Filter taxonomy by location

[dan_johnson]

If I type “Crustaceans” in the top search bar and then select “About” on the right for that taxon, I get this page:

If I then push “Filter by Place” in the to right and then enter “Texas,” I get this:

All the four categories in the upper right are now filtered for Texas, which is great!. But when I scroll down to the taxonomy I get this:

The taxonomy is not filtered by Texas! It would be so awesome to get it filtered this way. Is there a reason it isn’t? I would be using this all the time. I like to study the hierarchy for regions I explore. I don’t want it cluttered up with the entire world of taxonomy.

[bouteloua]

@dan_johnson

Is there a reason it isn’t?

“Why” type questions are hard for anyone other than the people who designed the pages to answer. One thought is that place checklists are pretty incomplete for most places on iNat - cobbled together by iNat observations and a relatively small group of people who manually add species to them. Narrowing the results by place would give very misleading information for most taxa.

[zdanko]

Some people, for example, me, forget that we have a location filtered, and if this was implemented it would probably freak us out.

If you really think this is a good idea you can always make a post in #feature-requests.

[dan_johnson]

I like to use inaturalist to explore what other people have found in an area and also see which organisms that have been found that I haven’t (using the unobserved_by_user_id URL option). We can see a list of species, but it’s not taxonomically organized. If the taxonomy is also filtered by location, the list of species then becomes taxonomically organized.

[jwidness]

There’s already a request with a pretty good amount of support for taxonomic sorting in Explore – that would give you a taxonomic list of species seen in a place. (Here and here, among others.)

And the checklist bouteloua mentioned is already able to be sorted taxonomically:

Edit: and there’s the observations/taxa page, though I’m actually not 100% sure how that information is collected or why it doesn’t match Explore or the checklist page.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?place_id=18&taxon_id=85493

[dan_johnson]

@jwidness where do I find the obervations/taxa page from the inaturalist main page? Or is in a URL option only? The option may work well for me.

[jwidness]

I don’t think it’s linked from anywhere, but I could be wrong.

[emjtca]

Another option :)

You can filter the images by taxonomy & location, this can be helpful for IDing or exploring in a region. However, it is limited by what people have reported in iNat. If an observation hasn’t been made for a species and ID’d further than your current taxonomic status, it will not show up.
For your crustacean example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/85493-Crustacea/browse_photos?order_by=created_at&quality_graexasde=any&photo_license=any&grouping=taxon_id&layout=grid&place_id=18

Then say you go investigate Fairy Shrimp, you can dive in and see which species have been observed at the different taxonomic levels. For a genus example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/92271-Streptocephalus/browse_photos?order_by=created_at&quality_grade=any&photo_license=any&grouping=taxon_id&layout=grid&place_id=18

[danielcahen]

In the meantime, GBIF recently added an Administrative areas filter if this is of any use to you

[dan_johnson]

Is this accessible from the inaturalist main page somehow or is it a URL option only?

[emjtca]

From the main page :)

Click on the “View More” option with all the photos. From the Photos page you have all the sorting options. Filter by Place is up in the right hand corner as normal. Then you can choose:
Grouping = Taxonomic and any other descriptors.

These selections will stay when you logout and return, so make sure you check them if anything seems weird :)