Over the past years I have uploaded every now and then an occasional bee to the platform. Now I would like to become a bit more serious and I was thinking that in addition to the bee, I could annotate the flower as well. Thus, I thought I could just duplicate the bee entry and make in addition a flower entry out of it (Probably I need to add an additional flower picture as often my pictures are cropped to the bee). Like here:
In the āNotesā section I refer to the other entry and I also add āObservation Fieldsā (Flower visited by bee ā¦ & Interaction ā> Visited flower of ā¦)
Is it okay to do it like this or is there any better way to link bee and flower. Also, as many of my bee observations are from Botanical Gardens, I would add quite some cultivated plants (Of course I would mark them as cultivated, but still.). Is that even wanted? Should I try to proceed with this, or is it better, to just stick to the bees?
Hereās one of my observations (a spider, not a bee) with the āAssociated observationā field: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/312841143 . How do you associate more than two observations together?
I enjoy observing bees in botanical gardens (my local one has a section with flower beds arranged taxonomically, for educational purposes, and I have thought sometimes that this must seem like an all-you-can-eat buffet for the oligolectic bees who specialize in a particular genus or family).
I try to take a photo of the label when photographing bees on a particular plant so that I can note this in the observation (I enter the taxon name in the observation field Interaction ā Visited flower of), but I donāt as a rule make separate observations for the plants. There is no rule that you cannot, but I donāt personally find it meaningful to do so. Also note that you canāt add more than one value for an observation field, so if multiple insects visited the same plant, it is difficult to link the plant to more than one observation.
You can create a set of linked observations by assigning them all the same value specific to that set (usually the number of one of the observations). This is the premise of the observation field similar observation set. However, you canāt record the type of relationship between the observations using this field.
Combine all the pictures showing a combo of different species that I plan to duplicate for into one observation.
ID for an obvious one in the first picture, adding a note in the description which one is the ID target.
Upload to generate the observation record.
Duplicate the observation and ID for other species in the picture(s), adding notes which one is the target for each.
Edit the duplicates as needed by deleting pictures that donāt show the identified organism and adding additional pictures that show only that organism.
Resort the images for all observations so ideally the identified organism is the only (or at last most obvious) target in the first picture.
āWe request that submissions include the following observation field: āInteraction->Visited flower of:ā It is a required field for this project. If youāre unsure of the flower, you can put āflowering plantā as the taxon and then post a second iNat observation of the flower. To link iNat observations between pollinator and plant, add the observation field **āreference URLā**and include the link.ā
And in fact when you try to add an observation to this project, you are prompted to include that āInteraction->Visited flower ofā observation field. Then, even when I feel that Iām able to enter the plant to species level, I try always to make a separate observation of the plant and add the āreference URLā observation field. This seems especially important in genera where my ID may be inaccurate, e.g., where there are possible hybrids, or e.g. where IDs can get tricky (as with Solidago in our region).
The general point Iām making is that even though iNat may not be ideal for recording interactions between organisms, using an established protocol set up by a well-thought-out project goes a long way towards providing useful structure for the data.
If you end up using observation fields, I made a little viewerā¦ Garden Viewer
I keep doing re-writes of the source code so itās not completely ready to share yet. It could be interesting for a botanical garden because they could ask visitors to do a targeted bio-blitz for wildlife activity on only certain plants. There is a configuration file (a .json) that tells it which observation field to focus on for the plant list and for wildlife activity.
Thanks for your thoughts. And yes, I actually agree, adding the plant as an additional observation is probably not very meaningful as all of these observations would be casual. In the end, all I want is having somehow a proper link to the visited plant species in addition to the āNotesā section.
True that. Thanks for making me aware of the project. And yes, even though I take many of my pictures in Botanical Gardens, plants are not always labelled which makes it sometimes necessary to upload the plant as its own observation to indeed confirm species.
This is cool. Is that automatically updated? I linked a view more observations that I made here in the Botanical Garden. I definitely like it as it provides a nice list of plants with its visitors for a specific Botanical Garden. Thanks!
Itās project basedā¦ so the observation of the common motherwort would need to be in the āTiere, Pilze und Pflanzen Iām Botanischen Garten der Universitat Tubingenā project. The other option would be to create a project for just the plants that are āin focusā and add and remove plants to that project when you want them to appear in the app.
Part of the thinking isā¦ the botanical garden could then direct visitors to specific plants via their configuration of the app. Some of the cultivated plants in a botanical garden tend to be unusual. Itās possible the unusual plants have unusual insect visitors. If each botanical garden had a handful of observers, they would quite naturally begin to on-board those users who would want their data to display in the app provided by the botanical garden project. Itās a way to nudge organizations toward helping with iNat on-boarding. What the organization gets out of it is data, visitor engagement, and the ability to direct the attention of their visitors toward specific plants.
It also helps with data normalizationā¦ because observers within each botanical garden would use consistent observation fields if they wanted their data to appear in the app for the botanical garden staff to see.
Alsoā¦ from the appās perspective, you only need one plant observation with āinteractionāflower visited byā populated (the app doesnāt need a plant observation for every insect visit). You could use a generic field like āgarden listā = āyesā for the plant if you wanted to. You can also configure it to use a tag as the plant filterā¦ so if a botanist at the botanical garden wanted to have their own configuration with a handful of plants in focus they could tag plant observations with a unique tag that the app could be configured to look forā¦
I like to use the Observation field āFeeding onā, because many of my flowers have been planted by me and I donāt add them to iNat. Here an example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/316566679 .
Then I can click on āFeeding onā and look at all the different insects that have been feeding on Tagetes patula on all of iNat (well, all the ones annotated with āFeeding onā)
Thanks! The observations on common motehrwort are in the project āTiere, Pilze und Pflanzen Iām Botanischen Garten der Universitat Tubingenā but still not in the viewer list. As far as I can see, all other observations are included except for all observations on this plant - which is quite curious.
I have to admit, some of the things you are trying to explain to me, I donāt get. But I also donāt want to annoy you with more questions. I really have to spend a little more time on iNaturlist to figure some things out.
In any case, I love the idea of the viewer that you made, because as you say it enables you directly to figure out plants that are visited by certain insects which makes it much easier to direct people. If you want this.
Is that automatically updated? I linked a view more observations that I made here in the Botanical Garden. I definitely like it as it provides a nice list of plants with its visitors for a specific Botanical Garden. Thanks!