Does anyone know how to search or filter a project list for species not observed?

[jdjohnson]

I have a traditional project with a species list that defines the observations that are eligible. I would like to find taxa on that list that have not been observed yet.

On a place checklist page, there’s a filter for Observed → No, which adds the term observed=f to the URL. I’ve tried adding that term to the project list URL but that doesn’t return the right results.

I’ve tried the compare tool but that only looks at observations and I’m looking for taxa that lack observations.

If anyone has figured out how to do this, I’d appreciate an example. Thanks!

[lappelbaum]

You can try this compare tool. You can’t look at every species at once. The query won’t give more than 500 results. In this case I looked at Order Poales. I asked for which species are in my county but are not in my project. I got a result of 188 species in my county with 166 of those not in my project.

[pisum]

there’s some relevant discussion here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-create-a-list-of-species-that-either-of-two-users-have-not-observed/51348. it’s not the same use case, but the same concepts apply and could be adapted for your case.

[Spifferella]

Thanks, that link just showed me that “&unobserved_by_user_id” was a filter I could apply. I never would have found that.

[jdjohnson]

Unfortunately that only compares observations. If I’m looking for a taxon with no observations it doesn’t show up.

[jdjohnson]

Unfortunately, I would have to add unobserved_by_user for every user who has posted observations in our state. Unobserved_by_project doesn’t work.

[pisum]

export your list, export your observed taxa, and compare the two. there’s not a simpler way to do it.

[jdjohnson]

Darn, I was hoping to be able to direct people to a search so we could have something like a treasure hunt for overlooked plants.

[pisum]

it’s possible to build a wepage or other tool to do the comparison, but i don’t think anyone has made anything to do exactly that yet.

[lappelbaum]

You CAN use this tool to get a list of species not in your project. Here’s an example.

Here I put Query 1 as “taxon_id=50829&place_id=2993&project_id=79239” (violets in Tyler Co, TX in my project)
and Query 2 as “taxon_id=50829&place_id=2993” (violets in Tyler Co, TX)

If you click on not in common you get a list of 11 species that are in my county but not in my project (Query 1 is all zeros)

[jdjohnson]

But it only works if the species has at least one observation. Many of the species in my list have 0 observations anywhere, not just in my project.

[lappelbaum]

Somehow I missed the part about there being a species list. Only way I know to do what you want to do is with Excel.

[jdjohnson]

Thanks!