Hi all - in this long ongoing conversation on Research Grade. This is an issue that has exercised us in NZ for several years and given the immense amount of restructuring of iNaturalist recently this would be the best time to address this. It shouldn’t involve too much work since the distinction between wild and captive/cultivated already exists providing people are trained to understand and apply. But certainly, if ‘cultivated’ didn’t suddenly get judgmentally downgraded to ‘casual’, many would be more inclined to classify their records honestly & accurately.
Anyway the following is the case we have made to the management team … Enjoy!
Research Grade – a Consideration & Recommendation
iNaturalist NZ; 5th December 2023; updated 1st March 2024
INaturalist is the most comprehensive citizen bioscience and learning tool in the world. It builds and depends on the mutual benefits to learners, scientists, environmental managers and the wider public. The ongoing development of functionality on the platform has been professional and innovative; the world is indeed lucky to have this asset at its fingertips.
One development or adjustment that we have sought informally has been regarding the way ‘Research Grade’ is determined and valued. We have argued that the current approach is an amalgam of two unrelated parameters or characteristics of an observation. These are “correct identification” on the one hand and “form of establishment” on the other.
In simple terms, this is ‘mixing apples with oranges’ and is therefore not science. Ascribing a value-related term (casual) to cultivated or domesticated organisms does have a chilling effect on uptake by especially new users in urban environments and will diminish the recording of often critical information from landscape inventories. Referring to planted spp or domestic animals as ‘casual’ continually insults the observer who may have very deliberately recorded such observations for precisely research purposes.
Every time one adjusts someone’s record, by correctly notifying its cultivated status, to then see it suddenly switch to being regarded as of no research value is considerably demotivating. Furthermore, some of our important identifiers on the site are now deliberately avoiding identifying records that are not eligible, under current rules, of being designated Research Grade. We also have government biosecurity officers frustrated when this distinction renders some planted observations, they need to know about (as much as ‘wild’ occurrences) for control purposes, less prominent.
All such records are absolutely ‘scientific’ with critical attached information. They may be the first alert of a biosecurity risk (garden escapes); they may be the source of wild seedlings; they will host wild spp (pathogens, pollinators, epiphytes, wildlife plant feeders and nesters); they will be the beginning of regenerative processes as new sources of propagules in ecological restoration projects; their growth may be monitored as measures of successful restoration – this is especially relevant in NZ where ecological restoration is such a huge and growing source of native plant presence in the cultural landscape; so to call these ‘casual’ is a complete misnomer. And finally, they provide the means of testing hypotheses about ‘potential’ versus ‘realised’ ecological niches and how these may be affected by climate change. They are valuable for predictive mapping of invasive species where both natural and extant introduced range needs to be known, separately, in order to accurately predict future spread. Accordingly, modellers go to GBIF for their data (at least they should), and not iNat directly.
Of increasing importance are the cultural values of cultivated specimens to first nations people; and also contemporary foragers.
Often the first observations that newcomers make are of domesticated spp and to make them sound ‘casual’/rubbish demeans the whole start up; and to encourage schools to deal only with ‘wild’ specimens (as currently promoted through the Help Advice to teachers), rules out a whole dimension of their initial learning.
This is not a matter to be determined by popular vote (through the open forum) – it is a simple matter of logic and integrity. Furthermore, GBIF is totally accepting of cultivated and wild data and the failure to upload the former into GBIF creates a significant distortion in the data integrity given the huge dominant and growing contribution iNaturalist makes to GBIF.
It is absolutely agreed that wild and non-wild observations must be correctly ascribed and differentiated – and this will be more likely when the stigma is removed. Currently, the important distinction of wild and cultivated/domesticated is or can be revealed on the maps; so, no adjustment is required there. We seek the network’s support for moving ahead with correcting this anomaly.
Recommendations
Records with community verified IDs should be designated ‘Research Grade’ (or ‘Community Supported ID’ or ‘Identification Verified’).
Those not yet identified might be termed ‘Needs ID’ (as currently).
The default establishment Status designation could be ‘Undetermined Establishment’ – until such time as someone clicks one or other of the buttons – ‘Captive/Cultivated’ or ‘Wild/Spontaneous’. Currently the default is Wild which results in many incorrectly labelled records on maps, etc (especially plants in cities).
All correctly identified records marked as Captive/Cultivated should become ‘Research Grade’ (or one of the 2 recommended alternatives above) and get exported to GBIF with one of the three appropriate ‘Origin’ fields (above) – so they can forthwith actually be used in Research!
The description under ‘data quality’ in the Help link on iNaturalist needs to be amended accordingly (the last bullet would be scrapped altogether). The statement about ‘wild’ being the (only) promoted preference for school projects should be changed.
Need solutions that work for most people most of the time!
It is understood that there may be a large problem with changing all the legacy records immediately, but one should begin with ensuring all further records use these new proposed settings and then work back through the 170 million legacy records as possible.