Species that haven’t been seen for years but may not yet be extinct are urgent conservation priorities. Rediscovering them before time runs out is crucial to directing conservation efforts and resources where they are needed most.

In June, we featured the Search for Lost Birds initiative by Re:wild, American Bird Conservancy, and BirdLife International, which used data from iNaturalist and other sources to highlight 126 bird species that haven’t been observed in the past decade.

Shortly after, the iNaturalist community made an amazing discovery: one of these lost species, the New Britain Goshawk, was unknowingly photographed and posted by @tomvierus in Papua New Guinea.

Accelerating Rediscoveries with Re:wild

We’ve been working closely with Re:wild’s Search for Lost Species program to accelerate these rediscoveries. Together, we’ve revamped the Search for Lost Species projects on iNaturalist, which are actively maintained by Re:wilds’s Lost Species Officer, Christina Biggs (@searchforlostspecies), and her team.

At first glance, there are nearly 500 lost species candidates, observed by over 750 iNaturalist observers, spread across 13 different lost species groups. The Re:wild team is actively investigating these potential rediscoveries, and also highlighting stories such as the rediscovery of the Frosted Phoenix, the "Holy Grail of New Zealand moths", on iNaturalist. By coordinating with Re:wild, we aim to better surface these finds and ensure they receive the conservation attention they deserve.

How can you help?

You can contribute to the search by reviewing observations in the Search for Lost Species projects. Here's how:

1. Taxonomic issues

Some lost species according to Re:wild’s taxonomy may be lumped with more common species on iNaturalist. For example, the bird Glaucidium castaneum from the original lost bird list is considered a subspecies of Glaucidium capense on iNaturalist, which is not lost. If you encounter species listed due to taxonomic discrepancies, please mention @searchforlostspecies and suggest their removal.

2. Misidentifications

If you have expertise in any of the species groups and suspect that an observation of a lost species candidate is misidentified, please add a disagreeing ID and explain why.

3. True rediscoveries

If you've ruled out taxonomic issues and misidentifications and believe an observation represents a genuine rediscovery, leave a comment explaining your reasoning. Mention @searchforlostspecies and suggest they add it to the Rediscovered Lost Species project.

Supporting Biodiversity Through iNaturalist

We’re excited to collaborate with organizations like Re:wild, who are leveraging iNaturalist to fulfill their mission of protecting and restoring biodiversity. Together, we can make a difference in rediscovering species that the world thought were lost forever.

This is the twenty-sixth entry in an ongoing monthly (or kind of monthly!) series profiling the amazing identifiers of iNaturalist. She had a lot of really interesting responses to my questions so I’ll be quoting her extensively here.

Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota, @rlucine (who goes by Lucie) remembers first becoming interested in nature during her “mushroom phase” at about the age of four. “As an adult, I am discovering that I was always extremely neurodivergent,” she says.

I also remember going birding with my mom when I was in grade school, and I liked observing wildlife at aquariums and on beaches in Japan (particularly Nakatajima Sand Dunes in Hamamatsu) whenever my family went to visit my grandma. 

Lucie first heard about iNaturalist while on a date in 2021, and started using it in earnest in 2023, when she found out her girlfriend was also on iNat. 

I decided to document everything in my local neighborhood, and also upload whatever old observations I saw in Japan. I currently love to photograph bugs, spiders, mollusks, and wildflowers; and in Japan I try to document as many limpets as possible.

A year ago I got cranky on the train when the computer vision on iNaturalist didn't suggest what a limpet I photographed was, and it was obviously a very striking color, so I went on the internet to do research. It turned out to be Cellana nigrolineata, and that prompted me to look into limpets more and try to identify them for other cranky people in Japan too. However, I'm not only currently interested in nature - I'm also a queer experimental fiction author, a big fan of Pokemon, and a huge nerd about commercial aviation.

I find myself drawn to limpets because of their unique body plan and behavior. It's funny to me how they only move like 1 meter per day at a very slow rate, and I've enjoyed finding them attached to rocks by surprise. In general things like marine fouling and weeds interest me since they are parts of nature that people don't value as much. Like, compare weeds to rose gardens, or compare marine fouling (barnacles, limpets, oysters, etc) to what might be kept in an aquarium.

I feel like often people ignore or even despise what is “common” or “unwanted” in nature and attempt to remove it, such as by weeding parks. Removing marine fouling is also necessary to some industries such as shipping since encrustation of organisms increases the drag of the ship's keel in the water. But as a person who's often found myself “unwanted” by society, I have a lot of empathy for the vermin/weeds/unwanted creatures which persist anyway.

She’s now added over 4,300 identifications to iNaturalist and focuses her identifying

across multiple classes and families in the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean, particularly in Asia. Subclass Patellogastropoda (true limpets) are my main focus, however I've also done research into the families Siphonariidae (false or pulmonate limpets), Fissurellidae (keyhole limpets), Hipponicidae (hoof snails), Calyptraeidae (slipper snails), the genus Septaria of Neritidae (nerite snails), and the order Lingulida (lingulate brachiopods), all of which are often confused because they are all "limpetized" to some extent.

Lucie’s task is made difficult for a few reasons: 

Visual characteristics and the number of ribs [on the shell] are historically unreliable in many cases, there are cryptic species, and erosion can also delete identifying characteristics from a shell and leave us with only the shape of the margin to determine a genus. Unfortunately a great deal of research also requires tons of money to read, which is not accessible to me (I just work as a housekeeper in my local Co-op, and don't have that kind of cash - I'm not sponsored or anything, despite that my friends keep calling me a grad student for how invested I am in limpetry).

So she finds as many free resources as she can (“many of which mutually contradict each other on topics such as shell morphology and distribution and contribute to a general sense of chaos”), such as WoRMS, malacopics.nl, BHL (Biodiversity Heritage Library), the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Jstage, ResearchGate, SeaLifeBase, BISMaL, Bishogai, biolib.cz, Conchology, Femorale, and Molluscs of Tasmania. Her identifications are best guesses based a “synthesis of distribution and morphology across as many sources as possible…[and] I add comments in order for whoever shows up next to have information to either agree or disagree with me”

Despite the many difficulties involved when researching and identifying limpets, and fixing misidentified observations on iNaturalist, Lucie tells me 

Taxonomy and shell identification are often frustratingly subjective, but the sense of understanding and organization that follows from identifying the natural world gives me a great sense of connection. I de-stress from my work week by identifying limpets on the computer, and I hope that the information I link to users makes them more excited to post photos of limpets, so that I can see more of them :)

Speaking of which, she’s anticipating her next trip to Japan:

I'm looking forward to visiting unusual non-tourist locations in Japan to determine the range of several species such as Cellana testudinaria and Siphonaria laciniosa, which may or may not be found as far north in the Pacific as Kyushu? I also intend to search for Siphonaria rucuana, Siphonaria subatra, and Siphonaria acmaeoides, which we don't have many photographs of on iNaturalist. The genus Nipponacmea and members of the Lottia kogamogai species complex also interest me, but we do have several photos of them. iNaturalist is very helpful because I get to see limpets every day without actually being on the beach in Asia.

Found a limpet? Lucie has some tips for making an identifiable observation:

• If possible, capture a photograph of the top-down, underside, and side profile of the shell so we can accurately discern the shape. However, the top of the shell tends to be most important.
• Please zoom in close and focus, as shell and rib microstructure is often necessary to discern or corroborate a species ID, particularly for Nipponacmea.
• Eroded shells and shells covered in algae or mineral deposits are often impossible to ID to species level, but sometimes it can be. Cellana species in Hawaii can be inferred based on what is growing on them, for example, as the three main species inhabit different areas of the shore.
• If you are in Hawaii, please try to observe the color of the limpet's foot (without hurting the animal, of course - unless you plan to eat it too).
• Photographs of numerous limpets next to each other often include more than one species, and often, more than one family. Siphonaria japonica and Siphonaria sirius mingle among Patelloida saccharina and Lottia dorsuosa, for example. It's best to include one limpet per picture/observation. Some very good information has been rendered unusable due to people uploading two species of limpet in the same photo, or combining tons of different limpet photos into the same observation.
• Tiny limpet shells can be found intact among large-grain sand on the beach, and these species are often incredibly interesting and understudied, such as Patelloida signata or (in my wildest dreams) Lepetidae or Pectinodonta species.
• Please do not hurt the limpets in order to take photos of them. I am opposed to live capture and it makes me very sad when people kill limpets just to post identifiable research information on iNaturalist. Even if a view of the muscle scar of the shell is needed for an ID, please do not excise a live organism from its shell; just search for another one that is already dead.

Here are some notable observations and taxa that Lucie sent:

• This beautiful limpet from Shandong has stymied myself and @zouyifan, and we think it may be an undescribed species! This is the one I think I'm most excited about.
• I think this one is Patelloida lentiginosa, a species first reported in India in 2020 by Vakani, Nakano, and Kundu. This paper basically showed me that all of the shells we thought were Cellana radiata, including the example images we used on iNaturalist, were wrong...
• If I had to pick a favorite limpet, it would be the Philippines' black-and-white striped form of Patelloida saccharina, or Patelloida striata. 
• Recently I identified Siphonaria tongensis on iNatualist here after some weird and exhaustive research detailed in comment.
• And I also may have identified Lottia tranquebarica in Tamil Nadu, India for the first time documented on the internet since the original description.

Our Observation of the Week is this Syzygium longifolium myrtle plant, seen in New Caledonia by @adurbano!

“I always knew that my life would be dedicated to protecting the environment,” says Amaury Durbano, who joined his first nature protection association at the age of seven. 

As a teenager, I arrived in New Caledonia where I discovered the marine environment and the exceptional Caledonian biodiversity, both terrestrial and marine. My academic career led me to obtain a master's degree in the functioning and management of marine ecosystems.

Since 2018, I have been the facilitator of the Hô-üt association based in Touho in New Caledonia.

The association helps to preserve part of the North East Coastal Zone (subzone 4), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and works with local stakeholders to do so. “Between my work at the Hô-üt association and my free time,” Amaury says, “I am lucky to spend a lot of time in nature.”

The inhabitants of the tribes, particularly that of Koé (Ko weï in Cèmuhî, the language of Touho) welcomed me warmly, integrated me into their activities and shared their knowledge. This article gives me the opportunity to thank them. Thanks to the Hô-üt association, I also have the opportunity to act as a link between the population and the community in charge of environmental management (the Northern Province).

In 2022, the Hô-üt association won a call for projects to create an educational trail in the Ponandou rainforest with the support of the clan council of the Koé (Ko weï) tribe. The objective of this trail, led by members of the Hô-üt association and the inhabitants of Koé (Ko weï), is to raise awareness among visitors about the preservation of the rainforest and to present this ecosystem: animal and plant species, the roles of the forest and its dynamics, traditional uses of plants, pressures and threats (fires, invasive exotic species, etc.), the names of plant species in Cèmuhî, the micro-endemic skink of Ponandou, etc. Note that 70% to 80% of the plant species in the rainforest are endemic to New Caledonia. 

As part of a project funded by the Northern Province, members of the Hô-üt association organized a visit to the trail with students from the Touho vocational high school on the morning of September 19, 2024, to raise their awareness of the importance of preserving the rainforest. Arriving at the end of the visit, around a waterhole where a waterfall flows, visitors had the chance to observe a Syzygium longiflorum in bloom. This species, which is part of the same genus as the Kanak apple tree (Syzygium malaccense), is called “éï” in Cèmuhî.

Ranging from Africa to Australasia, the genus Syzygium contains well over one thousand species. As Amaury mentioned, some have edible fruits (often called “roseapples”), and the clove is also a member of Syzygium.

A member of iNat since 2021, Amaury (above) tells me “iNaturalist and its community allow me to identify and learn about species living in the Pacific region and easily connect with experts around the world. Additionally, iNaturalist’s classification system allows me to easily save, categorize, and find my observations.”

(Photo of Amaury courtesy of the Hô-üt association.)

- a “lost fish” species in New Caledonia was rediscovered via iNat!

- a previous Observation of the Week detailed the finding of a rare Pancheria ouaiemensis plant in New Caledonia by @narido!

Last week, iNaturalist hit an exciting milestone—1,000,000 observations with sound!

While this is a small fraction compared to the number of image-based observations, it’s a significant contribution to global biodiversity monitoring. In fact, iNaturalist is now the second-largest provider of sound recordings to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) over the past decade. While initiatives like Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology and FrogID at the Australian Museum also contribute vast sound-generated point records to GBIF, the datasets on the graph below uniquely share with GBIF the sound recordings themselves.

The Growing Role of Sound on iNaturalist

Sound is becoming an increasingly important tool for biodiversity documentation on iNaturalist. Here's how it's being used and our vision for the future.

Using iNaturalist to Record and Annotate Sounds: Case Study from Panama

To explore how iNaturalist is helping record and annotate sounds, we spoke with Brian Gratwicke (@briangratwicke), a long-time iNaturalist user and amphibian conservation lead at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. In Altos de Campana National Park, Panama, where amphibian populations have been devastated by chytrid fungus, Brian and his colleagues Roberto Ibáñez (@ibanezr) and Jorge Guerrel (@jorge_guerrel) have been using sound recordings to make remarkable discoveries.

Recently, the team rediscovered and recorded calls from the Boquete rocket frog (Silverstoneia nubicola), a species that hadn’t been detected in the park for years. They also recorded the calls of the abundant Rainforest rocket frog (Silverstoneia flotator), which has a very similar call. Roberto Ibáñez, a leading expert on frog calls in Panama who has been studying them since the 1980s, is one of the few who can distinguish these species by sound alone.

So far, around 100 contributors have submitted 261 sound observations of 47 out of 188 frog species from Panama. Our goal is to make iNaturalist an even more valuable tool for collecting sound vouchers and annotations, which we hope will attract more experts like Roberto to share their amphibian call expertise on iNaturalist.

Looking Ahead: Sound and AI on iNaturalist

The future of sound on iNaturalist is bright. Grant Van Horn (@gvanhorn), a longtime collaborator on iNaturalist's computer vision projects and creator of Merlin Sound ID, recently worked with iNaturalist staff member Alex Shepard (@alexshepard) and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Amherst to publish a paper on the iNaturalist Sounds Dataset. This paper, focused on building sound datasets for advancing AI sound models, was just accepted to NeurIPS 2024, one of the world’s top conferences on machine learning and AI. A preprint on arXiv will be available later this month and we’ll share the link here once it’s live.

Our long-term vision is to elevate sound to the same status as images on iNaturalist. We’re committed to developing tools that will make it easier for the community to record, annotate, and showcase sounds. We aim to leverage these data to power the next generation of AI sound models. These models will not only enhance the iNaturalist platform but also be shared with the broader scientific and conservation community.

By the end of 2024, we project that iNaturalist’s computer vision and geo models will cover 100,000 species. Even building an AI sound model capable of accurately identifying 10% of that—around 10,000 species—could be transformative for bioacoustics research.

Join Us in Shaping the Future of Bioacoustics

Can the iNaturalist community rally to generate the data needed for a 10,000-species sound model? We believe the answer is yes. With the right tools, outreach, and collaboration, we can achieve this ambitious goal together. Let's continue working together to expand the power of sound in conservation and biodiversity research!

Tips for Contributing Sound Observations

Identifying species by sight can be tricky, and sound adds an extra layer of challenge! Follow these simple tips to make identification easier for the iNaturalist community:

1. Recording Techniques: Get as close as possible to your subject without disturbing it. Stand still and keep quiet to minimize background noise like footsteps, clothing rustle, or other sounds that could obscure your subject’s sound. Point your microphone toward the sound source, which may mean pointing the bottom of your phone toward your subject. Aim for recordings of at least 10 seconds—or ideally 30 seconds if the subject stays put—as longer samples can help with identification.
2. Recording Diversity: To help us build a complete picture of each species’ sounds, record different individuals across various locations and times of year. Many shorter recordings from diverse settings are far more useful than a few lengthy ones from the same spot.
3. Background Species: While it’s not required, going above and beyond by adding notes about any background species you hear can be incredibly valuable. Even when these sounds overlap with your target subject, they provide important context about the environment and help future listeners better interpret your recording. This extra detail also contributes to the development of machine learning models that recognize all species vocalizing, not just the target species.
4. File Format: If you’re uploading sounds recorded outside the iNaturalist app, please use WAV files with a minimum sample rate of 44.1kHz.

Our Observation of the Week is this Long-horned Beetle in the genus Dichostatoides, seen in Nigeria by @bibitee!

Currently Head of the Department of Wildlife and Ecotourism Management at Osun State University, Osogbo in Nigeria, Owolabi Bibitayo Ayobami tells me 

I’ve been in touch with nature right from my childhood days. My parents showed me the way of conserving natural resources in my early days, they are my motivating factors. Presently, I’m into ornithological research. Alongside ornithology, I study lepidoptera and odonata as well.

When returning to his office after some field work with an apiary group, Bibitayo noticed the large beetle shown above on the door to his office. 

I said to my graduate assistant that we must have come with this guy from the forest and I decided to take the picture and post. It is in my usual character to take pictures of any biodiversity around me. And that’s how the whole drama played out.

iNat user @fubr, who specializes in African beetles, identified Bibitayo’s beetle as being in the genus Dichostatoides, making it the first observation of that genus on iNat! It may also be the first known photo of a living Dichostatoides specimen. It’s a member of the long-horned beetle family (Cerambycidae), the larvae of which feed on plant material and often bore into wood. There are around 35,000 described species in the family.

Bibitayo (above) joined iNat back in 2019 and says 

iNat has helped my students to get closer to nature. They are so conscious of the tiniest of all biodiversity around them and I see loads and loads of pictures from butterflies to ants and birds. It is a great platform to learn about nature.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

- long-horned beetles are among the most visually stunning of the beetle families, check out the most-faved observations of them on iNat!

- Bibitayo’s featured in this video about Hooded Vulture conservation. Note that it does contain some tough imagery and subject matter.

- @abubakaringim's Yellow-winged Bat, seen in Nigeria, was a previous Observation of the Week!

When we first introduced the Geomodel, we mentioned its potential to help surface unusual observations. Today, we’re thrilled to share the first step in realizing that vision. Internally, we've been calling this the "Anomaly Detector"

For the more than 90,000 species included in the Geomodel, like the Joro Spider shown below, we’ve now ranked observations by their “unusualness” using relative Geo scores. The Joro Spider, native to Asia, is rapidly spreading across the southeastern US.

On the unthresholded Geomodel map below, observations (orange points) in lighter blue areas, where Geo scores are lower, are considered more unusual. For instance, the most unusual Joro Spider sighting is in Oklahoma, followed by two observations in Boston—where they’ve recently made headlines.

You can now use new filters in the Identify tool to search for these unusual observations. Here’s how:

1. Enable Research Grade: The Identify tool defaults to showing Needs ID observations only, so toggle on Research Grade observations first.
2. Sort by Geo Score: Set the Sort By option to the new Geo score (Ascending) filter.
3. Exclude Private Locations: Use the Hide observations with private locations option to exclude those records.
4. Not Expected Nearby: To focus on truly unusual sightings, select the Not expected nearby option, which displays observations falling outside the blue “Expected Nearby” area on the thresholded Geomodel map.
5. Refine Accuracy: To exclude observations with imprecise locations, enter a number in meters in the Maximum positional accuracy filter.

Understanding Unusual Observations

Unusual observations tend to fall into two categories: errors (e.g., Misidentifications or Inaccurate locations) and interesting discoveries (e.g., Joro Spiders arriving in Boston). Right now, most of the surfaced observations fall into the error category.

Please use this tool to correct these mistakes!

• For Inaccurate Locations: Kindly ask the observer to double-check the location by leaving a polite comment and voting "No" on "Location is Accurate."

• For Misidentifications: Submit a correcting identification or a disagreeing ancestor ID.

However, not all unusual observations are mistakes. As with the Joro Spider in Boston, some may represent important findings, so it’s crucial to carefully evaluate each case. When in doubt, politely engage the observer and the community for clarification.

The Limitations of the Geomodel

It’s important to note that the Geomodel isn’t perfect. For example, even though there’s a well-documented introduced population of Italian Cave Salamanders in Germany (with over 60 observations), the Geomodel hasn’t yet learned about this range and flags these observations as “Not Expected Nearby” with low Geo scores. We’re actively working to improve the Geomodel’s predictive accuracy, but keep in mind that its current limitations can affect how observations are surfaced.

Looking Ahead

We hope this tool will shine a spotlight on unusual observations in iNaturalist. In the short term, it may mostly help flag inaccurate locations and fix misidentifications—critical work that enhances the quality of the iNaturalist dataset. But in the long run, we believe this feature could evolve into an exciting and powerful Early Detection System for iNaturalist, allowing us to more rapidly surface important discoveries, like invasive Joro Spiders in new areas, which could ultimately help conservationists and invasive species managers respond more effectively.

Thank you to everyone who helps improve the data quality and surface exciting discoveries!

We've released v2.16 today with 1,389 new species (94,758 taxa up from 93,369). This new model was trained on data exported on September 1st, 2024.

Here's a graph of the model's release schedule since early 2022 (segments extend from data export date to model release date) and how the number of species included in each model has increased over time.

The graph below shows model accuracy estimates using 1,000 random Research Grade observations in each group not seen during training time. The paired bars below compare average accuracy of model 2.15 with the new model 2.16. Each bar shows the accuracy from Computer Vision alone (dark green) and Computer Vision + Geo (green). Overall the average accuracy of 2.16 is 90.7% (statistically the same as 2.15 at 90.6% - as described here we probably expect ~2% variance all other things being equal among experiments).

Here is a sample of new species added to v2.16:

• Arachnida
• Aves
• Fungi
• Actinopterygii
• Amphibia
• Other Animalia
• Mollusca
• Chromista
• Mammalia
• Reptilia
• Insecta
• Plantae

We are excited to announce the newest addition to our team, Kirk van Gorkom. In this new role as Head of Engineering, Kirk will be part of the Leadership Team. Kirk brings extensive experience in leading the development of user-facing products.

Kirk is passionate about building products that directly improve lives and is thrilled to continue that work for iNaturalist. Driven by that passion, Kirk joined a startup that delivered personalized fitness experiences through machine learning on community data. Following the company’s acquisition by Fitbit, he spent several years in management roles leading teams building scalable coaching platforms to help people better understand their health and reach their fitness potential. After Fitbit was acquired by Google, Kirk played a key leadership role in the transition to help their software reach millions more people. His experiences have shaped him into a versatile engineering leader with deep technical expertise across various domains.

His ability to lead teams in sustainably building robust, high-performance systems, while keeping user experience at the forefront, aligns perfectly with iNaturalist’s needs.

As the Head of Engineering, Kirk will oversee all engineering efforts, ensuring that our technical strategies align with our mission to connect people to nature and advance science and conservation.

Please join us in giving Kirk a warm welcome to the team!

Our Observation of the Week is this Limnospira cyanobacteria, seen in Thailand by @algaholic!

No, that’s not an old telephone handset cord, it’s the tiny tiny filament of a  Limnospira cyanobacteria! iNatter algaholic has been posting their amazing microscopy images to Instagram and other social media platforms for quite some time and people suggested that they join iNat as well - and we’re glad they did!

Joining last November, this is the second of their observations to be chosen as Observation of the Day (see the previous one), and they tell me 

Whenever I pass through a park or lake or other sources, I like to collect samples for observations (if it's not dangerous for sampling.). This August I found algal blooming at a park in Bangkok Thailand and it was a kind of blooming Limnospira sp.

Cyanobacteria are commonly known as “blue-green algae” but they are not algae all. Rather, they are photosynthetic bacteria and are thought to be the first organisms to have produced oxygen. They often aggregate into quite a few different forms. 

I reached out to identifier extraordinaire @roman_romanov about this find, and tells me that what’s pictured here is a “filament consisting of numerous cells,” part of the trichome of the cyanobacteria. 

Spiral trichomes without difference in cells and without mucilage around trichomes indicate Limnospira. This trichome consists of short cells. The transverse cell walls are recognizable. Species of Limnospira are delineated with size of cells, proportions between cell length and width, traits of coiling, shape of trichomes (narrowing to the ends or cylindrical), shape of end cells, presence or absence of aerotopes in cells. Some of them are not well described and their identification is tricky.

algaholic will continue to find and photograph the amazing tiny mico algae and posting them to iNat and elsewhere. They enjoy looking at algae posted here from other parts of the world, as well as adding identifications to those observations where they can.

- check out algaholic’s YouTube page!

- we profiled @roman_romanov a while ago, take a look!

- there are nearly 30k cyanobacteria observations on iNat, you can find them here!

Our Observation of the Day is this Tree of the Sorcerers plant (Latua pubiflora, latué in Spanish), seen in Chile by @josefina_ibanezb!

Currently an engineer in the field of renewable natural resources who specializes in flora and vegetation, Josefina Ibáñez says she’s had a deep interest in learning about nature and outdoor activities from a young age.

Her job has taken her to different ecosystems around the country, helping her to “to learn more and more about Chilean biodiversity and also understanding its great relevance worldwide due to its high degree of endemism.” 

Recently she visited an evergreen forest (bosque siempreverde), she and her colleagues spotted some of the plants you see photographed above, 

which stood out among the density of the forest and its species. In the middle of a heavy rain, we stopped to photograph this plant, which immediately captivated our attention with its striking color and particular beauty!

Like many other members of the nightshade family, tree of the sorcerors is quite toxic to humans and can be deadly if the dose is large enough. At lower concentration levels, though, it is a deliriant and has long been used as an entheogen by indigenous peoples of the area. Its flowers are pollinated by hummingbirds.

Josefina (above) joined iNat back in 2019, and tells me “iNaturalist has allowed me to share not only flora records, but also to continue learning from it and also to learn about other types of species that inhabit the different ecosystems of Chile.”

- while many nightshades are toxic to humans, quite a few are consumed widely around the world, including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes.

- the Wikipedia sections on tree of the sorcerors’ toxicity and use by humans are pretty fascinating.