VSP Odolympics (Bioblitz)

Everyone can participate. The goal is to try to record as many species from as many places in the Western Hemisphere (for TMNs – TEXAS) as possible in the two census periods to generate a snapshot of odonate distribution. You must join a project either via Odonata Central or iNaturalist and enter your observations to qualify for full VSP credit.

How to Contribute:

Overview: Submit your odonate observations to Odonata Central or join the iNaturalist project. Enter observations on as many days of the Odolympics as you wish.

There are three ways you can enter observations for the Odolympics

1. Directly into Odonata Central. We encourage participants to enter data directly into Odonata Central specifying Odolympics as the project. Odonata Central accepts complete checklists of photographed, collected and observed only records for any location and tracks abundance data.
2. Joining the iNaturalist Projects. If you prefer to just use iNaturalist, you can join the project called Odolympics September 2024 (coming soon). Observations reported to iNaturalist by project members during the Odolympics will be automatically collected into this iNaturalist project after you join it.
3. Imported into Odonata Central from iNaturalist. If you use iNaturalist, we also strongly encourage you to import your observations into Odonata Central so they will be available in one repository. You can enter observations into iNaturalist and then import them into your Odonata Central account by cutting and pasting the URL of the iNaturalist record. This copies location, date, species, and photographs into Odonata Central so they don’t need to be entered again. This way you can also create complete checklists (including Observed Only records) and assign records to your stored OC location names. Be sure to specify the Odolympics project during data entry. See this video tutorial for instructions on how to enter iNaturalist data into Odonata Central.

How to make sure your observations are counted in the Odolympics totals

1. If using Odonata Central. On the first screen of Add Records in Odonata Central, be sure to select Odolympics from the drop down list as the project for each checklist you enter. The Odolympics project is only available in the drop down list AFTER you enter a date of observation that falls during the Odolympics.
2. If using iNaturalist. Be sure you have joined the iNaturalist project or have imported your iNaturalist observations into the Odonata Central Odolympics project. When importing iNaturalist observtions, specify Odolympics as the project n the first screen of Add Records in Odonata Central. The Odolympics project is only available in the drop down list AFTER you enter a date of observation that falls during the Odolympics.

[VSP hours to be recorded in VMS under: “iNaturalist, eBird and Other Citizen Science: TMN Report Hours”]   Maximum 18 hours per day