Problem in counting beetle species

Bug Reports
1

the easiest way for me to report this is to ask you to read the dialog on this page:

https://www.inaturalist.org/messages/3977789?box=inbox

2

Hi Susan, since we can’t view your personal messages, can you copy the text here?

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3

OK! Here it is:

From Susanhewitt:
Dear Xris,

I wonder why I am not listed as one of the top 5 observers in the species ranking of the NYC beetles project?

Since I have 127 species of beetles observed here in NYC, I think I should be number 4 in that ranking.

Thanks.

Susan August 30, 2023 05:35 PM

From Xris:

xris xris My guess is that some of your Observations that you see in NYC aren’t meeting the Project Criteria.

If you can find a couple of those, we can confirm and figure out why. August 30, 2023 06:05 PM
susanhewitt susanhewitt So far I can’t see any that don’t meet the criteria. But perhaps I am not looking carefully enough… August 30, 2023 09:53 PM

xris xris This seems like a bug in iNaturalist.

[NYC Beetles] has only three criteria:

  1. Location: New York City, US, NY
  2. Taxa: Order Coleoptera (Beetles)
  3. Quality Grade: Research Grade OR Needs ID, i.e.: “Verifiable”, anything but Casual Observations.

I get different species counts for you, depending on how I choose to look at them:

  • Your Verifiable NYC Coleoptera Observations shows 2,293 Observations of 127 Species.
  • Searching for [your Observations in the NYC Beetles Project] also returns 2,293 Observations of 127 Species.
  • The NYC Beetles Leaderboard also shows you have 2,293 Observations. However, it only counts 98 Species. It should return the same numbers as if viewed through a regular search instaead of th project page. That’s an iNaturalist bug, not anything configurable in the Project settings.
4

This is intentional – the smaller number is the true species count and the bigger number is the leaf count. You can find more info here.

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5

Thanks Jane – so does that mean that I have recorded only 98 beetles in NYC that are so far actually ID’ed to the species level? The other 29 I have observed/photographed are presumably currently ID’ed to family, tribe or some similar taxonomic level?

6

The species count is species or lower, so yeah 98 that are species or lower (and it’s up to 100 now). And the rest are anything above species, I think they’re mostly at the genus level for you.

7

Oh, I see! Thank you very much Jane for explaining that to me. I will have to try to see if I can get any more of them down to a species level iD. :)

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