How can we get this higher up the “desired” list of features?
Both the New Zealanders and southern Africans have projects dealing with this.
Ours is visible at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/interactions-s-afr
Basically, we record only the active interaction (i.e. “a eats b”, not “b is eaten by a” - the latter just being the reciprocal of the first), although user pressure has resulted in us adding a passive field for the reciprocal observation, given that observations fields link only one way, so that these observations do not display their hosts) as:
Visiting flowers: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Visiting%20a%20flower%20of:%20(Interaction)
Eating: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Eating:%20(Interaction)
Parasitizing: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Parasitizing:%20(Interaction)
Attached to: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:attached%20to:%20(Interaction)
Carrying: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Carrying:%20(Interaction)
Associated with: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Associated%20with:%20(Interaction)
& the passive
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Passive%20Partner%20to:%20(Interaction)
Note that in each case the field value is the url of the interacting observation. Unfortunately we cannot use this is a query to summarize the interactions.
We can ask
“What flowers does the Cape Sugarbird Visit?” - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&subview=grid&taxon_id=13442&field:Visiting%20a%20flower%20of:%20(Interaction)=
but we will only see the bird, and not the flowers, even though all the urls to the flowers are in the field - see: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/7459.
In over 5 years of using this “set” of interactions, we have never had a request to add additional interactions (e.g. Eating = preys on = killing to eat - i.e. “killing for fun” has not cropped up), although it would be nice to have a hierarchical dictionary of interactions (e.g. visiting a flower > pollinating a flower (> for nectar, pollen, oil, gum)/robbing a flower/, etc.
Just a request for https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50333-Lantana-camara?test=interactions - is that it is searchable/filterable and displayed in explore/observations - species view in descending order (and perhaps also taxonomic order?).
Oh: these may tickle you? https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&subview=grid&taxon_id=122213&field:eating:%20(Interaction)=
(Note that one chilli bush has over 500 interactions! - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10949804)