As you may have heard, we have been busy working on a brand new mobile app! Among many other new features, it will include a leveled approach to monitoring, and a flow that more readily shows how phenophases are nested.

To accommodate this, you will see a few minor changes to phenophases for mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. The most notable change is that we broke “Young individuals” (which included both live and dead young) into separate phenophases for “Young individuals” (alive only) and “Dead young”.

In conifers, we revised phenophases for seed cones to be nested similar to the way fruit phenophases are nested in flowering plants.

• Instead of “Unripe seed cones” and “Ripe seed cones” which do not overlap, we now have “Seed cones” and “Ripe seed cones”. “Seed cones” includes all growth stages of a seed cone from first visible emergence through ripening until the cone drops entirely from the plant, or until it drops its last seed.
• Intensity questions have also changed to mirror those of fruits in flowering plants—you will report an estimate of “How many seed cones are present?” and “What percentage of all seed cones (unripe plus ripe) on the plant are ripe?”.

Also, in response to years of confusion about the “Increasing leaf size” phenophase for deciduous trees and shrubs, we finally changed the name and dropped the intensity question!

• We renamed it “Early season leaf expansion”, which we hope makes it more clear that it only includes the growing and expanding of leaves in the spring–what we call “greenup”--before the canopy becomes full.
• The definition remains the same: “A majority of leaves on the plant have not yet reached their full size and are still growing larger. Do not include new leaves that continue to emerge at the ends of elongating stems throughout the growing season.”
• Although the greenup period on a plant is captured by making intensity estimates for canopy fullness with the “Leaves” phenophase, reporting “yes” or “no” for “Early season leaf expansion” allows observers to provide greenup information even if they are not comfortable estimating percentage of canopy fullness.

Lastly, as in most years there are some new species on the list, and a few old ones that have changes to their scientific name (as we keep up with changes in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System at itis.gov), or their functional type when observers let us know when a species does not seen to have the correct set of phenophases.

We've added 58 new species to the list this year, including two new mammals, beaver and common muskrat; one insect, Japanese beetle; and dozens of plant species including forbs, grasses, and shrubs.

As always, thank you for participating in Nature's Notebook and happy observing!