our morning walk.
I was blown away by this fungus and was very keen to identify it, so I decided to try iNaturalist. It took no time at all to download the free app, register, and upload my photo.
Within seconds iNaturalist identified the fungus, and automatically recorded the time and location it was observed. It was great for me, but also contributed to biodiversity science. My observation will be shared with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility which provides free and open access to biodiversity data. I can’t wait to travel down that rabbit hole!
So it turns out that the fungus I photographed is Abortiporus biennis – a wood rotting fungus that’s not edible. The name dates from a 1944 publication by German-American mycologist Rolf Singer. Abortiporus, the genus name, comes from the Latin Abortus– meaning arrested development (of an organism), and –porus, derived from ancient Greek and meaning a pore. The specific epithet biennis means biennial (although the fruitbodies of this fungus are annual!).
I can’t wait for my next walk now that I have both my Frog ID app AND iNaturalist.
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