I came across a group that seems to be a sort of “Community of Practice” for mycologists. It uses iNaturalist as its observational data repository. It seeks to: promote the study of fungi; bring some best practices to bear in citizen science recording of observational data; provide a community; and promote conservation (I am crudely paraphrasing their objectives which are defined in better detail). It seems to be a sort of iNaturalist project.
I haven’t come across anything similar for entomologists. There seems to be some potential benefits that are similar to the mycology group [EDIT: to further the many great forum suggestions about how to develop iNaturalist for entomology into the future ]. Is there anything out there?
By the way, the mycology group I came across is Australia focused - but maybe a global focus might be of interest in the entomological space.
I was confused by Phil’s post, as there are probably hundreds of entomology organizations that practice citizen science, provide a community, promote conservation, etc.
So I clicked the link for more information
Many forum readers are reluctant to click on links, so there is a screenshot below that paints a clearer picture of what Phil is describing:
Thanks @AdamWargon for clarifying. I should perhaps have made it more clear that I am talking about a group that is all about developing entomology in the context of iNaturalist.
There are lots of great discussions amongst the ento people on this forum and great suggestions about strategy and practices to develop the iNat platform into the future. Is there an entomology “Community of Practice” group set up to actually further those suggestions? Unless there is such a group, then the discussion will remain no more than that. Can one of the existing groups take on that mantle of developing those suggestions? Or is another group needed?
Here are just a few examples of the discussions in recent years, that really need some sort of focus group or CoP group to progress. These are all pertinent to the area of entomology that I think need this sort of focus:
Fungimap has been around since 1995, so long before iNaturalist existed. It is one example where an existing initiative (essentially a field naturalists club) has subsequently adopted iNaturalist to capture data central to its objectives. There are probably many hundreds of similar organisations using iNat similarly.
Fungimap is how I got on to iNaturalist. I went to a Fungimap workshop and didn’t even realise I was using iNat when I created my Fungimap account. It was many months later before I started exploring iNat beyond Fungimap.
