The Most Observed Plants & Animals in Each US State
XKCD mapped the most observed plant and animal for all 50 US states as reported by iNaturalist users. I had no idea bumble bees were such a popularly observed animal — the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) is most-observed in Vermont, Wisconsin, Maine, Connecticut, Illinois, and Minnesota. Also popular: white-tailed deer, bison, milkweed, honeysuckle, and robins.
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Soooo many fence lizards in the Bay Area! They're scurrying around my yard in the middle of Silicon Valley.
Native Californian here and I have NEVER known what these were officially called. Grew up calling them blue bellies. Also: TIL that their blood kills Lyme disease??
As an Arkansan, I can't remember the last time I saw any kind of turtle, but I've seen deer, ducks, goats, and crawfish all last month.
And IIRC, honeysuckle is non-native and invasive in many of these areas.
I suspect invasive species get reported more often. The spotted lanternfly is a recent invasive species and there's a real communal sense of "kill on site" in NJ and neighboring states (actually more observations of it overall in PA and NY respectively). Garlic Mustard is another invasive species high on the NE US state-filtered observations.
That's a good point about invasive species being reported more often. Honeybee popularity is probably similar: part of a greater effort to track pollinators or something.
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