Biodiversity Projects (iNaturalist)

New Jersey Biodiversity

This is an umbrella project on iNaturalist tracking all species observations from New Jersey by any user on iNaturalist.  The project is divided up in subprojects by each organismal group (plants, insects, birds, etc.) and native vs. introduced (non-native) species.  It is currently the most complete assessment of species diversity in New Jersey. As of April 2025, over 16 000 different species seen by nearly 23 000 community scientists who have reported nearly 2 million observations. In 2014 only about 1000 observations had been reported from New Jersey, and iNaturalist has grown exponentially in New Jersey since then, partially due to the Personal Bioblitz (see below). (link to main page) [Founder and Administrator: Lena Struwe]

Flora and Fauna of Rutgers University

The Flora and Fauna of Rutgers University is an iNaturalist biodiscovery project tracks all species and observations reported by any iNaturalist user from Rutgers properties in New Jersey, ranging from urban campus areas to extension farms and oceanic research stations. (link to main page) [Founder and Administrator: Lena Struwe]

Personal Bioblitz (annual and global)

This annual biodiscovery project open to all people associated with Rutgers University and previous project members started in 2013 and runs from March 1 to May 15 each spring.  The goal is to see as many species together as a group from around the world, but there is also a friendly competition of who can report the most observations or see the most species individually.  The full project page is housed on the Chrysler Herbarium website, and the observation and species pages are housed on iNaturalist. (link to 2025 project on iNaturalist) [Founder and Administrator: Lena Struwe. Each year has a leadership team of curators of iNaturalist as well.]

 

 

Flora of Rutgers Campus (archived)

The Flora of Rutgers Campus is a checklist from 2010-2015 of wild plant species found on Rutgers-New Brunswick campus areas. The checklist and its observation data is housed on the website of the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria and it contains over 400 wild and naturalized plants. This project has now been replaced by the Flora and Fauna of Rutgers University project on iNaturalist (see above). [Founder: Lena Struwe. Administrator: Megan King. Content provider: Shao-Yu XXX]