Add species count (richness) statistics to the seasonal charts on taxon pages

Feature Requests
1

Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other:
website

URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant:

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47224-Papilionoidea

(The detailed information level of any taxon can be)

Description of need:

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Could species count (richness) statistics be added to the seasonal charts on the taxa information page? Similar to the species record quantity change curve, only the metric has changed to the monthly statistical count of species observed.

This would more clearly illustrate the richness trends of species in a given area and offer a better reference for nature observation trips. For example, if I plan to visit Xishuangbanna for butterfly watching, I would like to know which month boasts the highest butterfly species diversity there.

The same approach can be extended to other taxonomic groups, such as trends in insect species richness , trends in amphibian and reptile species richness, and so on.

2

I don’t think abundance statistics can be added based on iNaturalist observations. iNaturalist can show how many observer/organism interactions were posted at a given time, but not how many of the organisms were actually present.

4 Likes
3

I might be misinterpreting but I read it as species richness per month (e.g. 10 species seen in January but 40 species in July).

4 Likes
4

you can do this by iterating through the 12 months on the Explore page species view. for example, this gives you January numbers for this place and taxon: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?month=1&place_id=27840&taxon_id=47224&view=species.

or you can get just the numbers directly from the API: https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/species_counts?per_page=0&place_id=27840&taxon_id=47224&verifiable=true&month=1

you could use some sort of tool or script to get the numbers from the API, or the code in the following page could be tweaked, to get the numbers across all 12 months: https://observablehq.com/@robin-song/inaturalist-api-example-2 :

item count
January 138
February 125
March 207
April 135
May 145
June 153
July 226
August 283
September 260
October 236
November 188
December 126




i don’t think it makes sense to add this sort of functionality to the taxon page, since i would think that most of the time people are looking at the taxon page, they’re looking at species or subspecies level.

moreover, for more complicated views of data like this, it’s better to have have a separate page to present this sort of data, rather than trying to cram all that functionality into the taxon page.




there’s more discussion in https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/seasonality-of-species-for-location/66082

4 Likes
5

I never thought of that.

6

This is exactly what it means. It is the statistical data on species abundance derived from the observation results

7

The main reason is that this interface allows for the selection of biological groups and locations, and it is also made into a line graph, which is quite appropriate to be placed in this interface.

8

Abundance is not well captured on iNat.

iNat is basically a very loose presence/absence indicator and not much more.

A flock of 20 Swinhoe’s White Eyes (a small bird common in East and SE Asia) may get a single observation, while a single fruiting mushroom during a bio-blitz may get 50 observations.

Forget using iNat for abundance.

2 Likes
9

Don’t forget to vote for your own request.

1 Like
10

Thanks for clarifying! “Abundance” in ecology usually refers to “how many of a species” vs. “how many species” so I updated the topic title to reduce confusion.

Presence/absence of species across time is what the request is hoping to display.

2 Likes
11

Then it should probably be “species richness” not “abundance”, or possibly “phenology”. It’s unclear what’s actually being asked and the edited title doesn’t make it more clear.

Abundance is specifically about the number of individuals, richness is about the number of species, and phenology is about the timing of events such as flowering or presence/absence.

2 Likes
12

I intentionally avoided richness to avoid a specialized term that might not translate well, but the OP is welcome to adjust the title.

13

Thank you for the reminder. I’m not quite good at playing yet

1 Like
14

“Species Richness” is exactly the term I was looking for. Thank you for your understanding—my English is still quite poor.

1 Like
15

Your edit is correct. I haven’t found the option to edit this post yet.
Could you please replace “species abundance” in the main text with either “species count” or “species richness”? Thank you! This is to avoid any misunderstanding.

1 Like
16

I feel like the taxon page is probably due for a redesign before adding more to the chart/graph section.

Would you want this to only be available for, say, genus pages and above? Family and above?

1 Like
17

If computational resources need to be conserved, family and above may suffice.