How do I find out "How many.....?" for higher taxonomic orders

General
1

Hi,

I looked through the tutorials, but couldn’t see the answer to this, so I apologise if it’s obvious.

I’m working on coral, which is not something that can be readily ID’d by anybody, it often takes a microscopic analysis of a polyp skeleton. We do the best we can and I am incredibly grateful to the few people who attempt to apply any sort of taxonomy to the millions of Scleractinia observations.

We have over 1000 observations of hard corals and iNat thinks that’s 143 species. The inaccuracy of ‘143 species’ is not currently helpful to me. Is there some way I can count how many Genera we have? Or Families?

In species view, some Genera are visible - Goniopora, Platygyra and Alveopora in the top row,

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=47532&user_id=tracc&verifiable=any&view=species

but other genera - like Dipsastraea - have 70 observations but only the one ob that might have a binomial is visible.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=354723&user_id=tracc&verifiable=any&view=species

Is there some way I can do this without looking each genera up one at a time please?

Thank you for your insights!

2

Looks like 42 genera:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=genus&lrank=genus&taxon_id=47532&user_id=tracc&verifiable=any&view=species

and 5 families:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=family&lrank=family&taxon_id=47532&user_id=tracc&verifiable=any&view=species

(If I understand the question correctly).

Hm. This may not be what you want. It only counts observations that are identified exactly to genus or family. I’m not sure how to count genera (families) that were also identified more finely. Maybe your dynamic life list( https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/tracc?view=tree&details_view=observations&tree_mode=full_taxonomy ) can help.

edit2:

Ah, the lifelist does help. 67 genera in 16 families. Use the “show taxonomic level” dropdown:

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3

Oh, the life list is good. That shows we have 16 families! and 66 genera! Thank you!