There are posts about it https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-interactions-to-species-pages/433/3
he big problem looming over this whole feature is that observation fields are a bad way to model interactions. Since they represent a totally uncontrolled vocabulary, they’re rife with synonymous fields, so it’s hard interpret situations where, for example, there are both
eatsandpreys oninteractions, e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/117520-Enhydra-lutris-nereis?test=interactions . What’s the difference? Why are both supported?
How can we get this higher up the “desired” list of features?
Both the New Zealanders and southern Africans have projects dealing with this.
Ours is visible at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/interactions-s-afrBasically, we record only the active interaction (i.e. “a eats b”, not “b is eaten by a” - the latter just being the reciprocal of the first), although user pressure has resulted in us adding a passive field for the reciprocal observation, given that observations fields link only one way, so that these observations do not display their hosts) as:
Visiting flowers: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Visiting%20a%20flower%20of:%20(Interaction)
Eating: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Eating:%20(Interaction)
Parasitizing: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Parasitizing:%20(Interaction)
Attached to: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:attached%20to:%20(Interaction)
Carrying: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Carrying:%20(Interaction)
Associated with: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Associated%20with:%20(Interaction)
& the passive
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?field:Passive%20Partner%20to:%20(Interaction)Note that in each case the field value is the url of the interacting observation. Unfortunately we cannot use this is a query to summarize the interactions.
We can ask
“What flowers does the Cape Sugarbird Visit?” - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&subview=grid&taxon_id=13442&field:Visiting%20a%20flower%20of:%20(Interaction)=
but we will only see the bird, and not the flowers, even though all the urls to the flowers are in the field - see: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/7459 .In over 5 years of using this “set” of interactions, we have never had a request to add additional interactions (e.g. Eating = preys on = killing to eat - i.e. “killing for fun” has not cropped up), although it would be nice to have a hierarchical dictionary of interactions (e.g. visiting a flower > pollinating a flower (> for nectar, pollen, oil, gum)/robbing a flower/, etc.
Just a request for https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50333-Lantana-camara?test=interactions - is that it is searchable/filterable and displayed in explore/observations - species view in descending order (and perhaps also taxonomic order?).
Oh: these may tickle you? https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&subview=grid&taxon_id=122213&field:eating:%20(Interaction)=
(Note that one chilli bush has over 500 interactions! - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10949804 )
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50333-Lantana-camara?test=interactions