Diario de finding_remo

We're done identifying 2% of observed species in Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines! ≽^•⩊•^≼
We helped identify around 350 observations of macro-organisms (photos and audio). These are nonhuman species that can be observed by the naked eye.
350 / 16 700 observed wildlife in Metro Manila = 2%
350 / 250 000 observed wildlife in the Philippines = .1%

Location: La Mesa Ecopark, La Mesa Watershed Reserve, Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines.
Biome: tropical rainforest

Here are 12 fungi observations that need ID. Suggestions are very much welcome!
Location: La Mesa Ecopark, Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines, Southeast Asia

Format: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/[Link]
Example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/34576365

34576365, 189820401, 189821169 , 189821571

189822144, 189820401, 189822391, 189822563

191057596, 191054709, 191057329, 191057619

Unrelated note: It's still cool that bananas, abaca, and ginger are all more closely related than with other plants (they're Order Zingiberales).

https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/nyoni-pete/57748-stats-on-identifications
Credit goes to Dr Pete Woodall (@nyoni-pete)

How to search in iNaturalist
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63

Location: La Mesa Ecopark, Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines, Southeast Asia

NEED ID
PLANTS. a. Ferns: 173369907, 173369732, 173369634, 173364403
b. Flowering plants or angiosperms: burhead or swordplant, waterlily, & fig

FUNGI (Basidiomycetes?): Pinelitter gingertail 169902893, Deer mushroom 169903162, & Golden scruffy Collybia 169944071.

BUTTERFLIES and MOTHS (Lepidoptera): Admirals and allies 169411132, Erebus 169416352, Neptini (sailer) 169334970, Erebidae (moth) 168784010, Neptini (sailer) 168784202 .

Remarks: The Philippine Five-Ring looks somewhat similar (emphasis on somewhat) to a Dark-branded bushbrown, in terms of spots.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/341138-Ypthima-stellera
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/133717-Mycalesis-mineus

Happy new year!

Cheers,

Project: La Mesa Eco Park, Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines

• We've finished identifying ~200 species in La Mesa Eco park.

• 124 species left to ID for June and August 2023 , broken down below:
  a. 20-27 Jun: 67 species
  b. 4 Aug: 15 spp.
  c. 11-27 Aug: 42 spp.

Observation of the day:
Western Hooded Pitta (Pitta sordida)

_{Observed 19 May 2023. Photo by tiluchi.}

Seed Bugs (Genus Thunbergia) and Cotton Stainer Bugs (Genus Dysdercus) are a bit puzzling, more research needed on how to differentiate these two genera.

Also learned more about the dorsal and ventral aspects of a turtle: the carapace and the plastron, respectively! Cool stuff.

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/animal/turtle-reptile#ref421355

Cheers,

We've identified around 180 species in La Mesa Eco Park, Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines!

Here's a new fave, the Blue tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus).

_{Photo by Vijay Vanaparthy}

Here's a local version of the blue butterfly emoji (🦋), the Philippine Wanderer (Pareronia boebera).

NEED ID: bird, bug, moth

• We also need an ID for these three lowland white-eye (Zosterops meyeni): 158952414, 158952422, and 158952422.

• What's this Hymenoptera?
  
  _{Photo by micaelgabrielitliong}

• And these moths that are probably family Erebidae? 161773222, 161011339, 161772991, and 158453569.

Much work remains, we have yet to identify observations in La Mesa Ecopark from May-Aug 2023. This is all to help the 30x30 global movement, aiming to protect at least 30% of the planet’s lands and water ecosystems by 2030. :) https://30x30sea.org

To end this post, we also learned a bit more about Philippine biogeography, particularly about our Pleistocene Aggregate Island Complexes (PAIC) and how Luzon, Negros-Panay, and Mindanao species differentiate with each other. Here's a map by Khalighifar et al.

Further reading
[1] Khalighifar, Ali & Brown, Rafe & Vallejos, Johana & Peterson, Andrew. (2021). Deep learning improves acoustic biodiversity monitoring and new candidate forest frog species identification (genus Platymantis) in the Philippines. Biodiversity and Conservation. 30. 10.1007/s10531-020-02107-1.
[2] Philippines reiterates commitment to protect 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. https://www.denr.gov.ph/index.php/news-events/press-releases/5694-denr-leads-ph-initiatives-to-meet-30x30-global-climate-change-pledge

La Mesa Ecopark identification project

• finished identifying 130 species of observations from Quezon City, Luzon Island, Philippines
• next step: 72 species to identify from 2023 January to June (page 3 of 4)

• not gonna lie, I got confused between:
  the Black-naped oriole Oriolus chinensis chinensis and the Elegant tit Periparus elegans

Family Oriolidae: Old World Orioles
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/186060790

Family Paridae: Tits, Chikadees, and Titmice
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/181791513

Both are Order Passeriformes, or Perching Birds.

Ending this post with a beautiful bird call from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, recorded by Benjamin Clock. A wood thrush! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcR6XrnD7Yc

Cheers,

Identified all the observed species in from oldest to 2019 in La Mesa Eco Park (or Ecopark) in Quezon City, Philippines, Southeast Asia. In particular, I've finished the last page (4 of 4) in the map that I've set. I will finish ID from 2020 to 2023, or the first three pages of images. Fun!

68 identifications done. I've tried my best to answer the four annotations as well (alive or dead, evidence of presence: organism, life stage, sex). In many animal cases, I don't know the sex, but I find that some species of dragonflies can easily be sexed (by colour).

From the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), there are three programmes which are aimed for "capacity building for biodiversity data mobilization and use, cooperation and knowledge sharing", namely:

1. BID: Biodiversity Information for Development
2. BIFA: Biodiversity Information Fund for Asia
3. CESP: Capacity Enhancement Support Programme

It led me to reading on one BIFA project which was the digitisation project for the specimens in the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Museum of Natural History. The project focussed on the Luzon island, with four datasets on:

1. Botany - the madder family (Rubiaceae) from the years 1904 to 1999
2. Mycology - fungi in the Mount Makiling forest reserve from 1905 to 1992
3. Ornithology - birds from the 1948 Rabor collection

4. Arachnology - predatory arachnids from 1963 to 2019
   Read more here.

It's quite mind-blowing that the UPLB museum holds more than 600k specimens in Philippine flora and fauna!

Anyway, here's a cute sun skink (Eutropis multifasciata) to cap this off, photographed by charleyhesse—

Oh, and I think we'll be needing Spanish and Catalan translations for the Dr. Dioscoro Rabor's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioscoro_S._Rabor

Cheers.

I picked a park in Quezon City, which is the most populous city (by humans) in the Philippines.
The park I chose was La Mesa Ecopark and I've helped identify around 30+ species from fungi to birds.
Great progress! I would love to identify more species from other Filipino observers.