I was in costa rica last year and I just continued uploading some of the photos, when I noticed that my observation of a Potoo was in no way unique: There are 12 observations of the same exact specimen in the same exact spot uploaded by 12 different people within a period of 3 weeks. https://www.in…

[image] timo27: I am just wondering if there should be something done about this because it feels like this falsifies statistics for Potoo observations iNat observations record encounters between an observer and an organism , so each of these are fine. But yes, because of this iNat isn’t great…

Or, this rather photogenic (but dead) bristlecone pine (most, but not all, observations in the square are of the same specimen). I photographed it this fall, but chose to post another less famed (and still living) specimen instead.

More observations of a few same specimens: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=22.4021&nelng=114.2&subview=map&swlat=22.39922&swlng=114.19622&taxon_id=52348 I’m sure there were more observations there of these few specimens. In particular, I helped identify 100+ times the Senna bicapsul…

Or Morris: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=39.92477663476919&nelng=-118.23305936995894&swlat=35.76242641744415&swlng=-125.61587186995894&taxon_id=3802

This is something that researchers mostly know that they need to account for. It’s a well-known phenomenon that also affects other platforms (for example, on eBird, the percentages will make it look like Lazuli Buntings are not that unusual in southeastern Ohio in January). I believe with some math…

I have seen something similar where it appears that a group of students all used the same batch of photos to record several species in Panamá.

12 Observations of the same exact specimen

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12 Observations of the same exact specimen

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