VSP: Odolympics 2023

Four-spotted Pennant Dragonfly Perched at Cross Creek Ranch polishing pond in Fulshear – Photo by Lynn Trenta

From Odonata Central, “The Dragonfly Society of the Americas, Sociedad de Odonatología Latinoamericana and Odonata Central are partnering to conduct the Odolympics 2023.

Highlights

• Odonate survey of the entire Western Hemisphere
• Everyone can participate by entering observations into Odonata Central or iNaturalist
• Two dates per year so one falls in your summer no matter where you are in the Western Hemisphere
• The goal is to record as many species from as many places as possible
• You can have fun and contribute to citizen science by helping to create a snapshot of odonate distribution

Details

Everyone can participate. The goal is to try to record as many species from as many places in the Western Hemisphere as possible in the two census periods to generate a snapshot of odonate distribution.

Dates: 19-27 August 2023.

Help make this project a success. Plan to participate.

How to Contribute

Overview: Submit your odonate observations to Odonata Central or join the iNaturalist projects. 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 August 2023. 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.

Results

At any time, users can view the Odolympics data in Odonata Central by opening the filters and setting the Project filter to “Odolympics” for records, species lists or maps. If you only want to see the Odolympics data for one time period, be sure to set a date range. Records contributed to iNaturalist can be viewed by visiting the Odolympics iNaturalist Project.

NOTE: When the Odolympics was first conceived, we planned to bulk import all the iNaturalist project observations into Odonata Central. This proved impractical and the effort to develop that process has been abandoned. So, the Odolympics is now run as separate projects on the two platforms. We are grateful to users who make the effort to import their iNaturalist observations into Odonata Central as described above.”

Questions?

Use the the following link and note the footer for FAQ and/or to email any questions.

Per Sari Garfinkle, “Here’s a link that explains how you can share your observations with the Odolympics project:https://www.odonatacentral.org/odolympics/#/”

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