I’m creating a project for Water bugs, but obviously can’t go into each order, family genus, etc looking for every species that is classified “a water bug”. Can anyone help me find a easier way to add all the water bugs into the project?
you don’t need to add individual species. you can just add a high level taxon like Nepomorpha to your project criteria, similar to what this project has done: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/water-bugs-of-south-australia-nepomorpha?tab=about.
if you’re talking more about aquatic insects in general, then you can look to see what other projects have added to their project criteria: https://www.inaturalist.org/search?utf8=✓&q=aquatic+insects&commit=Go&source[]=projects.
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Nepomorpha and Gerromorpha probably cover almost all the options.
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Great. Thanks!
Nepomorpha and Gerromorpha seem to be the criteria used for this project also: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/aquatic-and-subaquatic-hemiptera
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@silversea_starsong @spiphany Do you know how to specifically make the Odonata for the project nymphs?
You can require that observations have a certain annotation (e.g. life stage=nymph) when creating a collection project.
However: this applies to all taxa included in the project. You cannot require an annotation only for some of the taxa in the project. One solution would be to create separate projects for each taxon where you have specific requirements and then create an umbrella project to bring together each of the individual projects.
Also note that requiring the annotation “life stage=nymph” also means that the individual observations have to be annotated accordingly. In many taxa, a large portion of observations lack annotations.
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Thought so. Thanks 
I also feel obliged to point out that Odonata are not “bugs” in the sense of organisms in the taxon Heteroptera, so it is a bit unclear what definition of “bug” you are using.
If you are including insects in general, there are additional relevant taxa, e.g. certain beetle groups, several insect orders with aquatic larvae (mayflies, caddisflies, mosquitoes, etc.).
If “bugs” means arthropods, there are lots of tiny aquatic crustaceans, and a few spiders that have aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyles.
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You’re right. I will remove them from the project.
If you were adding Odonata, you’d also want to add the beetles (Dytiscidae, Elmidae, Gyrinidae, Haplipidae, Psephenidae, and so on).
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