Have seen several projects on plant galls on iNaturalist, but i am still searching for a projects on domatia. Domatia differ from galls: While both are plant structures housing insects or mites, domatia form even in the absence of said insects or mites. Galls on the other hand are usually induced by their inhabitants.
Is anybody aware of a project on domatia ( Acarodomatia / Myrmecodomatia) or interested in starting / joining one?
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I’d be interested in joining a project on domatia.
I have a project called “Lovely Leaves” ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lovely-leaves ) where I stockpile interesting leaf observations for use in my botany classes, and it includes several domatia examples, but it isn’t devoted to that.
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I see (at least) two ways to make a meaningful project on Domatia:
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Start a traditional project and add plant observations that show domatia manually. This allows not yet identified plant observations to be added. The project can never be completed though, as always more plant observations will be added to iNat.
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Start a collection project and manually add taxa of plants that have domatia into the project requirements. This type of project can potentially be completed, it doesn’t allow for non identified plants to be added though, which limits its usefulness in identifying plant species that have domatia, especially as long as the project is very incomplete.
I am more interested in the second type of project, what do you think m_whitson?
As for now i started this tag and observation fields:
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Both approaches have merits. A traditional project would let many different users help you hunt for plants with cool domatia (but also potentially add non-pertinent observations). A collection project is much more under your control, but will take much more work on your part. You might try both approaches and then group them under a Domatia Umberlla Project.
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