Observed species total counting error

in my mind, 2s is relevant only to the extent that 2s should be equal to 3s and 4s. so to the extent they are not all equal, then there is a problem.

1s should be greater than or equal to any of 2s, 3s, and 4s (since 2s, 3s, and 4s should all be equal).

while i agree that 4s(=3s) currently is not correct, 5s also is not correct (although 5s is less incorrect than 4s). fundamentally, the observer’s species count (based on “species” from the API’s /observations/observers endpoint) is not correct for you.

the problem is probably related to the the settings on the system’s indexes and the fact that you have so many observations – probably similar but not the same as the issue noted above:

UPDATE:
i dug around, and it looks like iNat staff have identified another similar issue before and have chosen not to address it: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/number-of-species-greater-than-number-of-observation/59789/4. that other issue deals with the observer’s observation counts, but it’s possible that the same analysis applies to the observer’s species counts.