Count New Cones on Trees – Contribute to Community Science!

Hello! Dr. Jalene LaMontagne and Kiley Chernicky, of the LaMontagne Lab at the University of Missouri - St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden, met some of you at the ACS meeting in June, and now we’re reaching out to all ACS members. We would love your help counting new cones on conifer trees – wherever you live or travel! Cone Counters - Lite was launched on the iNaturalist platform in 2023, and we are always looking for new community scientists to join. To participate, it only requires that NEW cones (not the old brown cones) are counted on conifer trees, and they can be in your yard, or what you see in public areas. The perfect time to count new cones is July and August (RIGHT NOW), but remember, zero new cones are data too!

This project aims to identify areas where there are LOTS of new cones produced in a year, and areas where there are few or no new cones produced in a year, and how that varies over time, and across species, at regional, continental, and global scales. Conifer cone production follows a pattern called “mast seeding,” which means there is a highly variable amount of reproduction from year to year. These mast-seeding patterns are often highly synchronized locally, which means trees of the same species may behave similarly to each other, but, in areas far apart, the trees may be doing different things. The goal of this project is to quantify new reproduction in conifers in as many geographic areas as possible to understand what drives conifer reproduction and better predict when large “mast events” might occur, hopefully helping guide collection practices for seed and cone collection.

Want the quickest and easiest way to participate? You can read more about Cone Counters - Lite on the iNaturalist project page at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cone-counters-lite.

Want to take more detailed counts and other measurements? You can learn more about Cone Counters (not Lite), how to identify and count new cones, and other ways to submit data on the lab website at https://lamontagnelab.weebly.com/conecounters.html.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected].

Sign-up for our mailing list to receive more detailed information on Cone Counters, reminders for when to count cones, and updates from work in the lab: https://forms.gle/SdYzhfV162KkCiuh6. Thank you!

ACS members – watch for more about this project in the next CQ.

Photo: screenshot of the Cone Counters - Lite project page on iNaturalist showing new cones on a number of conifer species. (Photo credit: Jalene LaMontagne)