I don’t get it.
Both studies got the same results. So they replicated.
So then the newsidjits wrote a breathless headline in effect saying “all replication problems in all the sciences have been solved”, when the more trivial reality is “This one certain study replicated, which unfortunately proves that the replication crisis is alive and well everywhere.”
“Washington, DC: Eastern gray squirrel, Amur honeysuckle. Puerto Rico: Crested anole, sea grape. US as a whole: Mallard, eastern poison ivy.”
Okay, I’m completely whooshed as to what the point of the comic is.
It’s just interesting statistics (for some people).
People can record observations at https://www.inaturalist.org/. This comic reports the most common flora and fauna recorded in each state. There’s nothing more to it.
And i thought it was kind of neat. It tells you what plants and animals people tend to notice. I wouldn’t have guessed “bumble bees” were so prominent.
At least five non-natives on that list (brown anole, Amur honeysuckle, Chinese privet, great mullein, spotted lanternfly). I might have missed one or two, but that’s honestly better than I expected.
ETA: rugosa rose is another.
And I was sent down a rabbit-hole about the Western Fence Lizard (whose name I didn’t recognize, but the animal itself I recognized as that lizard I see all over the damn place), which is commonly infected by ticks, and how there seems to be controversy about whether they are responsible for the low levels of Lyme Disease (due to a Lyme-killing substance in their blood), or if instead they actually contribute to it by acting as hosts for Lyme-carrying ticks.
I’d say contribute is an inaccurate statement. The west has a much lower incidence and concentration of Lyme’s Disease than the northeast and that’s down to fence lizards (also alligator lizards) being the primary nymphal host out west by a very wide margin. Removing all fence lizards is functionally impossible in addition to being ecologically irresponsible (a ton of things eat them and they eat a ton of things). But even if it were possible Ixodes pacificus (the tick in question) will use other hosts (which is why we have Lyme out west in the first place) and would probably adapt in time to a wider preference of hosts in the absence of fence lizards and end up propagating Lyme more widely. That status quo is best preserved by our lizard friends that are already keeping LD relatively suppressed.
I certainly don’t advocate eliminating the lizards! As you say, we have a very low incidence of Lyme disease out here in CA. And few ticks in general. But there are a zillion articles around along these lines:
Are lizards superheroes? Maybe not:
So which is it? Both, I guess. Anyway, keep the lizards around; they’re cute.
Also, I only went down the tick rabbit hole because I noticed a weird bump on the main image of the Wikipedia page:
I thought it might have been some weird sense organ or something. But then I read further and realized it was a tick, and it had never occurred to me that reptiles could get ticks (shouldn’t the scales help?), and then I read further about the whole thing.
One thing I will say about I. pacificus is unlike a lot of ticks the adults can hurt if they are allowed to attach for a period of time. I’ve twice had the experience of ‘oww! wtf!’ moments when it turned out to be a Western black-legged tick all burrowed in. All praise the mighty fence lizard, but if we could somehow exterminate those goddamn little ticks without irreparably damaging the environment I’d be all for it 
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I’d definitely support eradication efforts. Those little bloodsuckers transmit Alpha-gal Syndrome.
Speaking of fence lizards …
I’m mostly aware of Western Fence Lizards because there’s a population of them (subspecies? Species? Hybrid? Last I heard it was unclear how finely to split) that’s exclusively lesbian. They reproduce through parthenogenesis, but still go through the motions of mating.
On the comic itself, I think it’s an interesting question, since the top-reported species would have to be exotic enough to be worth noticing (nobody’s going to post “I saw a squirrel today”), but also common enough that it gets reported more than all of the other things worth reporting. It’s not surprising that invasives would show up a lot, since they’re common now, but didn’t used to be, so folks aren’t used to seeing them.
And if the numbers of younger forms I’m seeing now are any indication, spotted lanternflies are probably going to be Ohio’s animal for next year 
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I think you’re thinking of whiptail lizards. They are considered distinct species, all formed via hybridization between two different bisexual species (or a backcross of a unisexual species and a bisexual species). There are also others, but none native to NA (there are a couple of geckos in Hawai’i though).
Far as I know there are none in the fence/spiny lizard genus.
“"And in maritime news, the Coast Guard is on the scene today after an apparent collision between two lighthouses."”
Not exactly impossible that two lighthouses could collide:
For those curious about Flettner boats, here are more details. They aren’t a pure sailboat since they require some power source to spin the cylinders. But still pretty cool.
Given the long history of maritime jurisprudence, I’d wager that there’s been at least one law forbidding disguising a boat as a piece of land.
It’s most definitely illegal to have deceptive navigation lights, so making it look like a lighthouse is out. But I don’t know about laws against making it look like land.