How are species organized in my species list?

When I look at my species list I can see that the species are shown in order of how many observations I have of them. But I also have alot of species I’ve only observed once and those species seem to be just thrown into the species list randomly. Other than number of observations what are species organized by in a species list? Because it’s not alphabetical like I’d assume.

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It is the ‘tree of life’ taxonomy. But you can toggle various options.

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Can you show me where that is? For some reason it isn’t in the content and display section in settings. I know I can select “Sort: Name” in my life list on the website but I’m talking about sorting the species list in grid form in alphabetical order on the android app.

Open your life list in lists, there’s no way to sort it that way on explore page.

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Sorry - I missed the Android app.

I’ve had a similar question myself. It doesn’t look to me like these lists are ordered using taxonomy though. For example, if I look at observations of the family Geotrupidae then look at observations with only one (or any other value) the taxa in each genus are not together. In this example, the order starts with Mycotrupes, Neoathyreus, Onthotrupes, Halffterius, Onthotrupes, Neoathyreus. Clearly not ordered by taxonomy.

Maybe the date the taxon was added?

The date when the taxon was added to the iNat database or the date when the taxon was observed and added to the species list? Because I know it isn’t the latter, they seem to just be thrown in randomly.

Th order they were added to the iNat database. I haven’t tested it at all though, just a complete guess.

Just looked, from the few I can see history for it seems correct.

Does it seem bizarre that alphabetical order isn’t an option?

I don’t think that would have occurred to me; but that’s probably because even before I understood “tree of life” taxonomy, I still thought of organisms mainly organized in groups, e.g., Bufflehead, Wigeon; Brant, Canada Goose (ducks grouped together and geese grouped together) makes more sense to me than Brant, Bufflehead, Canada Goose, Wigeon (alphabetical).

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