Odd Native/Introduced Results from Projects versus Geographical Searches

General
1

I just noticed some odd behavior when looking at observations sorted by species. It might be a bug, but it could also be some sort of unintended filtering result. I’m hoping someone here can figure it out.

I’m in the USA. When I do an explore search for Solanum eleagnifolium (without narrowing it by geography) and view the results by species rather than all the observations in a grid, the species photo is tagged with “N” for native. That makes sense – it is a native North American species, my account is out of North America, and since I have no geographical filter in use, yes, it is native to Earth, too. If I narrow my search to somewhere the species isn’t native, like South Africa, now the species photo is tagged “IN” for introduced. That makes sense – it is introduced and not native to South Africa.

Now here’s the confusing part. If I go to a regionally focused project, like Biodiversity of South Africa ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-south-africa ), search for their observations of Solanum eleagnifolium, and display by taxon rather than seeing a grid of all the observations, now the photo of the species is tagged “N” for native. Why? Yes, it is native to where I physically am, but all the observations I’m working with are from an area where it isn’t native. It would make more sense if the native/introduced tag defaults to the region where the observations are from, like it did when I used a geographical filter to find observations rather than a project to do the same thing. Why doesn’t it? Is there something I can adjust to make the nativity status from the project observations match the status I get when I just use a specific geographic filter?

I’m interested to hear if anyone else has this issue and if it seems as odd to you as it does to me.

2

If you want to see the establishment means representing a particular place, you need to include that place in the URL, or else iNat defaults to the establishment means for your default location (I believe if you don’t have a default location, it just uses your IP address to estimate one). If you add the South Africa place ID to the URL, it shows “IN” as expected:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6986&project_id=biodiversity-of-south-africa&taxon_id=79137&verifiable=any&view=species

(I added “place_id=6986” to the search)

Because searches often return a mix of observations of the same species from places where it is native, introduced, and not specified, it’s not possible for the search result screen to automatically depict the establishment means for the observations in the search results. One place ID has to be specified in the URL to get the establishment means to show up from that place.

3

Thanks for the detailed explanation. That makes sense and I had wondered if it was something like that. I just think of geographic collection projects like saved searches (show all life from place X here) so it seems weird that there wouldn’t be a place ID sort of linked to the results they return. I realize databases are complex and mysterious things, though.