Great topic and responses! I live in the Los Angeles area. From my point of view, I see inaturalist as a repository of data on life on the planet. As such, because I have the time, I try and record as much life as possible. I don’t necessarily take photos of the same organisms in a place every time I’m there but I try to record first blooming of a flower species, late blooming of a species, first sighting of an insect for the season, etc. because our planet is rapidly warming, this data is really important. I also try to visit when possible under-observed areas.
I’m fortunate in that Southern California has many habitat types…mountains, ocean, deserts, chaparral etc. so there are lots of places to make an impact with your observations. It’s interesting to see also that even a local natural park near me had very few common insect species. People go there for picnics, or to hike or to bird watch, etc but very few people even looked at insects. And this is in a very urban area. So I’ve been going there weekly and adding all kinds of insects that had no records before because no one was looking.
And common species are important to record. As has been noted, people like the exotic or rare but even so-called common species can change in location and/or numbers. All that information is important to science.
Finally though I agree that you should do what makes you happy and what you enjoy. It’s a great way to learn, have fun and contribute!
That depends how many common species I see. Oftentimes, there are a subset of the most common species which are disproportionately uploaded, and depending on how disproportionately, yes, it can annoy me. I stumbled upon one of those dreaded class projects recently, and I kid you not, there were tens of pages of maybe 5 or 6 species. Another class project I came upon, it appeared that literally every student in the class had observed the same individual tree. For those kids, I don’t think it was a matter of “interesting” enough to observe; more like, let’s get this assignment over with by photographing whatever the teacher points out.
The original question was a personal one: how do I decide what is interesting enough to observe?
There isn’t really a pattern to it, other than that when I am traveling in a place that feels “exotic” to me, I make more observations than I would in a familiar environment – especially if I am pretty sure that the destination will be once-in-a-lifetime.
But this is not exclusively the case. I have plenty of observations from places near where I live, and from my own country generally. It is like asking how I decide which species to make species accounts for in my Grinnell journal; for the course where I originally learned how to make a Grinnell journal, we were supposed to have a species account for every bird species (it was an Ornithology course), but I certainly don’t do that anymore. It’s more a matter of which ones have something about them that strikes my fancy. So for these Fiddlenecks it was the combination of the curly flowering stem (called a cyme), the orange color that I like in flowers, and that it is one of the few native plants that lives in the highly altered meadows dominated by weedy species. Conversely, for this Mexican Fleabane it was that I could photograph it in such a way as to emphasize the urban setting and show how nature claims the smallest cracks in our civilization. Finally, sometimes it’s just the name; California Black Oak has “kelloggii” as its specific epithet, which makes me think of those Kellogg’s breakfast cereals – it’s not often that a patronymic can feel to me like it means something.
It is good to be reminded of that sometimes. And I think that is the big flaw in those class projects I mentioned earlier – those kids aren’t thinking of getting anything out of it except a passing grade, and it shows. @egordon88 asked, “Birds though, why bother when there’s millions of data points on eBird?” Well, if one happens to like birds, that is a valid reason. Since my last year’s observations were dominated by plants, this year I am making a conscious effort to have more balance among kingdoms.
I’m with the others that believe everything is worth it. It exists, qualification enough.
My limits may determine whether or not I photograph it and the quality of the photos themselves determine posting or deletion.
I think I understand the sentiment behind this, but that is unfortunately not workable advice. Common species need to have observations, but there has to be a limit somewhere. Should I really post 1000 observations of Pinus strobus from walking around my yard? Some should be there, but if I really posted them proportional to their actual number, those observations would be overwhelming and not terribly useful.
What we need is a way to indicate that an observation is representative of many others nearby. Maybe radio buttons to select Abundant, Common, Unusual, and Rare. That way I could post a couple Pinus strobus observations but indicate there are many more around. On the other hand, the same number of Castanea dentata 8 inches in diameter could be flagged to indicate that’s all there are.
The different levels of commonness could be shown differently on heat maps, and the commonness information could be used to better define the geographic range of an organism. Right now, individual outliers probably make real ranges look bigger then they are.
I would personally find it exhausting and not enjoyable to make observations of lots of individual organisms of the same species while on a hike, and that’s really not what iNat is for - it’s not a surveying or abundance recording tool. There are observation fields you can use to note abundance, but that’s secondary functionality.
Main thing is that you should enjoy yourself when using iNat. You shouldn’t feel pressured to record everything you see. If you want to record common things, great. If you only want to record rarities, that’s also fine.
I do see your point, but what you are describing is not how the average iNaturalist user operates. In order for me to indicate whether something is abundant or unusual, I would have to have some knowledge about the species, its distribution and frequency to begin with, one that I don’t have, also because I have no formal training. I wouldn’t tick anything.
When I said ‘go for everything’, I meant ‘don’t limit your curiosity to what someone else may consider important or note-worthy’. Which again means the observer would have to know enough about the species in question to be able to make an educated guess whether someone else may consider it note-worthy or not.
As for taking hundreds of pictures of one and the same species in one outing… no thanks, that’s not my idea of fun. I would never dream of taking 1000 pictures of the same specimen growing in my yard, nor do I think anyone else would. Let’s be realistic. Near my place there is an oak tree, and yes, I have taken more than one picture of it, at different times, when flowering and later in the year, of the acorns. I would assume that most people follow common sense.
Returning to the frequency. I recently bought two shrubs that are native in my area and are good for the pollinators and the birds, because I hadn’t seen that species in the wild around here. Until this week, when I did find one, and very close at that. Likely that particular shrub had grown tall enough in the meanwhile for me to actually notice it, no idea why I hadn’t seen it before. It is not a rarity, at all, yet my observation of it is just the third in our entire region. Pretty low number for a common native shrub…
I feel that recording observations, regardless of whether it is “interesting” to others or common, gives one an opportunity to develop skill sets as a naturalist. The more one observes, the more one becomes aware of the what, where when, why, and how of the subject or why not, trusting/building intuition/hunch, etc. What was present that allows one to observe that subject - time of day, temperature, weather, season, lighting, were you in the moment? The more one observes the more on can become comfortable in the environment - does one feel secure, warm enough, dry enough, hydrated enough, awake enough, etc? Physically, is one’s core strengths capable of achieving what one needs to achieve that observation or does one need to or have to realize possible limitations? Is the equipment for recording the observation understood, limiting, not charged enough, too awkward, heavy, not waterproof - or maybe today is the day one just sits on a rock and takes it all in without loosing the moment to technology. Recording many observations may help one develop reflexes and/or a feel for what kind of framing of the subject is more helpful for identification - head shot, side shot, rear shot, luckytogetthat shot, wing veination, flower, bark, leaf, leaf underside, fungi gills, and etc. Then there is developing the skill set of using different platforms for recording observations - the more one uses a given platform (web based, android, IOS?), the more comfortable one will be at moving around within it. There is likely quite a bit more to add when talking about building naturalist skill sets - and, all this being said, there is nothing wrong with starting and celebrating somewhere at any level. Develop those skill sets and that something “interesting” experience will be that much more special.
FWIW, here’s a new paper that used iNat data of commonly-observed introduced squirrels to model their effect on native squirrels. (unfortunately it’s not open access)
I consider geography first. Where something is found is a basic biology question. In addition to parks and public places I also seek out ignored/waste places as well. Any new location is game.
I’m also happy recording each organism in my yard just once. It leaves time to search for new stuff here and elsewhere.
The term “interesting” doesn’t enter the equation because it is about biology, not me.
I find a flaw in that reasoning. The “-ology” in biology refers specifically to a human endeavor. Before there were humans doing science, there was life, but there was no biology as such. The term “interesting” enters the equation on the most basic level in that you are spending that time doing biology rather than, say, oil prospecting or writing a novel.
The second has a great comment by @alexis18 showing a very nice side-by-side graphic of GBIF vs iNat data showing relative representation of top taxa at the bottom.
I’m a plant guy, so I usually ignore non-plants in observation. I also ignore Grasses (Poaceae) and many non-flowering plants. I also do short hikes so I miss anything that’s farther away.
Hopefully, there are other observers in my area who are interested in non-plants, grasses, etc. and enjoy longer hikes to balance out biases that my observations add to the data.
I am definitely a record EVERYTHING observer. Basically I want to be able to use iNaturalist to see what occurs where. So I will take repeats every hour or so on a hike, more so if something is of interest (e.g. noting aliens to be cleared, or patches of rare species, or unusual flowering).
I very much use iNaturalist maps by season to plan my weekends, targetting the gaps - not just locally but planning holidays as well.
Plus I enjoy seeing what I species I have recorded - some of which take years to be identified (even the few with good photographs), so I target areas with species I dont have.
I do have biases. My hiking partners dont want to wait for me, so I cannot do everything, but I try and get everything in flower, although if there are too many, then the grasses and graminoids get ignored first (and for some reason I seem to miss Lobelias). But I will often focus on a group if a taxonomist is online and making identifications, and even target walks to find rarer species in those groups while they are active. I try to at least get one lichen set per day (no one else is really interested, and my IDs are almost all from Lithuania (thanks (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/jurga_li)). And I tend to focus less on groups that do not get any identifications (no feedback), or that I know cannot be identified to species from photographs (unless photogenic).
But with older age I dont notice the smaller life as much anymore, so I am missing out the invertebrates and fungi especially: most of those are done at tea-time or camping sites.
So quite honestly, I just record what I enjoy and notice, and if it gives someone else some joy then that is a bonus.
But without doubt, the biggest bias is that I record along paths and roads. But how on earth else can one do it easily? https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=123155&subview=map&user_id=tonyrebelo&verifiable=any
I suspect that iNaturalist is not so good for population statistics, unless used with other sources of data. But I do think it helps establish the range and timing of species, and whether populations are established in an area. And this may become very important as we need to notice shifting territories of species due to climate change. Few people where I live record the song of the first Night Hawk or Chimney Swift they hear each year (photographing them is hit or miss) but because I do, the record is there for my area.
I don’t believe that there truly are any “record everything” users. None of us notice everything. Don’t believe me? Okay, how many species of earthworms live in that meadow that you frequently visit? That dark silhouette of a bird that passed quickly high overhead – did it even register in your mind? What kind of insects was that Brown Creeper preying on as it so carefully worked the tree trunk?
I agree. I say I record everything I think can be identified, but I often forget to record the very common trees here like Northern Red Oak or Eastern White Pine. Plus, I just ignore most of the graminoids and, when it’s appallingly hot and sticky, I lose patience very quickly with anything that doesn’t sit still to have its photo taken.
I think it’s all interesting and I usually base my observations on how much battery life I have left. I like variety, so if I’m on a trail I’ll spread out my observations so when I know I’m halfway, my battery should be at 55% and by the end of the trail I’m usually at 5% or less. My aim is mainly an attempt at a representative picture of the area, I think it’s all important. Someone mentioned intuition and now I feel the need to comment regarding this. I have faith in serendipity and synchronicity- trust your gut feeling, my own example when I intuitively thought it was an important observation to make. (Curious, people that identify as HSP, how often do you ID/observe using intuition?) Maybe yours could be the tipping point that helps save a wetland from being destroyed!
This is where I’ll argue for quantity- quality matters (I apologize for my blurry photos, especially my damselflies, can’t be helped) but keep in mind that the more observations that are out there, the more chances of others becoming engaged.You never know what could engage someone else, I had never heard of iNaturalist prior to last May and at that time I started seeing it consistently throughout the summer when trying to make IDs. It took me a while to remember that I had downloaded it and then the website and appropriate usage, ie Agree is not a like button lol- I so wish I had found it years ago. It’s an amazing opportunity to engage the world in something that truly matters! I’d like to think that any information we put out is a step closer to making our world viable for as many species as possible.
