Interesting list. Curious how you obtained it, API or external tool?
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That’s an important point. Researchers have been collecting specimens and depositing them in museums, and photographers have been taking voucher photos, for much longer than iNat has been around. A first on iNat is great but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the first photo documentation ever (but sometimes it is!).
If you really want to know all the records for some obscure species, you need to search data sources beyond iNat.
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Looking at observations in Iowa, I definitely share the bias that I think most observers have of not making observations of ‘background’ foliage. In the list of most commonly observed species, the first tree is at #150 (honey locust). The next woody plant comes in after #200. The most commonly observed poale (indianagrass) is at #137. Among plants in general, there is a clear trend towards herbacious plants with easily visible flowers. Obviously we are surrounded by trees and grass, so this is just a matter of what organisms people are interested in seeing and making observations for. Among my personal observations, I have a disproportionate number of observations of drab species that aren’t exciting to see, like house sparrows, lucerne moths, and common grackles, as well as ground-ivy, garlic mustard, and white clover. As I get more busy with other stuff, I am also starting to focus on more ‘interesting’ species rather than uploading 500 trash mons.
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this past summer i crossed ficus opposita (mother) and ficus carica (father). it’s the 1st time that these 2 species have ever been crossed.
here’s the definition you shared…
A monopoly is a market situation where a single entity has the power to control the supply of a product or service, and can dictate prices or exclude competitors.
i’m the only person in the world who has my ficus hybrid. so i have the power to control the supply? kinda? it’s entirely up to me what i do with the hybrids.
what about dictating prices? hmmm. i could put a $1 million dollar price tag on a seedling but this doesn’t necessarily mean much. maybe there’s barely any demand for my hybrid. perhaps the most money that people would be willing to pay for it is $10.
in terms of excluding competitors, in my case i could certainly not share my pollination process with anyone. this would be my “trade secret”. in this regard, i shouldn’t even say who the parents are. i should grow out all the seedlings, test their tolerance to root knot nematodes, test their ability to function as a rootstock for carica, and judge the quality of their fruit. then i could market it as “wonder fig” or something silly and since nobody would know its parents, they wouldn’t be able to reduplicate the cross. of course i’d have to patent it to discourage other people from selling it.
if i did start raking in the millions, then naturally this would encourage the professional fig breeders to test my fig’s dna. they would then cross carica with all of opposita’s closest relatives and my profits would plummet. but by then i’d have 3 mansions and 2 yachts.
the most important part to appreciate is that, the “smartest” (profit maximizing) move for me personally (discouraging competition) is not the “best” (benefit maximizing) outcome for society. the best outcome for society is to have the optimal abundance of fig hybrids as soon as possible. we’d be able to achieve this by giving the proper kudos to people who shared their trade secrets.
when i said that i’m the only person in the world with my fig hybrid, i lied. i shared seeds with 3 local ficus friends who are experienced at germinating fig seeds. their seeds germinated and now they have seedlings. and i also publicly shared my pollination process on the tropical fruit forum. anyone can publicly thank me for sharing my trade secrets, which counts as kudos, but it doesn’t count as proper kudos. in other words, it won’t encourage all the monopolists in the world to share their trade secrets. and it’s not like monopolists are the only people with trade secrets. i know numerous plant sellers and they all try to hide their sources. nobody wants more competition. everybody wants less competition. everybody wants a monopoly. yet, everyone’s benefit would be maximized in a world of perfect competition.
again, it all boils down to proper kudos.
when papernautilus shared the link to their oom, i clicked the heart button. doing so definitely counts as giving kudos, but is it proper kudos? nope. it doesn’t properly encourage similar behavior. nobody in ecuador is going to look at the hearts on papernautilus’ posts and be motivated to submit observations of that mollusk. if i truly want more observations of rare mollusks, then my kudos has to be equivalently selfless.
submitting observations is selfless, id’ing observations is selfless, but clicking a heart or star button is not selfless, it’s shellfish, because there’s no personal cost involved.
now i’m going to start uploading 45 more observations in order to have the 50 minimum needed to create a ‘traditional’ project that i can add observations of ficus timlada to. let’s see if i can manage to submit any ooms…
To be frank, you’re using a lot of text without saying much at all. Your point is pretty nebulous.
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I think I have a couple provincial and country firsts from home. When I visited Kenya I observed a number of country first for iNat (and one iNat first entirely), including the first observation of an entire superfamily of amphipods in the country. There aren’t many people in Kenya observing obscure taxa and it’s unfortunate, but completely makes sense given the infrastructure and lifestyle of most people there that iNat wouldn’t be a very appealing activity.
Also if I wanted to I could look at what exotic animals don’t have observations and go to a local zoo and take photos of them and get the first observation in the country, but I don’t see how that provides much value to anyone.
What would you consider to be ‘proper’ kudos in this situation?
To be frank, I’d be surprised if the vast majority of users place as much emphasis on receiving favourites on their observations as you seem to think they do.
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no you don’t have a monopoly, any person could do the same thing you did if they wanted to and you do not control the supply
I don’t imagine most people on the site are particularly motivated by getting favourites on their observations, however I can think of other examples of people being motivated to do things by receiving kudos in forms other than money.
Personally, I’m an artist, but I don’t take commissions. I do it purely for fun and as a hobby, and would keep doing so regardless of what other people think about my work, but people complimenting my work or adding likes when I post it is a huge source of motivation to make more art.
That being said, I’m still going to end up making whatever interests me at the time, regardless of what ends up being more popular with other people. I’m doing it for fun, and I’m far too aware that turning your hobbies into a money making scheme can burn you out and sap all the fun out of it, so even if you offered to pay me, I’d much rather focus on what I want to do. If you wanted to pay someone to do the thing you want, you could go to someone who’s doing commissions instead.
The same goes for wildlife observations. Most people will post what they’re interested in. If their observations get favourited, that’s a nice fun bonus, but otherwise they’re going to post whatever they’re drawn to and enthusiastic about. If you wanted to pay people to specifically observe the organisms you’re interested in, you could presumably go find some freelancers to do it instead, since they’re already offering to do work for money.
iNaturalist is a site people mostly use as a hobby. Many of the people on here have jobs, and do wildlife photography as something fun to do in their free time. It’s not something they want to turn into more work, and if they did, they’d probably be selling prints of their photos or something similar
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Can someone provide the link to the page that calculates your observations and the total number of observations for species? I saw it once but do not remember where.
I believe it’s this one?
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Thanks for posting that tool! The results were quite amazing to me.
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thanks but is it my imagination or are all those groups relatively specific? i do appreciate a good niche, but in this case i’d prefer joining a general ficus group.
So only specifically for observations, and not for identifiers or commenters?
Considering the general population of people using inaturalist and their specific motives, I doubt financial incentive (even - or perhaps especially - if not directed towards themselves) would make much of a difference to people’s inat usage. Like many other users have already explained, most people who use inat already have an incentive, be it conservation, data, or just the fact that they find it fun for a number of reasons. Inat is a specific website - it’s not Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Inat users are already inat users for a reason.
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That’s the one! Thank you !
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I think your chances of being the only ‘one’ depends on what you look at and where you look for it. I’m in Costa Rica and live in a low-elevation cloud forest where almost everything is rare. Last time I looked I had 38 unique sightings. Today it was 35. I’ve 8-ish where I have the only two sightings.
I believe they are all native species. When I look through the inat observations for my area, a large percentage of them are the same bunch of introduced cultivars that are planted countrywide so going native is the way to go in Costa Rica.
I’m not sure I have much of a point other than basing your perspectives on what is seen in the US or Europe, then the rest of the world will surprise you. If you want to find unique things, then I think you should look really, really close at the background. When all you see is green then learn to discriminate the individual plants from the masses.
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everyone participating in this discussion is an active user. we are motivated and inspired. this is a classic example of survivorship bias. basically, we’re not hearing from the inactive users. we don’t know why they didn’t stick around. we just know that they didn’t stick around. perhaps if there was an exit survey of sorts we’d know why they became inactive. i’m sure it would be a long list of reasons.
a while back i watched a nature documentary about coywolves. a coywolf was walking down the street with a goose egg in her mouth. she happens to find a roadkill. she puts down the egg, sniffs the roadkill, picks it up, looks longingly at the egg, and then continues on her way.
egg < roadkill
for ever inactive user…
inaturalist < alternative
for every active user…
inaturalist > alternative
This assumes people can’t simultaneously use iNat and alternatives at the same time. I know plenty of people who use iNat, eBird, various other citizen science sites, etc, and take part in volunteer work for conservation programmes, all of which are done purely because it’s something they’re enthusiastic about, even if those people do have issues with some parts of how each option works
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