One of the reasons I like iNat is that the observations can be looked up and used by anyone for whatever purpose they choose (depending, of course, on the license).
After the recent post about corporate/government surveillance, I decided to google my username just to see what would show up – seven pages of stuff, as it turns out (I used “eyekosaeder” for a few things) O.O
I don’t think this is a real indication of how much data anyone has about me, but I believe it can serve as a first estimation of my “online footprint”.
I noticed that among the results, there were a bunch relating to my activity on iNat, which makes sense. The most interesting thin I found was an attribution in a Polish paper by Piotr Gąsiorowski titled Uwaga, barszcz! Część 1: Kosmata roślina using an image of mine of the underside of a Heracleum sphondylium leaf. So I got curious and decided to ask Google for a translation. It turns out, the paper is about the etymology of Borscht, a soup from Eastern Europe originally made from that plant.
I think this is really cool because not only has one of my observations been useful to someone, it also has been used for a topic I would have never imagined it would be used for! :D
As iNat images are seemingly utilised in more varied ways than I had anticipated, I’m curious to see what your photos or observations have been used for! ^^
I had a student use my photo of an Eastern Ratsnake for their capstone project which was an informational website about the reptiles and amphibians of Connecticut, USA.
The Ohio Odonata Society uses iNaturalist as a database for their annual surveys. Last year they published a field guide using the iNaturalist data, historical records and other recent past data. Here is the description of the guide on the Ohio Odonata Society’s website:
“One of the primary outcomes of this survey is a new field guide, ‘A Naturalist’s Guide to the Odonata of Ohio’, created by Dave McShaffrey, MaLisa Spring, and Jim McCormac. Published by the Ohio Biological Survey, the 2024 book covers all species of Odonata known to occur in the state with mention of a few likely to be found here in the near future. Distribution data for the state combines the data from the 2002 book with new digital data (over 165,000 records from OOS members and other enthusiasts), curated into a single database by Jim Lemon.”
Note: the 2002 book mentioned was published by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
I have been trying to contribute to the survey by visiting locations in my general area. I try to visit places with no iNat observations to get new data. While I don’t have any photos in the new field guide, I know other people who have had photos used. I don’t have a really good camera. But, I can contribute species data using iNat.
I was the first person to record Nomada placida in the state of Connecticut. This record was added to the CT Bee species checklist: Biodiversity of Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) in Connecticut (USA) https://www.mapress.com/zt/article/view/54105/55581
Really bad photo, and I didn’t even know what species it was at the time.
I also found a new population of Andrena aliciae, a critically endangered species in Connecticut, living amongst a patch of wild sunflowers growing behind a gas station next to a busy highway lol. Tracy Zarrillo did not have a voucher specimen of this species yet, so this is how I sort of connected with her. Now I’m working at her lab.
A Plant Biology PhD student at Illinois State University, studying natural variation of Field Penny-Cress (Thlaspi arvense), contacted me to send her seeds, for a study about how it has adapted to various environments and how this species and other plant species may respond to climate change. The 1st observation show plants that appeared on a strip of land during roadworks, the 2nd shows what I collected for this student:
A few of my photos were used in the INVENTORY OF THE BUTTERFLY SPECIES OF COTACACHI CAYAPAS ECOLOGICAL RESERVE - ECUADOR, not that I knew what they were when I snapped the picures.
The interesting part is - I’ve never set foot in the USA! All the pictures are from the edge of London, one Atlantic Ocean away. Nice to know they still find them useful though.
If you use an appropriate WikiMedia-compatible license (such as CC-BY) for your images, you can search to see if any of your images have been used on Wikipedia/WikiMedia:
I’m quite proud that several of my images were used in an important field guide Spiders of North America by Sarah Rose and apparently also the upcoming revision of Beetles of Canada and the United States (previously American Beetles). I’ve also had a handful of people reach out about using my images in various scientific literature, websites, ecology-related powerpoints, etc. like this graphical abstract for a paper on Mutillidae “velvet ants” (bottom photo)
If you’d appreciate your photos being used like this, ensure they are released under an appropriate license and maybe consider putting a sentence or two about it “If you’d like to use my images in field guides, books, websites, etc. I’d love that - please shoot me a message!” in your iNat profile.
I’ve had an iNat user ask if they could use some of my mistletoe photos for a regional vegetation guide and request flower and fruit photos of other species when I found them.
There don’t appear to be any outside uses of my observations; but in Googling my username, I find that my profile and journal have been mirrored on the various regional versions of iNat, which I have not joined. My profile on iNaturalistEc (Ecuador) My profile on iNaturalistGT (Guatemala) My profile on iNaturalistNZ (New Zealand)
They all share the same database - users, projects, observations, taxon tree, etc. are all based on the same underlying data. So the profiles are not “mirrored” on different sites, just displayed with a different URL and potentially in a different language.
I guess as iNat grows and becomes more widespread, its images will become the go-to source for many forms of media and nature publications.
It would be cool to have a kind of blockchain tag, so that you could get a notification on your phone at 3 AM that your image has just appeared in a field guide, or in a scientific paper, or in a nature app.
And tokenization would presumably enable a type of revenue sharing as well, if revenue was generated.
I look myself up now and again since I love seeing where my images are being used to promote species/conservation etc. Its one of my fave things about inaturalist.
On wiki search my name returns 121 results. but 7 arent mine. Of those many are “not used on any pages” but several in last month so maybe will be? This is the wikis.
A fishing magazine used one of my photos to illustrate the insect that a particular fishing fly, known as a Jassid, was copying.
Several of my photos have also been used in the Field Guide to the Insects of Tasmania including the one above.
