My role for the citizen science project will be to collect videos, photos, and data from my group members and my personal endeavors to compile a documentary, with Saul as the narrator. I plan to make a visit to Central Park with my group within the next few weeks, followed by a personal visit or two to Marine Park in the following weeks. While there, we will try to find various invertebrates that we will observe, photograph, and record. Hopefully the culmination of our efforts in Central Park along with our individual efforts in our assigned parks will result in our understanding of noticeable trends in the invertebrate world. We will upload our findings to iNaturalist’s “New York is Wild!” Citizen Science project. We might learn facts about the lifestyles and niches of various invertebrates as we observe them. Or we might learn about population growth and decline of certain species as the season gets cooler. Findings from other people on iNaturalist will be a useful tool for learning as well.
In the meantime, I prepared my camera to take pictures and video of invertebrates I find in my neighborhood. I created a basic layout for the documentary, and familiarized myself with the “New York is Wild!” page on iNaturalist. I found out that it’s easier to find wasps outdoors right before the fall season, since that is the time they do their last-minute food foraging for their colonies. During the colder weather, the colonies die off, leaving only fertilized queens to survive and hibernate in sheltered locations. We might find proof of this as we explore the parks. I also noticed that the amount of posts on the page was high during the summer, but weaned off toward the end of the end of the season, with very few posts for September and October. Could this be because cold weather kills off many of the insects people typically photograph for the webpage? Or are they migrating? I realized that many of the journal entries are regarding invertebrates that are easier to find in the summer, such as fireflies, bees, cicadas, horseshoe crabs, and katydids.
Another possible reason for the diminishing frequency of posts is that perhaps cooler weather is correlated to people going outside less often. Therefore, members of the project would have less opportunities to take pictures of invertebrates. A journal entry about mud snails on the beach was made in July, for example. I doubt there would be similar posts nowadays because people don’t typically go to the beach in late October.
It’s interesting how participating in a Citizen Science project can lead to discoveries in the social sciences in addition to the biological science the project is designed for. This realization goes to show how important for science metacognitive processes are, as described in Surrounded by Science.
