Despite the pandemic crushing BioBlitz (a short survey of the biodiversity in an area) plans in Spring 2020 the Florida Museum Student Association (FMSA) reorganized an amazing BioBlitz extravaganza in Spring 2021. The BioBlitz series was designed to continue building community among students per FMSA’s mission. Additionally, the FMSA board envisioned the BioBlitz would help students explore their local flora and fauna, share expertise and knowledge on various taxa, and continue the conversation about using iNaturalist in research following an FMSA workshop by Vijay Barve in Fall 2020. The Natural Teaching Area Lab (NATL) at UF was selected as the starting point for the BioBlitz. Future BioBlitz events will continue to document local biodiversity and visit creeks and parks around Gainesville exploring various aspects of biodiversity including fossils.
Given the BioBlitz was conducted during the semester, when students did not receive a conventional week off for spring break, the BioBlitz was spread across two weeks with several options for meeting up including weekends and times from 7am to 7pm. Students were broken into two teams to help with community building around the biodiversity exploration. Therefore, when asked about helpful aspects of the BioBlitz participants noted:
“It was also helpful that it took place over multiple days.”
“Email reminders were also nice.”
“Weekend and morning options for meetups were great!”
“It was helpful to have a team.”
“The flexibility of times and people to work with”
“The opportunity to get outside and socialize with other graduate students. I also learned quite a bit about other taxa from different people!”
“It was great to finally meet fellow museum students in person for me, as a first-year student who moved here during the pandemic. I participated in the BioBlitz because I wanted to meet other students and I think that aspect worked out well.”
As we prepare to launch the next BioBlitz in our series, we will be incorporating some of the feedback provided by the participants which included:
- Developing group chats to facilitate conversation and teambuilding outside of email
- Keeping a longer window for the event given the demanding nature of graduate school and life during a pandemic and heightened awareness of racial injustices and inequity in our society”
- Finding funding to help participants take better pictures
- Expanding to other natural areas in and around Gainesville, allowing more opportunities to participate wherever folks may be located.
Nonetheless we were able to build a gallery from some of the amazing images captured during the BioBlitz and we would love your assistance in selecting “the image that speaks to you”.
Thank you to Adania Flemming, Aditi Jayarajan, Gabriel Somarriba, and Kristopher Kusnerik for leading the BioBlitz teams, coordinating logistics and setting up the event, Jessie Pelosi for creating the project on iNaturalist and curating the images on our website and to all the BioBlitz participants who can be seen on our iNaturalist BioBlitz project.
Blog Written By: Adania Flemming
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