Seeking information about apps that feed into iNaturalist data

Educators
1

Hi,

I educate schools about iNaturalist - and the CSIRO’s Atlas of Living Australia - which has reciprocal feeds to and from iNaturalist. I am wondering if there is a general rule of thumb as to how many citizen science apps feed into iNaturalist? I have been told many do and for ease of use of citizen science, I often advise that iNaturalist can be used for most, if not all, species’ uploads. Is this good advice? And does iNaturalist capture info from more specialised and focussed citizen science app? Thanks, Pollinator Protector.

2

welcome to the forum

just to clarify, the following statement is not correct:

there is no reciprocity in this relationship. iNaturalist records feed into the ALA, but there is no movement of data in the other direction; nothing from the ALA feeds into iNaturalist. The ALA is a data aggregator, so it doesn’t send anything to iNaturalist

1 Like
3

thanks for that. Another two questions - is it possible just to use iNaturalist for all species and what is the difference between iNaturalist and iNaturalist Australia in respect to setting your affiliation?

4

I’m not sure what you mean by this, could you please clarify further

see pages 69-72 of the guide I wrote for an explanation of this: https://ala.org.au/publications/a-guide-to-inaturalist

2 Likes
5

thanks - i will look at the guide. In relation to using iNaturalist for all species, I mean, can you use it for birds - and not use eBird or Birdata for example, or use it for frog sounds and images and not FrogID?

6

yes, you can use iNaturalist for any taxa; there are plenty of bird and frog records on the platform for Australia

7

That should do it for now! Thanks!

1 Like
8

You can use iNat for birds, but I’d recommend eBird for serious bird data. It’s a much better platform for bird data; it records numbers, bird absence (not just presence) via complete checklists, and has finely tuned filters and local experts to vet unusual sightings.

9

If taxa do not exist you can flag the genus and if you are lucky a curator can add this species to the list. Erg beknopt, but Chapter Taxa page 37 gives a smalll introduction about flags and adding species.

https://ala.org.au/publications/a-guide-to-inaturalist

–

iNaturalist requires media with your observation and I expect eBird doesn´t. So for bird data without evidence another platform could be better. I should not recommend eBird (liveatlas) but I do not know what platform I should recommend for Australia.

1 Like