One wild day: FGCU’s BioBlitz celebrates campus’ rich natural landscape
- Laurie Dionne Babcock
- Student success
- Contributors: Laurie Dionne Babcock, Photos | Chris Noonan, Video
6 – minute read
For the third consecutive year, Florida Gulf Coast University celebrated biodiversity on campus by hosting BioBlitz April 18.
Guided by faculty, attendees were invited to explore FGCU’s natural surroundings while learning field techniques and using tools like the iNaturalist app to record their flora and fauna findings. The immersive event offered a snapshot of Southwest Florida’s unique ecological diversity while advancing FGCU’s sustainability mission.
A global activity promoted by the National Geographic Society, BioBlitz brings participants together to identify as many plant and animal species as possible within a set time and defined area. The goal is to help foster a worldwide appreciation for biodiversity and involve communities in citizen science.
“Achieving a planet in balance, one that provides for humanity and the many millions of other species with which we live, may be the greatest challenge of our century,” notes Vicki Phillips, the National Geographic Society’s chief education officer, in its published BioBlitz guide. “Understanding and appreciating the organisms that inhabit our planet is a critical first step toward a more sustainable future.”
Birds of Southwest Florida
“BioBlitzes are held all over the world,” said Mercedes Roesler, a senior biology major and the vice president of the Ornithology Club, which hosted BioBlitz. “People can just see how many species they can find and make a day of it.”
Whether part of an organized event like BioBlitz FGCU or on a solo outing, participants spend the day observing and documenting as many species as possible — contributing valuable biodiversity data while deepening their connection to the natural world.
“It’s really a celebration of what we have on campus,” said Roesler. “It gets people out to experience wildlife in a way that maybe they haven’t before, or in ways that they don’t get the chance to every day, and take a really good measure of how many species we have on campus, from plants to insects to animals.”
A budding avian enthusiast, Roesler volunteered at a Punta Gorda parrot rescue after Hurricane Ian displaced many feathered friends in 2022.
“That kind of spurred my love for birds,” she said. Her ultimate goal is to become a veterinarian, specializing in avian medicine.
What kinds of birds can be found on FGCU’s campus? There have been 174 documented residential and migratory winged species in the university’s various ecosystems.
“We’ve got grackles, some nesting loggerhead shrikes. We’ve got plenty of northern mockingbirds. We have cardinals and blue jays and egrets,” Roesler said. “We’ve got the whole shebang.”
The BioBlitz FGCU boundary included the entire campus, from nature trails to areas around academic buildings.
“We’re making sure that we cover everything,” Roesler said. “Everybody is going to have a little bit of learning and a moment of celebration for our wildlife.”
Flora of Southwest Florida
Participants documented 246 unique species among 559 overall entries this year, including 15 sightings new to the university record.
BioBlitz participants were asked to use iNaturalist, a crowdsourced species identification platform, to record their findings. Students in Jay Horn’s “Flora of Southwest Florida” course had already been using the app all semester, so they were prepared when he took their Friday morning class outdoors for the BioBlitz event.
“This campus harbors a treasure trove of biodiversity, not only in plants, which are my specialty, but across all of the tree of life,” said Horn, a botanist and assistant professor of biology. He requires his students to log at least 50 observations — the class logged more than 1,500 by semester’s end.
Horn guided his group toward a campus nature trail that leads to one of the many hidden cypress domes on FGCU’s 400 acres of conservation land.
“With a small walk away from the bustle of campus, we can really get into a marvelous kind of, almost untouched, natural landscape,” he said. Before entering the trail, he had students stop and note the gentle slope downward, explaining how elevation changes shape ecosystems and affect how the water table intersects with the soil.
“As you’re going in, think about some of these factors that are important for shaping natural community types,” he said, including the role of wildfires in sculpting and renewing the landscape.
He reminded students to document any insects or critters they observed but emphasized that each individual needed at least one plant observation for the event. One community member who hadn’t previously used iNaturalist recorded over two dozen plant species during 90 minutes in the cypress dome — yet barely scratched the surface of the area’s biodiversity.
What kinds of plants can be found on FGCU’s campus?
Near the trail entrance, the group observed pine varieties and bald cypress trees and plants that prefer upland or drier environments, like golden polypody, rosy camphorweed and pineland heliotrope. Among the more unique flora were Leavenworth’s tickseed, endemic to Florida, with only a few occurrences outside the state, and leafy bladderwort, a carnivorous aquatic plant. Once the group neared the cypress dome, students were able to document wetland plants like pink sundew, Virginia chainfern and alligator flag.
For an upcoming quiz, students learned to identify plants by their scientific names, including Dichanthelium erectifolium (erectleaf panicgrass) and Hypericum fasciculatum (peelbark St. John’s wort). Before leaving, Horn gathered stalks of warty sedge, maiden cane and common buttonbush to place in vases for BioBlitz attendees — to share a souvenir of his class’s wilderness experience.
“I know not everyone gets excited about plants like this, but I do,” Horn said.
BioBlitz FGCU not only offers hands-on learning experiences but also inspires a growing community of citizen scientists working to document and protect Southwest Florida’s natural heritage.
