Is there an easier way to compare checklists?

[bluefox3971]

Hello, when comparing checklists from two regions, I would like to see the creatures under the taxon I want (I know how to compare two checklists).

For example, when comparing the checklists of two lists, I can find out which taxons are in the region, which are not in the region, or which are in both regions. If I say I only want to see animals that belong to the birds, it would be good to be able to do that.

But unfortunately, it seems that now inaturalist does not have such a feature, or the accessibility to it is low. I’ve been looking for it for a few days, but I couldn’t find it.

Currently I have to go through a list of at least about 1000 pages to find the results I want, which is very inefficient and inconvenient. Is there anything like that for other search queries? Thanks!

[pisum]

@bluefox3971

For example, when comparing the checklists of two lists, I can find out which taxons are in the region, which are not in the region, or which are in both regions. If I say I only want to see animals that belong to the birds, it would be good to be able to do that.

here’s an example of how to do that: https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/4419264-Exploration-Green-Conservancy-Check-List/compare?taxon=3&with=2463558

[bluefox3971]

the solution was to replace ‘compare?’ in the url with ‘compare?taxon=(taxon code)&’… thank you so much!

[mrtnlowr]

I thought this would be a nice tool but for the taxa and lists I want to compare it doesn’t work. Any idea why?

Update: Checked the code: it only works for Iconic Taxa. [See line 63 of lists_controller.rb]. That’s a shame.

[bluefox3971]

I hope we can search for other taxons not only Iconic Taxa…

[pisum]

just to clarify, you can search a single list by any taxon, but i think @mrtnlowr is right that you can compare two lists only for iconic taxa.

it doesn’t look like you can filter the CSV download, although it seems like you can download a “taxonomic CSV”, which will give you the ancestor taxa. so then you can download the taxonomic CSV for each of your places, filter each CSV yourself based on whatever ancestor taxon you like, and then compare the two filtered lists.

it’s also possible to filter the JSON reposnse form the old API (ex. https://www.inaturalist.org/check_lists/4419264-Exploration-Green-Conservancy-Check-List.json?taxon=47604&page=1), but it may take a little more initial effort to write the necessary code to parse those results and make the comparison.