Placeholder species added as observation fields instead of taxa

Bug Reports
1

Platform: All platforms? But most visible on website

App version number, if a mobile app issue: N/A

Browser, if a website issue: Chrome, but doesn’t seem to matter

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: See below

Screenshots of what you are seeing: N/A

Description of problem:

I’ve recently noticed that when species are added to observation fields (e.g. Host Plant, or Interaction->Visited flower of), whether they’re added as a common name vs scientific name seems to make a difference. For example, observations of insects feeding on “dandelions” are not showing up along with observations feeding on “Taraxacum” (Taxon ID 47603), which should be where that common name redirects.

“Dandelions”: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Interaction->Visited%20flower%20of=dandelions

“Taraxacum”: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Interaction->Visited%20flower%20of=47603

I haven’t been able to replicate this so I’m not exactly sure how it’s happening- best I can guess is that users might not be waiting for the proper taxon name to appear in the dropdown and aren’t selecting it before hitting “add,” so they’re instead entering it as a sort of placeholder? If so, is this readily fixable, or at least avoidable in the future?

2

these all appear to come from the iPhone app. so it’s possible that the app may not be enforcing the datatype of the field consistently.

3

That would certainly explain why I can’t replicate the issue on my Pixel!