Extraterrestial species on iNat

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): website

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : DuckDuckgo

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=72231&view=species

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Screenshot_20250310-171435_DuckDuckGo|225x500

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Go to the explore tab. Filter for the plant genus Maytenus.

Step 2: Switch to the species tap, in order to see a list of all species of Maytenus, documented with iNat.

Step 3: The species Maytenus boaria is marked as introduced in this worldwide species list. → Does this mean this species was introduced to this planet / is extraterrestrial?

Fun aside. In the explore tab/species view, an assumed or real location is probably used to evaluate establishment means. This does obviously make no sense, as long as no filter for location was set.

4 Likes
2

This is not a bug, but an error in taxon curation. It would be best handled by creating a flag from the taxon page.

3 Likes
3

Please don’t fix it :alien:

14 Likes
4

Correct me if I’m wrong, and I might be explaining this poorly, but might it have to do with either your set locale or network? Both of these are located under “Account” in the Settings menu. I have mine set to English and iNaturalist, respectively, and when I click on your link and hover over the pink “IN” icon, I get “introduced in United States.”

That said, it would be interesting to figure out how observations of extraterrestrial life-forms would work, considering they’d all but certainly lie outside of our traditional taxonomic frameworks.

1 Like
5

I have similar problems, my iNaturalist seems to be set to Panama (I may have done this when I travelled there).
However, I can’t find the option to reverse it. But I also don’t want it to be set for my home country, I use iNaturalist quite internationally as I’m identifying observations from around the world.
I’d like to see the introduced symbol only when searching for taxon+place, specific for that place.

2 Likes
6

I found a time zone, and a prefered common language in my account settings. But i can’t tell you either, where the assumed or real locality information for this feature is coming from.

Found many more extraterrestrial species in the meanwhile though.

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The bug only exists, when logged in and no filter for location is applied!
When either a filter for location is applied, or when logged out, everything works as expected: All species are assigned their establishment means depending on the area filtered for. In case no filter for area is applied, no establishment means are shown.

2 Likes
7

try the profile picture dropdown in the top right > account settings > account > inaturalist network affiliation and set it to “inaturalist”

8

We will solve it when we get there! Just like how to geotag lifeforms on other celestial bodies.

3 Likes