Batch add species from a same genus

Feature Requests
1

Platforms : Website
Description of need : When there are many species under a genus that have not been added to the database, species can now only be added one by one, and they have the same Parent ID and Source(sometimes), which leads to duplicate and meaningless operations.
Feature request details : I suggest extending the Scientific Name window https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/new As shown in the picture
This allows curators to add species of the same genus in bulk
Snipaste_2023-02-27_21-39-16

2

Would also be nice to have auto taxon frameworking and the option to include a URL in the taxon creation page (POWO for vascular plants, for example), with maybe a checkbox stating “this taxon matches framework source for Phylum Tracheophyta sourced to Plants of the World Online.”

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3

As a workaround, I’ve noticed that after adding the first species you can use the browser’s Back navigation to return to a (mostly) pre-filled version of the New Taxon page. IIRC, when I had several species to add in the same genus all I needed to to was enter the new scientific name and reselect the correct reference source. The parent name and rank were already there. I can’t remember if I had to repaste my comment text explaining why I was adding the species.

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4

This will certainly save us a lot of time. Also sometimes there are many genera we need to add under a same family, when we add taxa from often-overlooked groups.

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5

If this is possible it would be great for us curators, but I need usually more time for adding synonym names and for filling in the Taxon Framework Relationships than for creating the taxa itself.

3 Likes
6

I don’t add too many taxa to iNat so I haven’t encountered the issues discussed here, but one thing we try to do is match the iNat taxonomic database with taxa that people are observing. Having a lot of empty nodes requires more support, infrastructure-wise. So I’d be concerned that making it easy to add a lot of species at once would create a lot of unused taxa in the database. But perhaps that outweighs the tedium of adding lots of needed taxa to iNat.