The other day as I was thinking about trail cams and audio recorders it got me thinking about what other sensors could we use to log observations of animals?
iNat predominately uses photographs for IDs but also supports Audio. What other sensors do you think could (or in the future) be used to observe and identify animals?
And if some sensors are not precise enough on their own do you think they could be combined into a multi-sensor capable of providing a new data type?
Lidar? Electric field sensors? Magnetic field sensors? Scent profiles?
Chemical tests and DNA sequencing are relevant for some taxa (particularly lichens and fungi, but e.g. human viruses are also typically posted on iNat using chemical means such as antigen tests).
DNA sequencing is posted in text form supplementing the other evidence in an observation. I suppose chemical tests are still generally going to be documented photographically on iNat, but the type of evidence is not really visual in the same way.
Not quite sound (that humans can hear): I saw that there is a small attachment you can buy for your smartphone that detects and attempts to ID bat echolocations. I also saw an app for that. But, you would have to be able to save a printout of the recording or a modified version of the recording in order to upload something to iNat.
I think phase shifted (correct term?) and uploaded as audio covers this already. Therefore both bats and whales can be accommodated already. Alternatively you could add the sonogram as an image, but many threads on this forum discuss that and it’s discouraged.
Let’s not forget that iNat is citizen science. Citizen scientists, on the whole, don’t have access to sophisticated laboratory equipment. So, for example, we can smell the fragrance of Wisteria blossoms, but we probably aren’t equipped to record the scent profile in a scientifically meaningful way. Things like bee pheromones, which we cannot even smell, are even further outside the citizen science purview.
We can see this simply by noting the scarcity of micrographs. A light microscope is well within the range of possibility for many ordinary people, yet it is considered a niche interest compared with regular photography and audio recording. A scanning electron microscope? Not likely! For my master’s thesis, I used spectrophotometry to measure chlorophyll a as an indicator of algal productivity, but I don’t have access to such equipment on a regular basis.
This is more along the lines of what is possible for iNat: what will citizen scientists lacking academic affiliations have access to?
I agree - but technology is changing fast, and sensors for phones and robotics are evolving rapidly, so partly I was hoping people would speculate a little on what we might have in the near future and how we might subvert that to make more/better observations.
I think the greatest possibilities for citizen scientists are in the UV and IR ends of the spectrum. Trail cameras and other devices already work under low/no light conditions using light intensification or near IR flash systems. Thermal IR systems are decreasing in price. What would an Orca look like in thermal IR? Ordinary cameras can be modified to show the UV spectrum we can’t see. Could we differentiate between nearly identical flowers if we could see them as bees do?
Methods to record chemical analyses generally rely on some kind of visual medium that makes the results of the analysis perceptible to humans. This may be simple and relatively direct, such as a lichen changing color when iodine is applied. Or it may be indirect (a computer screen displaying the chemical makeup of a sample).
Smell (and taste) are our perception of molecules. While we normally perceive this using physical receptors (nose, tongue), it is also possible to use equipment to record what those molecules are. The equipment, again, will generally display the results in visual form. This is not likely to be a meaningful way of presenting smell for the average person – few of us would be able to interpret it – but the underlying phenomenon can still be captured this way. Unless at some future time people develop devices that can reproduce scent molecules for home smelling, the only way to make scent shareable with others is to put it in visual or audio form (a representation of the molecular structure, or more mundanely, a verbal description, using sound or text, of the smell. People can and regularly do make use of the latter method.)
I don’t think there’s always a correlation; Omphalotus illudens is well known to glow to be bioluminescent, but I don’t believe it has gills that fluoresce under UV.
Meanwhile the genus Hypholoma is VERY well known to have strong UV reactions, but I’ve never heard of it being bioluminescent.
