Phenology graphs on each taxa page provide excellent information on the time of year that a species is active, and they can give information on when different life stages can be found (e.g. moth vs caterpillar). However, casual-grade observations are included in these graphs, which can make the phenology graphs non-reflective of actual phenology.
For example, if an observation has an incorrect date, it might be recorded as being active during a month when that species is actually not typically active. Similar problems can arise with inaccurate locations- a species may be active at very different times of year in Florida versus Maine, in North America versus South America, and so on. Captive organisms can also influence phenology estimates- pets and other captive organisms can often be found year-round in any location when they might not typically be active year-round in their natural environment.
By allowing a user to exclude casual-grade (and possibly Needs ID) observations, similar to how observations without annotations can be excluded from certain phenology graphs, users may be able to access better information on species phenology.
Feature request details:
In phenology graphs on all taxon pages, add the option to hide any casual-grade observations, like shown below. This would then hide any casual-grade observations in the phenology graphs.
I never noticed this until now, but itās curious that the Seasonality and History charts show only verifiable and RG observations, yet the charts governed by annotations (Sex, Leaves, Life Stage, etc.) show all observations, casual included. Is that intended behavior?
This is a good idea; Iāve been wishing for something like this for a while.
The current situation most bugs me when Iāve annotated the Life Stage for an entire species/region and the chart still shows a handful with āNo Annotationā that I canāt do anything about - because they donāt have a photo attached, haha.
Yep, I just finished annotating a species with tens of thousands of records, only for there to remain thousands more casual observations without annotations. I have no plans to go through them.
It doesnāt bother me so much in cases where all non-casual records are annotated, because then hiding all un-annotated records does the trick, but it is slightly disappointing to see that remaining sliver of gray.
It might be nice to be able to exclude ādeadā observations from the phenology charts, too. Iām thinking of when people post a long-dead insect they found in their windowsill from the middle of winter, which doesnāt correspond at all to the actual emergence window. Though this is admittedly a small fraction and Iād agree excluding casual is more important for starters!
I think these ideas about customizing phenology graphs are potentially very useful, but the GUI with the graphs really isnāt made to handle a ton of options. it would get very cluttered and hard to use quite quick.
I wonder if a slightly different solution might be to do something like adding a button to the Explore or Identify page (I know Explore Feature requests arenāt currently allowed, just spitballing) that takes the current search and opens a new window with a phenology graph of just the observations returned. That would allow for essentially all the customization that iNat currently has (including via URL editing) to be leveraged to make phenology graphs.
no, i donāt. are you planning on making one? i could never justify the work needed to create one that would be useful for most people, especially considering that other tools using /observations/histogram already exist (see the thread i linked to above).
Having an alternative to the taxon page phenology graphs that enabled lots of customization would be absolutely amazing. I would also support the ability to exclude observations with annotations of dead (or evidence of presence = bone etc), as it might not reflect ātrueā phenology. I would also love to have the option to exclude observations at Needs ID status (could be mis-identified). But for this feature request I wanted to keep it simple for starters with what I hope would be a simple and non-obtrusive change. I agree that having lots of options within the phenology graph as they exist currently would be very cluttered and potentially overwhelming.
I donāt personally have a need for one (read: Iām too lazy to make one), but in my head itās a really slick GUI with lots of user options, including displaying multiple term values at once.
