{"id":7078,"date":"2020-03-30T15:09:03","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology-new\/?p=7078"},"modified":"2020-03-31T07:51:20","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T11:51:20","slug":"10000-photos-of-the-wild-life-in-homes-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/news\/10000-photos-of-the-wild-life-in-homes-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"10,000 Photos of the Wild Life in Homes (and Counting)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"\"><strong>Note:<\/strong> This is a guest post by <a href=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/people\/rob-dunn\/\">Prof. Rob Dunn<\/a>, August Sanchez Dunn, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">Never Home Alone<\/a> team.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">Roughly a year and half ago, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/10\/29\/science\/spider-insect-survey.html\"><span style=\"\">as chronicled by Nicola Twilley in the <\/span><i><span style=\"\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"\">, we set out, with participants around the world, to begin cataloguing the animals living in homes. We did so via <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/523\/?TB_iframe=true&amp;width=921.6&amp;height=921.6\"><span style=\"\">an iNaturalist project <\/span><\/a><span style=\"\">in which participants (including me), could (and can) submit photos of the life in their homes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">This public project, which continues and which we hope you will join, began on the back of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/1582\/\"><span style=\"\">work we had done in a smaller number of homes in Raleigh, North Carolina<\/span><\/a><span style=\"\">. When we first started that work, our colleagues thought it boring. They said as much when we gave talks. It went sort of like this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">Colleague: \u201cI have a question\u2026\u201d<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"\">Me: \u201cYes, what is it?\u201d<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"\">Colleague: \u201cThis is boring.<\/span><span style=\"\">\u201d*<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">What could we possibly find? A lot. On windowsills and floors, in bathrooms and light fixtures, we uncovered a tremendous diversity of species. But then our colleagues said, \u201cwell, but are they really living there, predictably living there, or are they just blowing in?\u201d (In other words, \u201cstill boring.\u201d). One of our goals in working with iNaturalist to enlist the public to help us study the life in homes was to see to what extent the species we had found were really regular denizens rather than occasional interlopers. Well, thanks to more than 2000 participants, we can now tell you. Or, we can at least now begin to tell you.<\/span><\/p>\n<h6>*<span style=\"\">August pointed out that his teachers would have been quick to remind, in this instance, that this utterance was a statement not a question.\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7079\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7079\" style=\"width: 950px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter layout_image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-page_layout_full wp-image-7079\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-950x632.png\" alt=\"A Boreal Combfoot spider, Steatoda borealis\" width=\"950\" height=\"632\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-950x632.png 950w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-1024x681.png 1024w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-768x511.png 768w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-600x399.png 600w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-460x306.png 460w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-230x153.png 230w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1.png 1096w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7079\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. A Boreal Combfoot spider, Steatoda borealis, discovered in a kitchen in Attleborough, MA. The spider was seen and photographed by James Waters. James, meanwhile, was also seen by the spider.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"\">Our initial goal, as Nicola Twilley announced, was ten thousand observations of animal species in homes, a big goal. It is a goal that we have achieved, as of yesterday. Or rather, it is a goal that our participants achieved, as of yesterday. As we have looked at their results, we know some things for sure. First and foremost, the life in homes, around the world, is definitely not boring. Consider, for example, the giant crab spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Heteropoda venatoria<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) found in some tropical Asian homes, a spider with a five inch arm-span. A toilet seat-sized spider is many things, none of them boring.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7080\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7080\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7080\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing of a bluebottle fly (Calliphora vicina)\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2-230x307.jpg 230w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2.jpg 384w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7080\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2. A bluebottle fly (<em>Calliphora vicina<\/em>), drawn by August Sanchez Dunn.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"\">It has also become clear that many more species predictably dwell indoors than had been apparent based on the scientific literature. Dozens of these species <\/span>appear to be indoors basically everywhere in the world. Of the twenty most common species detected by participants, nearly all are present in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. For these species, including the long-bodied house spider, house centipede, greenhouse camel cricket, varied carpet beetle, bathroom moth midge, American cockroach, Indian meal moth, pantropical jumping spider, long-tailed silverfish, European earwig and many more, the home is a world and the world is a home. Many of these species have been in homes around the world for a while. The poet <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kobayashi_Issa\">Issa<\/a>, for example, in examining his own home in the late 1700s, commented on many species that seem likely to be the same ones being seen around the world today, or at least species of many of the same genera. In this way, his and our participants\u2019 observations about these species are timeless (which makes it all the more surprising that so much about these common species has yet to be studied).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7092 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly.jpg\" alt=\"Issa poet translations\" width=\"950\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly.jpg 950w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly-768x485.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly-600x379.jpg 600w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly-460x291.jpg 460w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly-230x145.jpg 230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px\" \/>At least the fleas, mice, and bed bugs were the same species that iNaturalist participants are still finding in their homes today. Some of the flies and crickets probably are too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7115\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7115\" style=\"width: 950px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter layout_image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7115 size-page_layout_full\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-950x454.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"950\" height=\"454\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-950x454.png 950w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-300x143.png 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-1024x489.png 1024w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-768x367.png 768w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-1536x734.png 1536w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-2048x978.png 2048w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-1500x717.png 1500w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-1200x573.png 1200w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-600x287.png 600w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-460x220.png 460w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-230x110.png 230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7115\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 3. Many of these same species photographed in our project or featured by Issa also make their way into Japanese art. This beautiful painting by Mori Shunkei (1820), for example, appears to show the same Japanese camel cricket species, <em>Tachycines asynamorus<\/em>, that is now so very common in houses in North America. At right is the same species in my basement. It appears to be invading in the image, an accurate impression given that we were recently able to show, thanks to the help of the public, that <a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/523\/?TB_iframe=true&amp;width=921.6&amp;height=921.6\">this Japanese species has spread house to house across North America<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"\">But as we have looked more at the list, we\u2019ve also seen quite a few species that, while common in some regions, are definitely not everywhere. This appears to be particularly true for ants and spiders. While there are at least a dozen spider species (maybe more, as we tabulate better) that are in homes from Australia to Anaheim (we just liked the alliteration; we may not have any records from Anaheim\u2013haven\u2019t checked), many spider species were more geographically restricted. Participants observed some 259 species of spiders indoors, most of them relatively restricted in their geography and most of them, also, very poorly studied. For example the boreal combfoot spider photographed by James Waters is found almost exclusively in North America (with a small introduced population in Europe). Issa had a lot to say about spiders, though we can\u2019t be sure which spider species. Most famously he wrote&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7100 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually.jpg\" alt=\"Issa poet translations keep house casually\" width=\"950\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually.jpg 950w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually-300x63.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually-768x162.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually-600x126.jpg 600w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually-460x97.jpg 460w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually-230x48.jpg 230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">My guess is that the spider in question was not a geographically restricted one, but instead the long-bodied cellar spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Pholcus phalangiodes<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">; the most frequently observed animal species in houses) but we don\u2019t know. Regardless, we take this poem to mean Issa let the spiders in his home be, whether they were individuals of the very most common species or a species unique to Japan. If you are willing to keep house casually, at least with regard to cleaning away spiders, take pictures of them. Write poems about them. Draw them. Keep an eye on them. We are beginning to suspect that some of the spiders in houses live in their particular corners and crannies of the home for many years, perhaps as long as a decade. In writing about house spiders, Issa might have seen the same spiders, again and again, during his life. He could write not just about spiders in general, but instead about a spider, an individual, a fellow being around which he was a little less lonely. Indeed, this is just what the author David Sedaris (who was born and raised in Raleigh) did in 2008 upon discovering a large spider in his house in Normandy, France. He befriended it and then began to observe; those observations appear in an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2008\/03\/24\/april-paris\"><span style=\"\">article in the <\/span><i><span style=\"\">New Yorker<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"\">, in which he wrote\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"\">I was at my desk one afternoon writing a letter when I heard a faint buzzing sound, like a tiny car switching into a higher gear. Curious, I went to the window, and there, in a web, I saw what looked like an angry raisin. It was a trapped fly, and as I bent forward to get a closer look a spider rushed forth, and carried it screaming to a little woven encampment situated between the wall and the window casing. It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hardcore violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"\">The spider Sedaris was watching (and would continue to watch, feed and watch some more) was a large individual of the species, <\/span><i><span style=\"\">Tegenaria duellica<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">, the giant house spider. This species is common nowhere, based on the observations of our iNaturalist participants, but present in Europe and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It is a giant jewel of a spider worthy of the emotions Sedaris would go on to describe when he wrote, \u201cAt that moment (&#8230;) I stood at the window with my mouth hanging open, all I recognized was a profound sense of wonder,\u201d wonder at the life of the spider, wonder at the life that surrounds us wherever we might be. Regardless of which species you find in your own home, watch them like Sedaris watched his own private giant house spider, with patience, empathy and whatever special approach or perspective most suits you.*<\/span><\/p>\n<h6>* <span style=\"\">Sedaris also mentions his experience with the Carolina wolf spider when he was growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina. It, he writes,&#8230; \u201cThose had been hunters rather than trappers. Big shaggy things the size of a baby\u2019s hand, they roamed the basement of my parents\u2019 house, and evoked from my sisters the prolonged, spine-tingling screams called for in movies when the mummy invades\u2026\u201d We had just one observation of the Carolina wolf spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Hogna carolinensis<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) made by a participant in a home in Austin, Texas. <\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"\">As for the ants, many of the ants that come into our homes live both indoors and out. They are more of a reflection of outdoor nature than are other species and, as a result, differ from house to house and region to region. They are a connection not to the ubiquitous features of our indoor life, but instead to the varied conditions of the world outdoors. Yet, we also suspect there are some general patterns to which ant species thrive in homes, patterns we need more observations in order to test. For example, it seems as though carpenter ants (which make their homes in wood, but don\u2019t do much actual carpentry and don\u2019t eat the wood in which they live) seem to be found walking through homes with unusual frequency (the black carpenter ant, <\/span><i><span style=\"\">Camponotus pennsylvanicus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) is one of the most common species seen so far in houses in North America. On the other hand, some of the ants that succeed in houses appear to do so by being able to make many small, connected colonies, in essence turning your house into an apartment complex. Meanwhile, in the tropics, four people found trap jaw ants (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Odontomachus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\"> species) in their homes, ants that rely on a hair trigger to release the pressure in their mandibles and allow them to snap shut on prey.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7076\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7076\" style=\"width: 341px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7076\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/ratsnake-inaturalist.gif\" alt=\"ratsnake inaturalist\" width=\"341\" height=\"481\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7076\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 4. While we don\u2019t allow pets in the project, we do allow vertebrates, for example this mesmerizing eastern Ratsnake in Key Largo, Florida.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"\">Yet, while ten thousand observations tells us a lot about common, widespread species, it doesn\u2019t yet tell us as much about the rarer, more geographically <\/span>restricted life forms. We have just four observations of <i>Odontomachus <\/i>ants in homes, for example. And just a dozen or so observations of the giant house spider. To understand those species, we need more photos. We need to know more about just how different the ant species and spider species in homes in different regions are. Yes, this means <b>we now want more observations. We want 20,000 observations<\/b>. And what better time to help study life indoors than now, when, amidst quarantines, so many of us find ourselves with time to examine our nooks and crannies, or rather, those of our homes. If you choose to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">join us in this mission<\/a>, we hope that you, like David Sedaris, experience the sentiment we have experienced again and again as we have gone about our work, \u201cHow had I spent so much time in that house and never realized what was going on around me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">In the coming months of our sequester, we will be documenting our own homes (it is the wilderness at hand). But we will also be working to make sense of what our participants (hopefully including you) have seen and are seeing. We will also begin to write a scientific paper based on participants observations, while collaborating with some of the participants to do so.\u00a0 In the meantime, we look forward to new observations in the way that a child looks forward to the contents of a present. And that is what the observations are, presents that, once we unwrap them, tell us much more about the world than we knew before, a world that is so close to us and yet at the sametime so easily overlooked, a world that even as our countries are now separated by border policies and divisions, unites. These observations unite us with each other in the same way that Issa\u2019s poems unite us with the feelings of one man in ancient Japan. We may be very different and yet are all capable of patient observation and, I hope, also all able to see in other lives, something of our own. Of course, sometimes our observations also reveal the differences in how we live too, such as this poem by Issa which begs the question of what about his home was so different from my own home as to allow the proximity of horse and bed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7102\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow.jpg\" alt=\"Horse peeing near my pillow\" width=\"950\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow.jpg 950w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow-300x63.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow-768x162.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow-600x126.jpg 600w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow-460x97.jpg 460w, https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow-230x48.jpg 230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 950px) 100vw, 950px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"\">For the record, if you do have a horse in your bedroom, we ask that you not upload a photo of it to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">our iNaturalist project<\/a>. Or rather, you should upload a photo of it only if it happens to be a wild horse (in which case, you probably have other more urgent things to tend to anyway, like getting the horse out of your bedroom). We decided, as a policy, to exclude domestic animals.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"<em><span style=\"\"><strong>Note:<\/strong> This is a guest post by <a href=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/people\/rob-dunn\/\">Prof. Rob Dunn<\/a>, August Sanchez Dunn, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">Never Home Alone<\/a> team.<\/span><\/em>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">Roughly a year and half ago, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/10\/29\/science\/spider-insect-survey.html\"><span style=\"\">as chronicled by Nicola Twilley in the <\/span><i><span style=\"\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"\">, we set out, with participants around the world, to begin cataloguing the animals living in homes. We did so via <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/523\/?TB_iframe=true&amp;width=921.6&amp;height=921.6\"><span style=\"\">an iNaturalist project <\/span><\/a><span style=\"\">in which participants (including me), could (and can) submit photos of the life in their homes.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">This public project, which continues and which we hope you will join, began on the back of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/1582\/\"><span style=\"\">work we had done in a smaller number of homes in Raleigh, North Carolina<\/span><\/a><span style=\"\">. When we first started that work, our colleagues thought it boring. They said as much when we gave talks. It went sort of like this.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">Colleague: \u201cI have a question\u2026\u201d\r\n<\/span><span style=\"\">Me: \u201cYes, what is it?\u201d\r\n<\/span><span style=\"\">Colleague: \u201cThis is boring.<\/span><span style=\"\">\u201d*<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">What could we possibly find? A lot. On windowsills and floors, in bathrooms and light fixtures, we uncovered a tremendous diversity of species. But then our colleagues said, \u201cwell, but are they really living there, predictably living there, or are they just blowing in?\u201d (In other words, \u201cstill boring.\u201d). One of our goals in working with iNaturalist to enlist the public to help us study the life in homes was to see to what extent the species we had found were really regular denizens rather than occasional interlopers. Well, thanks to more than 2000 participants, we can now tell you. Or, we can at least now begin to tell you.<\/span>\r\n<h6>*<span style=\"\">August pointed out that his teachers would have been quick to remind, in this instance, that this utterance was a statement not a question.\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_7079\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"950\" class=\"layout_image\"]<img class=\"size-page_layout_full wp-image-7079\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-1-950x632.png\" alt=\"A Boreal Combfoot spider, Steatoda borealis\" width=\"950\" height=\"632\" \/> Figure 1. A Boreal Combfoot spider, Steatoda borealis, discovered in a kitchen in Attleborough, MA. The spider was seen and photographed by James Waters. James, meanwhile, was also seen by the spider.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">Our initial goal, as Nicola Twilley announced, was ten thousand observations of animal species in homes, a big goal. It is a goal that we have achieved, as of yesterday. Or rather, it is a goal that our participants achieved, as of yesterday. As we have looked at their results, we know some things for sure. First and foremost, the life in homes, around the world, is definitely not boring. Consider, for example, the giant crab spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Heteropoda venatoria<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) found in some tropical Asian homes, a spider with a five inch arm-span. A toilet seat-sized spider is many things, none of them boring.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_7080\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"225\"]<img class=\"size-medium wp-image-7080\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Figure-2-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing of a bluebottle fly (Calliphora vicina)\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/> Figure 2. A bluebottle fly (<em>Calliphora vicina<\/em>), drawn by August Sanchez Dunn.\u00a0[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">It has also become clear that many more species predictably dwell indoors than had been apparent based on the scientific literature. Dozens of these species <\/span>appear to be indoors basically everywhere in the world. Of the twenty most common species detected by participants, nearly all are present in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. For these species, including the long-bodied house spider, house centipede, greenhouse camel cricket, varied carpet beetle, bathroom moth midge, American cockroach, Indian meal moth, pantropical jumping spider, long-tailed silverfish, European earwig and many more, the home is a world and the world is a home. Many of these species have been in homes around the world for a while. The poet <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kobayashi_Issa\">Issa<\/a>, for example, in examining his own home in the late 1700s, commented on many species that seem likely to be the same ones being seen around the world today, or at least species of many of the same genera. In this way, his and our participants\u2019 observations about these species are timeless (which makes it all the more surprising that so much about these common species has yet to be studied).\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-7092 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/winterfly.jpg\" alt=\"Issa poet translations\" width=\"950\" height=\"600\" \/>At least the fleas, mice, and bed bugs were the same species that iNaturalist participants are still finding in their homes today. Some of the flies and crickets probably are too.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_7115\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"950\" class=\"layout_image\"]<img class=\"wp-image-7115 size-page_layout_full\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-30-at-3.20.40-PM-950x454.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"950\" height=\"454\" \/> Figure 3. Many of these same species photographed in our project or featured by Issa also make their way into Japanese art. This beautiful painting by Mori Shunkei (1820), for example, appears to show the same Japanese camel cricket species, <em>Tachycines asynamorus<\/em>, that is now so very common in houses in North America. At right is the same species in my basement. It appears to be invading in the image, an accurate impression given that we were recently able to show, thanks to the help of the public, that <a href=\"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/523\/?TB_iframe=true&amp;width=921.6&amp;height=921.6\">this Japanese species has spread house to house across North America<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">But as we have looked more at the list, we\u2019ve also seen quite a few species that, while common in some regions, are definitely not everywhere. This appears to be particularly true for ants and spiders. While there are at least a dozen spider species (maybe more, as we tabulate better) that are in homes from Australia to Anaheim (we just liked the alliteration; we may not have any records from Anaheim\u2013haven\u2019t checked), many spider species were more geographically restricted. Participants observed some 259 species of spiders indoors, most of them relatively restricted in their geography and most of them, also, very poorly studied. For example the boreal combfoot spider photographed by James Waters is found almost exclusively in North America (with a small introduced population in Europe). Issa had a lot to say about spiders, though we can\u2019t be sure which spider species. Most famously he wrote...<\/span>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-7100 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Copy-of-keep-house-casually.jpg\" alt=\"Issa poet translations keep house casually\" width=\"950\" height=\"200\" \/>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">My guess is that the spider in question was not a geographically restricted one, but instead the long-bodied cellar spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Pholcus phalangiodes<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">; the most frequently observed animal species in houses) but we don\u2019t know. Regardless, we take this poem to mean Issa let the spiders in his home be, whether they were individuals of the very most common species or a species unique to Japan. If you are willing to keep house casually, at least with regard to cleaning away spiders, take pictures of them. Write poems about them. Draw them. Keep an eye on them. We are beginning to suspect that some of the spiders in houses live in their particular corners and crannies of the home for many years, perhaps as long as a decade. In writing about house spiders, Issa might have seen the same spiders, again and again, during his life. He could write not just about spiders in general, but instead about a spider, an individual, a fellow being around which he was a little less lonely. Indeed, this is just what the author David Sedaris (who was born and raised in Raleigh) did in 2008 upon discovering a large spider in his house in Normandy, France. He befriended it and then began to observe; those observations appear in an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2008\/03\/24\/april-paris\"><span style=\"\">article in the <\/span><i><span style=\"\">New Yorker<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"\">, in which he wrote\u2026<\/span>\r\n<blockquote><span style=\"\">I was at my desk one afternoon writing a letter when I heard a faint buzzing sound, like a tiny car switching into a higher gear. Curious, I went to the window, and there, in a web, I saw what looked like an angry raisin. It was a trapped fly, and as I bent forward to get a closer look a spider rushed forth, and carried it screaming to a little woven encampment situated between the wall and the window casing. It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hardcore violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.<\/span><\/blockquote>\r\n<span style=\"\">The spider Sedaris was watching (and would continue to watch, feed and watch some more) was a large individual of the species, <\/span><i><span style=\"\">Tegenaria duellica<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">, the giant house spider. This species is common nowhere, based on the observations of our iNaturalist participants, but present in Europe and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It is a giant jewel of a spider worthy of the emotions Sedaris would go on to describe when he wrote, \u201cAt that moment (...) I stood at the window with my mouth hanging open, all I recognized was a profound sense of wonder,\u201d wonder at the life of the spider, wonder at the life that surrounds us wherever we might be. Regardless of which species you find in your own home, watch them like Sedaris watched his own private giant house spider, with patience, empathy and whatever special approach or perspective most suits you.*<\/span>\r\n<h6>* <span style=\"\">Sedaris also mentions his experience with the Carolina wolf spider when he was growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina. It, he writes,... \u201cThose had been hunters rather than trappers. Big shaggy things the size of a baby\u2019s hand, they roamed the basement of my parents\u2019 house, and evoked from my sisters the prolonged, spine-tingling screams called for in movies when the mummy invades\u2026\u201d We had just one observation of the Carolina wolf spider (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Hogna carolinensis<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) made by a participant in a home in Austin, Texas. <\/span><\/h6>\r\n<span style=\"\">As for the ants, many of the ants that come into our homes live both indoors and out. They are more of a reflection of outdoor nature than are other species and, as a result, differ from house to house and region to region. They are a connection not to the ubiquitous features of our indoor life, but instead to the varied conditions of the world outdoors. Yet, we also suspect there are some general patterns to which ant species thrive in homes, patterns we need more observations in order to test. For example, it seems as though carpenter ants (which make their homes in wood, but don\u2019t do much actual carpentry and don\u2019t eat the wood in which they live) seem to be found walking through homes with unusual frequency (the black carpenter ant, <\/span><i><span style=\"\">Camponotus pennsylvanicus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\">) is one of the most common species seen so far in houses in North America. On the other hand, some of the ants that succeed in houses appear to do so by being able to make many small, connected colonies, in essence turning your house into an apartment complex. Meanwhile, in the tropics, four people found trap jaw ants (<\/span><i><span style=\"\">Odontomachus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"\"> species) in their homes, ants that rely on a hair trigger to release the pressure in their mandibles and allow them to snap shut on prey.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_7076\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"341\"]<img class=\"size-full wp-image-7076\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/ratsnake-inaturalist.gif\" alt=\"ratsnake inaturalist\" width=\"341\" height=\"481\" \/> Figure 4. While we don\u2019t allow pets in the project, we do allow vertebrates, for example this mesmerizing eastern Ratsnake in Key Largo, Florida.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">Yet, while ten thousand observations tells us a lot about common, widespread species, it doesn\u2019t yet tell us as much about the rarer, more geographically <\/span>restricted life forms. We have just four observations of <i>Odontomachus <\/i>ants in homes, for example. And just a dozen or so observations of the giant house spider. To understand those species, we need more photos. We need to know more about just how different the ant species and spider species in homes in different regions are. Yes, this means <b>we now want more observations. We want 20,000 observations<\/b>. And what better time to help study life indoors than now, when, amidst quarantines, so many of us find ourselves with time to examine our nooks and crannies, or rather, those of our homes. If you choose to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">join us in this mission<\/a>, we hope that you, like David Sedaris, experience the sentiment we have experienced again and again as we have gone about our work, \u201cHow had I spent so much time in that house and never realized what was going on around me?\u201d\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">In the coming months of our sequester, we will be documenting our own homes (it is the wilderness at hand). But we will also be working to make sense of what our participants (hopefully including you) have seen and are seeing. We will also begin to write a scientific paper based on participants observations, while collaborating with some of the participants to do so.\u00a0 In the meantime, we look forward to new observations in the way that a child looks forward to the contents of a present. And that is what the observations are, presents that, once we unwrap them, tell us much more about the world than we knew before, a world that is so close to us and yet at the sametime so easily overlooked, a world that even as our countries are now separated by border policies and divisions, unites. These observations unite us with each other in the same way that Issa\u2019s poems unite us with the feelings of one man in ancient Japan. We may be very different and yet are all capable of patient observation and, I hope, also all able to see in other lives, something of our own. Of course, sometimes our observations also reveal the differences in how we live too, such as this poem by Issa which begs the question of what about his home was so different from my own home as to allow the proximity of horse and bed.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7102\" src=\"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2020\/03\/Horse-peeing-near-my-pillow.jpg\" alt=\"Horse peeing near my pillow\" width=\"950\" height=\"200\" \/>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"\">For the record, if you do have a horse in your bedroom, we ask that you not upload a photo of it to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/projects\/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes\">our iNaturalist project<\/a>. Or rather, you should upload a photo of it only if it happens to be a wild horse (in which case, you probably have other more urgent things to tend to anyway, like getting the horse out of your bedroom). We decided, as a policy, to exclude domestic animals.<\/span>"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roughly a year and half ago we set out with participants around the world to begin cataloguing the animals living in homes with iNaturalist. Thanks to more than 2000 participants, we can now tell you what we&#8217;re finding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2094,"featured_media":7105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,3,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extension","category-impact","category-newswire"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7119,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions\/7119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}