This is a place to track fields with are in broad use or have the potential to be broadly used, and are applicable to a broad range of taxa (ie. no ‘number of koalas’ field). Please add fields that you find useful or any relevant comments or description. Blank ones i don’t know which version of many duplicates is most often used so feel free to add one. If we find that there are duplicates, we can work to merge them if we have tools to do so.
All Taxa
Count/Number - I believe this one is used the most.
Alive/Dead - Is now an annotation so best to use that instead. Previously: I think this one is the main one?
Interaction - There is a series of fields used to document interactions between organisms. The standardized ones are shared with GloBI though it would be good to verify if that collaboration is still active. For species observed in association without a specific interaction noted, there is this field and other options for multiples though i am not sure which are linked to GloBI
Taxonomy - the Holding Bin fields can be used for taxonomic units that don’t fit iNat’s criteria for being added as taxon, for instance two plant species that don’t form a monophylletic group but can’t be distinguished much of the year.
Natural Community/vegetation community/habitat type - used for habitat characterization, but there isn’t a consistent taxonomy here. @charlie uses this one in Vermont, USA with this reference and in California we mostly used Sawyer-Keeler-Wolf for more specific types and Holland for more broad. In the US there is also this. There’s also this field that is even less formalized. I don’t think there’s a global standard. If this topic generates lots of interest we can make a spin-off wiki
Microhabitat - Physical substrate, Microhabitat description
Spore color - Spore color, Spore print, Spore print color, Fungi spore print. The more generic ones should be preferred because they could also be used for organisms besides fungi.
Illustration - Illustration can be used to mark observations supported by drawings/sketches/illustrations.
similar-observation-set or Same-specimen-over-time to link different observations of the same organism on different times.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-the-field-similar-observation-set-for-linking-observations-of-lepidoptera-when-raising-on/1018
Animals
Type of Evidence - I believe Animal Sign and Song is the most broadly used but there may be others? There is also one called Sign which gets almost as much use, which are prime candidates for merging.
Cause of death - Field for marking roadkill, window kill, natural, etc. Not sure how specific would be best if this was could be improved (“natural” could get into predator vs starvation, type of predator, etc. etc.)
Plants
Gametophyte/Sporophyte - Rarely used, but is just as useful as flowering phenology. Sporophytes present? is bryophyte-centric, but a new field could be created that could be used for all plants, ex: A seed plant identified from just pollen could be marked as a gametophyte.
Leaf Phenology - field for deciduous trees and shrubs - is the plant leafing out, fully leafed out, showing fall foliage color (or dry season foliage cover), or bare?
Tree - Tree not sure what it was originally used for, as it opens a blank text box, not a dropdown. It appears to accept whatever someone chooses to type. Occupied tree hollow - is the tree hollow you found being used by a bird? Circumference of Tree – Measurement of Circumference at breast height (54 in), or where applicable; this one is redundant with this and this.