Question about more complicated searches

I put this in general because I don’t know if there’s a way of doing this, but if not it may be more appropriate for feature requests. I’ve been using iNaturalist for a few years now and something I’ve wanted to do but not known how to do is some more complicated searches.

I’m having a hard time articulating what I’m trying to say, but searches that consider more than one area and include a little logic component would I think be pretty handy. For example, if I wanted to search for birds in Louisiana that have not been observed in Mississippi or something of the like. The opposite could be just as helpful, amphibians that have been observed in both Harris County and Bexar county. It’d also be a handy feature if you could consider your own observations for something like this. If you were going on a trip for example, you could search for observations in the area you’re going to that you don’t already have. Mammal species observed in California not observed by [username] or something like that.

So hopefully that made sense. My question is basically, is there an existing way to do that? If not, I think it’d be a fun addition.

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Welcome to the forum!

These two threads will probably have some of the info you’re looking for. You could certainly use these techniques to generate lists of taxa for different places and compare them on your own. I’d read through, and, if there’s something specific you want that isn’t in those, search the forum or followup with a specific question.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-2-of-2/18792

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https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search+urls is a reference to those query builders in one place.

On your Life List, you can view species you haven’t observed in particular places, e.g. mammals observed by others in CA that you haven’t seen: https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/andersenfrench?view=tree&details_view=unobservedSpecies&tree_mode=full_taxonomy&taxon_id=40151&place_id=14

You can also try out the Compare tool, e.g. this link compares the amphibians observed in Harris and Bexar counties: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/compare?s=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