Right, you can’t take lack of observations as a fact of absence, humans on iNat are rare, we can’t ask to observe larches in taiga at the same grid as pigeons in the city, but even big cities can lack observers and thus lack observations of even common species (and there’re those species that don’t show up each year). You need people looking at the right thing at the right time/time of the year to observe something, sometimes it means someone going out in the rain and finding it at their doorstep. A blessing or a curse, iNat is pretty chaotic in comparison with organised sampling, and that can lead to new discoveries or downfalls.
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Me, too. I like to follow plants and populations near me across time to see them in multiple stages of growth. It helps cement the species in my mind.
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Great way to put it! I’m going to pocket that wording and utilize it in the future when I struggle with expressing myself…
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While I didn’t anticipate the value of this when I first started out, it has become clear that more data is almost always better. I started a little biodiversity project when I moved into our new home about 7 years ago… basically, a “backyard list” of sorts. Now, all these years later, I can clearly see patterns of what species are active for only certain months of the year (like many inverts) or the months they pass through in migration (like birds or dragonflies, etc). It is really neat to realize that, for example, one can “predict” the month a specific species should arrive and sure enough, it proves true each year. Another really interesting benefit is the ability to get a sense (albeit a stretch) of population changes… for example, we had a rare freeze in Texas in '21 that brought several inches of snow and temps as low as 5 degrees to Houston (where I live) and the impact to wildlife population was horrific. Had I not been observing the same species regularly over time, I might have been oblivious to the severity the event had on the local ecosystem. Anyhoo, at the end of the day, do what you enjoy… as some data is better than no data… but, my two cents of the peanut gallery is more observations (even of the same species) is better.
Cheers!
/c
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Thank you for these insights! I concur with, “Post what feels good to you”. As much as I want to contribute to the greater good for biodiversity, I also want to learn and grow in my abilities as a naturalist—as well as reward my curiosities.
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Thank you all. Many useful suggestions that will help me with future posts.
To… IDK, kind of play devil’s advocate? I could see advantages in posting a bunch of say, trees, in quick succession (assuming they’re different specimens, of course.)
Maybe someone is trying to see the particular density of certain trees in an area - so they go post observations of every single tree they catalogue in a particular patch. Throw a dart at certain parks in my area and you’re going to get a lot of maples, oaks, and beeches, but it would show the proportion of those to rarer species.
Not that I plan on doing this, because I’m just… not that into that sort of observation. But I tell you what, there’s been times I’ve been in a pine stand, then looked on inat and there’s only a couple observations in that area. Someone just looking at the mapped observations wouldn’t be able to tell accurately what the forest composition looks like.
EDIT: like for example, take this area here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=41.14752982471326&nelng=-81.14743732171631&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=41.14218938521587&swlng=-81.15241550164795&taxon_id=47561 (the bounding box isn’t perfect but it gets the point across.)
There is a big ass pine stand here that’s mostly scots pine and white pine, with a few broadleaf trees mixed in. ATM the only obs in that area is one that I put there, at all. Now I know that trees aren’t the most charismatic or easy thing to ID sometimes, but still, it does not surprise me a bit - I ended up noticing because I was trying to find Elm observations in the park for, ahem, reasons, and saw just how few tree observations there are in general.
(I will be putting my money where my mouth is and trying to get better at tree observations)
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I saw a comment somewhere that suggested using a Tag to identify a certain individual in repeat observations. Examples: Red Oak 4; male bluebird 2.
Now that I’ve been using iNat for a few years, I’ll confess I can’t remember which trees or whatever I’ve photographed on which trails around here, so I bet some of my observations are re-observations just by accident. Does that bother me? No, not really.
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