Revoke automatic iNat ‘captive/cultivated’ mark at genus when an observation is refined to a species in that genus that is not 80%+ ‘captive/cultivated’

Feature Requests
1

Platform(s): n/a

URLs: see below

Description of need:
iNaturalist automatically marks an observation as ‘captive/cultivated’ if there are at least 10 observations of that taxon (at genus and below? higher taxa?) in the area and 80% of those observations are ‘captive/cultivated.’ I feel that this is a good feature. However, in genera in which some species are overwhelmingly ‘captive/cultivated’ and others are mostly not, it would be helpful if the automatic vote were revoked when an observation at genus is refined to one of the species that is mostly not ‘captive/cultivated’.

Feature request details:
Case in point: the genus Magnolia in Washington, D.C. There are tons of magnolias (especially Magnolia grandiflora and the various common magnolia cultivars) planted around the city as street trees, in yards, etc., that are (thankfully) automatically marked as ‘not wild’. However, there are established (and self-seeding) wild populations of Magnolia macrophylla and Magnolia tripetala in the wooded parks of the city. Here’s the current breakdown:

  • Magnolia grandiflora: 548 observations, 99% casual
  • Magnolia cultivars (M. stellata, M. × soulangeana, etc.): 495 observations, 100% casual
  • Magnolia (at genus): 438 observations, 97% casual
  • Magnolia virginiana: 153 observations, 56% casual (should likely be higher)
  • Magnolia macrophylla: 89 observations, 18% casual
  • Magnolia tripetala: 84 observations, 4% casual
  • Magnolia acuminata: 21 observations, 95% casual

Now, if you’re walking in a woodland park in D.C. and you observe a wild magnolia but are unsure of the species and suggest the genus Magnolia, that observation will be automatically marked ‘captive/cultivated’ by iNat (unfortunate, but a good tradeoff versus having hundreds of street-tree magnolias not auto-marked as ‘captive/cultivated’, in my opinion). However, if an identifier finds that observation and refines the ID to a species that is not 80%+ casual (in this case, M. macrophylla or M. tripetala), the iNat ‘captive/cultivated’ auto-vote remains (Some examples here, here, and here; ‘wild’ votes added by me). I suggest it should be automatically removed in such cases (when there are at least 10+ verifiable/RG observations of that species in the area or something of that sort).

Counterpoints: if an identifier knows enough about the iNat system to go looking for mislabeled ‘casual’ observations to mark as ‘wild’, they can just take the extra step to add that vote themselves. Plus, the ‘captive/cultivated’ mark does get automatically removed if the observation gets to ‘research grade’, though that does require one more person to find a ‘casual’ record if the first refiner did not vote against the iNat auto-vote.

Thanks for reading. Perhaps others can chime in with better suggestions (or other counterpoints), or examples of other taxa for which this is an issue.

2

Would this be similar to the rose/Rosa situation?

3

I’m not familiar with that; do you mean native wild roses put at genus Rosa get auto-marked as ‘captive/cultivated’? In my area there’s so much invasive Rosa multiflora that even if cultivated roses were all properly marked as ‘captive/cultivated’ I think it would still be below 80% for the genus.

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4

No it’s the opposite, where people uploading cultivated roses don’t have them automatically set as cultivated because there are enough legitimately wild rose observations to where it doesn’t hit the 80%

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5

Yes then my request is about the opposite of the rose situation, where a genus is at 80%+ casual (so all observations at genus get auto-marked ‘cultivated’) but there are species within that genus that are mostly wild. I don’t have a problem with that, but I think if someone adds an ID moving the genus observation to one of those mostly wild (<80% casual) species, the ‘cultivated’ auto-vote from iNat should get removed.

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6

I wonder about these. It’s another native species and not your typical garden tree. Are those 95% casual really cultivated trees?

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7

Not sure! Looks like six of those are on the national mall itself, and those at least are almost certainly planted. I think it’s more properly native farther west in Appalachia. There are quite a few ‘native-ish’ (native to somewhere in eastern North America) trees planted in the city (as street trees, in the native sections of arboretums, botanic gardens, etc.). Actually, I think the only ‘properly’ native magnolia in the area is M. virginiana, and even those are probably more planted in yards and gardens than actually growing wild. The most popular magnolia in the area, the Southern Magnolia (M. grandiflora), has a native range much farther south, yet is not marked as ‘introduced’ (in fact, it has that green ‘endemic’ star next to it’s name!).

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8

I suppose this would be done when the observation is reindexed after a new ID is added. I don’t know how computationally difficult it would be, but it would add at least a little load.

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