I love the way the species page organizes the species from most to least frequently observed.
I’d love to be able to flip the list, and view species from least to most frequently observed.
Well I agree this would be nice, I will note that you can do so by continuing scrolling through the list (as long as there are less than 500 species) and that usually these little-observed species are dominated by misidentifcations and/or unmarked captive organisms. Actually this is one of the best ways to find such observations to clean up.
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Good call! There are ways too work around the issue. But on the main species page, the 500th most frequently observed one has more than 2000 observations. You could narrow it down by searching for all the species in area code 02118 and then scrolling to the bottom. But what is rare in 02118 could be common on 02119. You still couldn’t get a clear picture of what is truly rare in a more general sense.
Yes, the best workaround is to narrow your search by location and/or taxonomy. So for example, there are only 409 species of tiger beetles recorded worldwide, including dozens with only a single iNat observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=table&taxon_id=119895&view=species
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I had a chuckle at a bioblitz where all the particpants went off from the introductory talk to start their observations, eager photographing this flower, and that bush, oh… and that tree over there! Not one thought to snap the daisy in the grass they were walking over. If I look at my own observations, there is definitely a bias apparent. Hopefully “observations from the masses” smooths a lot of that personal bias out, but it won’t take out the “human bias”
One of the things that iNat amazes me the most with, is the “iNat first” observations that then turn out to be something really common and just not normally paid any attention to.
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Totally true, i’m sure! I’ve read that grasslands are incredibly complex ecosystems. But i doubt many inat users–certainly very few novices–take the time to photograph distinct species of grass. Of which there are many.
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Crucial! Great idea. Will do. Many thanks!
Proof that this method works. I looked up “horses,” and found that there are 11 species, of which the rarest is a hybrid Zebra/Donkey, i.e. a “Zonkey.” Exactly the kind of info i was looking for!!
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Closing, as this would only happen in a revamp of Explore and it’s already on our ideas doc for that.