Bay Area Citizen Scientists Win Global Urban Nature Challenge

San Francisco Bay Area citizen scientists won the third annual City Nature Challenge, a competition to log observations of animals and plants in urban areas, organizers announced Friday.

The observations are valuable to professional scientists.

Organized by San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 68 cities across 17 countries participated this year, up from 16 U.S. cities last year.

More than 1,500 observers from the Bay Area submitted 41,737 observations and documented 3,211 species.

A highlight from the Bay Area includes at least one sighting of the San Francisco garter snake, a subspecies of garter snake that is endangered and only found in the greater Bay Area, according to the Cal Academy.

Another highlight was an observation of a Hammerhead worm, native to Asia and spotted in Oakland. It may be the first seen in the U.S.

Observers in the Dallas/Fort Worth area made 34,218 observations, which was good for second place.

Observers in Houston claimed the second spot for the number of species documented at 3,088.

The competition was open to people no matter how old and no matter their science background.

Citizen scientists submitted pictures to a free mobile app known as iNaturalist, which is powered by the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic.

This year, more than 400,000 observations were made, more than 18,000 species documented and more than 17,000 observers participated.

"Our hope is that by introducing people to the Challenge, they'll stay curious and share their nature discoveries throughout the year," Rebecca Johnson, co-director of Citizen Science at the Academy, said in a statement.

Johnson said the "passion and organization" of the Bay Area community catapulted it to the top spot.

But organizers said each city's observations are invaluable to science.

Highlights from across the globe included an Atlantic pygmy octopus off the coast of Miami, a chameleon only found in the Andes mountains and observations from Palmer Station in Antarctica.

Cities that participated for the first time included London, Kuala Lumpur, Prague and Hong Kong.

Worldwide, 17,329 people participated, 423,845 observations were submitted to iNaturalist and 18,116 species were documented.

The most observed species was the common dandelion.

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