In Australia we have this site “Atlas of Living Australia” https://www.ala.org.au/ which maps the distribution of a thousands of different types of organisms. These can be museum collections or the observations of naturalists over the last two hundred years. In recent times however, most of the entries are drawn from iNaturalist. Anyone who has logged an iNat record from Australia will probably find their photograph on this database. It sometimes takes a few months to appear.
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Beside the data in GBIF, a Russian website used my Chordodes formosanus photo for an article regarding horsehair worms
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I use people’s CC0 photos in pamphlets and powerpoints for my job
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this was really fun to do!
i was asked if one of my ecuador butterfly photos could be used on a website cataloging species at cotocachi-cayapas reserve. they haven’t been able to ID it to species yet, which is exciting!! maybe undescribed?
https://www.cotacachi.eu/en/fiche-papillon/021-Riodinidae/003-Riodininae/001-Mesosemiini/003-Mesosemia/611-n.+id.+3/_
i was asked if one of my observations of purslane speedwell could be used in a plant field guide- i don’t know what the status of that book is, but it would be pretty cool to be published :)
looks like i have some observations linked on an african flora catalog: https://www.zimbabweflora.co.zw/speciesdata/utilities/utility-display-determinations-by-person.php?person_id=1418
one of my prairie smoke photos is featured on a university of minnesota species profile page!
https://seasonwatch.umn.edu/prairie-smoke
and a song sparrow photo:
https://seasonwatch.umn.edu/song-sparrow
this paper on dalmation bush cricket taxonomy cited one of my observations (among many others) for their range analysis.
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I would expect they all use the same one and only database and in that sense we all seems to be a member there.
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One of my „time series“ was used in this publication in „Frontiers in Arachnid Science“
(in table 4)
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/arachnid-science/articles/10.3389/frchs.2024.1383339/full#T4
While I was asked upfront and knew the result I didn’t realize the journals name. Kind of funny as I consider myself as a plant guy. However, I meanwhile I uploaded over 200 observations of the spider species in question, mostly belonging to time series.
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Someone from Brazil messaged me and asked to use a couple of my pictures for some kind of brochure or something… I said sure, but I have no idea where they actually ended up. I had the second record (I think?) of a species of fly in my province and it was featured here, they never contacted me for that one.
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Now, this isn’t one of my observations, but look at the wall in the background of this observation.
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Over the last five years, I have uploaded several thousand RG images from iNaturalist to Wikimedia Commons. Images from more than 1,600 iNaturalist users were then used to improve Wikipedia articles that lacked an image.
User names are compiled on Santa’s Nice List. Maybe you are on the list already?
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My photos are used in several Wikipedia articles and have been used for a bunch of scientific and other publications.
Most interesting because new to me was the use of this photo as inspiration
for this painting
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The problem with all this (at least in Plants) is that there are a vast number of misidentified photographs in iNaturalist and there is no mechanism to feed through reidentifications from iNaturalist to those users nor from other users back to iNaturalist. So the same photograph appearing under different names will become more and more common.
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I often upload photos to iNat when I am seeking help with ID, which enables me to write it up on my website Ausemade … I have even written a blog about the process… titled Using iNaturalistAU
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One of my Rusty-patched Bumble Bee photos was used (with prior inquiry and my permission) in this YouTube “Wild Species Video Series: Bees in Canada” https://youtu.be/EkCPNtAp7F8
This video link is also listed at:
English version: https://www.wildspecies.ca/knowledge
French version: https://www.wildspecies.ca/fr/connaissances
This Bumble Bee photo was taken in central Minnesota but no doubt it has relatives in Canada ;)
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Well, I don’t know if anyone has used my iNat observations for anything yet, but my Leafminers of North America e-book is loaded with footnotes that link to observations showing new host and distribution records, previously undocumented leaf mines, etc. Also, pretty much every peer-reviewed paper I publish these days (starting around 2020; see list here) refers to iNat observations for the above reasons. When I tell observers that certain leafminers are worth trying to rear to adults, and they follow up on it and preserve the specimens, this sometimes leads to papers with the observers as coauthors, for instance:
Eiseman, Charles S., Owen Lonsdale, Gaye L. Williams, and Thomas Irvine. 2024. First records of Phytomyza hellebori (Kaltenbach) (Diptera: Agromyzidae), a Palearctic leafminer of Helleborus spp. (Ranunculaceae), in North America. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 126(3): 382–389.
Eiseman, Charles S., Owen Lonsdale, Graham A. Montgomery, Jake M. Jacobsen, Ethan X. Kahn, Mia C. Rosati, Martin Hauser, Grishma R. Parikh, and Doris Yu. 2024. Invasive Cape ivy (Asteraceae: Delairea odorata Lem.) confirmed as a host for the North American leafminer Liriomyza temperata Spencer (Diptera: Agromyzidae). Zootaxa 5555(1): 24–34.
Eiseman, Charles S., Flown Kimmerling, and Tracy S. Feldman. 2024. New larval host records for three species of leaf-mining weevils in the eastern USA (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Curculioninae), with a review of hosts and larval habits for the genus Tachygonus Schönherr. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 126(2): 247–253.
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