Hello!
I’d like some help- is there any way I can export a csv file with all mammals species observed in iNat with their last observation date?
I see there is a last observation date for every species but it’s not something I can export in bulk…
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I don’t believe this is possible without any serious work through every mammal on Inat. Sorry!
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Yes, it doesn’t seem like this would be possible.
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Not even with the API?
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why do you want this? considering that observations are constantly added to the system, the last observation date is going to be instantly out of date for some of the more commonly observed species.
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I want to get some macroecological data for species that haven’t been observed for a long time. I don’t care about the more commonly observed species
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I think I can develop a software using the API to generate the report, and give you the report, within a few days (or weeks).
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if that’s all you want to do, then you probably just need two lists. list A would be all mammal species observed in iNat. list B would be all mammal species observed in iNat after a specific date – whatever your cutoff date for “long time” is. then you would then look for items from list A that don’t exist in list B.
you can use the Export function in these pages:
- all mammals: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_observations_species_counts?hrank=species&taxon_id=40151
- all mammals observed after 2020-01-01 (change the date to whatever you need it to be): https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_observations_species_counts?hrank=species&taxon_id=40151&d1=2020-01-01
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Do you mean ‘last’ or ‘most recent’?
Those are two very different things, but via iNat are pretty much impossible to separate.
This is an important distinction because ‘last’ observation implies that the species is extinct and you’re looking for the observation that was the last time it was seen prior to going extinct.
To do that you’d have to independently confirm that X species is considered extinct and then go looking for observations of it. And, then you have the issue that the final observation of X extinct species is very likely not going to be an iNat observation, so the iNat date won’t really be a useful bit of information.
If you want ‘most recent’ observation regardless of conservation/extinction status, that’s a different and simple thing, just a simple date filter.
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Except this would not work in theory since only the 1000 most observed species would show up.
i’m not sure why you’re worried about a 1000 species limit. the page i noted above handles 10000 by default and can go beyond that if the proper option is specified.
there’s more than one meaning of “last”, and one of these means exactly “most recent”. if there’s any confusion in which meaning is intended, just use context.
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I’m aware of the meanings of last, hence the question for OP.
It’s necessary to clarify what they meant as there are several meanings of the word, and in context even more. To properly answer their question their meaning needs to be specified.
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there’s nothing in what the original poster says to suggest they are looking for extinct species only. everything suggests they are looking for all species.
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I disagree. The wording is very ambiguous, but I am not interested in getting into an argument or discussion about it as that will just waste both of our time for no good purpose.
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