Welcome to the Herps of Arkansas project on iNaturalist!

The purpose of this project is to facilitate a better understanding the distribution of reptiles and amphibians in Arkansas. Our goals are to 1) promote citizen science and a better understanding of an often misunderstood group of animals within our state and 2) curate and provide data for conservation and research purposes.

The following is a short tutorial on how to add observations to the project using the iNaturalist website interface.

*** COMPLETE ALL FOUR STEPS ***

STEP 1:

Sign up for an iNaturalist account. It is free and can be linked to an existing Facebook or Google account.

STEP 2:

Start adding observations, such as amphibians and reptiles seen in Arkansas, to your account. There are several ways to do this, but most will find it easiest to simply upload photos, since most modern devices automatically embed key information, such as date and location, already. The iNaturalist system is very good at suggesting initial identifications of organisms, which are then followed up by human curation.

STEP 3:

After one or several observations are added, join the Herps of Arkansas project.

(You can alternatively search for the project by name as one of the community projects.)

Upon joining, for "Do you want to make your private/obscured observation coordinates visible to the project curators?" select one of the "yes" choices.

STEP 4:

From the Herps of Arkansas project homepage, find "Add from Your Observations" (one of the menu choices, NOT the orange "Add Observations" flag). Click "Batch Edit", "Select - All", "Add to Project - Herps of Arkansas".

Any records that don't go through may be due to easily correctable errors, such as an identification that is not narrow enough to match the project list.

Tips & Tricks

• iNaturalist is also available as an app for Apple and Android systems. These are somewhat limited in functionality and it is strongly recommended to use the website interface to at least get started.
• The project homepage has a tempting large orange "Add Observations" flag on the top banner. This takes you to a somewhat legacy interface and we recommend not submitting records this way, although it is still functional.
• There are now a couple of different fundamental types of projects on iNaturalist. Due to our project rules (for curation of the data), observations must be added intentionally/manually; they are not added automatically. As new records are added to your iNaturalist account, repeating step 4 from the tutorial should catch anything suitable that hasn't yet been added to the project.
• While most modern devices do embed location information with photos, these should be double-checked for accuracy when added to iNaturalist. It is recommended localities of a sensitive nature (ex: at your house, rare herps, etc.) be set to obscured or private. As a future tip, allow your device interface to be active for a couple of minutes (ex: open the map app and see where it plots) BEFORE taking nature photos to allow for accurate location triangulation.
• Yes, please add whatever other nature observations you wish to iNaturalist! It is really a terrific system for naturalists, and only getting better!