The purpose of the project is to find and identify jumping spiders, and other riverway critters, plants and living organisms.
 
Designed as a fun-filled citizen-science adventure, Project Jumping Spider aims to gather both members and non-members of FLOW to explore the beautiful properties along the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway by looking closely at an array of critters and other organisms living there.
 
Identification of individual species will center on taking up-close smartphone/digital camera photos of organisms, then uploading them to an application called iNaturalist. This app is a popular one used by many scientists, national park services, and other citizen-science groups such as ours.
 
Immediately after running a photo of an organism through the app, a list of groups of organisms appears on screen. Each entry identifies a likely group to which the organism belongs. 
 
Although identification of all sorts of critters, plants, fungi, and other organisms are encouraged, project planners have chosen to focus on looking for and identifying jumping spiders. Inevitably, however, participants will uncover a myriad of fascinating riverway "inhabitants."
 
Not incidentally, iNaturalist strongly discourages participants from disturbing critters, ensuring that no organisms will be purposely harmed during this citizen-science project. To learn more about iNaturalist, go to iNaturalist.org.
 
FUN FACTS
Jumping spiders make up about 13% of all spiders among 5,000 species globally.
They do not catch their prey in a web like most spiders, but instead, they POUNCE!
These critters can jump about 50 times the length of their body.