In the spirit of birding, I’ve come up with a game that celebrates the incredible biodiversity around us. It’s pretty simple: tally up all the types of life you’ve seen. You get one point for each unique species, two points for each genus, 3 points for a family, 4 points for an order, 5 points for a class, and 10 points for a phylum. Add them all up (made easier through iNaturalist, Bugguide, and eBird) and see what you get!

I like this because it incentivizes looking for creatures that are evolutionary different from what we’ve seen before. For me, that means looking for things like freshwater sponges, marine worms, and new plant families. It’s a great excuse to explore!

Contact me for an R script (that I’ve called biolistR) that downloads your species lists from iNaturalist, eBird, and BugGuide, compiles them into one, and tells you your score!