Might be an interesting topic, if you go to “Explore” on iNat and click the “Species” section, you can view the global totals of all species in the world. Out of the top species observed, which ones have you not seen? Example I have not seen the following species in the top 50 most observed iNat species:
Oo that’s an interesting one! There definitely is some geographic bias in this (as to be expected) so would be interesting to do it for your local regions as well!
Or you can do like @fffffffff and @intyrely_eco did (for Eurasia and New Zealand, respectively), and add a location filter, so you can post your local list instead of just the global one.
For the world, I am missing
17. Western Fence Lizard
30. American Toad
31. Yellow rumped warbler
32. Seven spotted Lady Beetle
34. Common Garter Snake
37. Fox Squirrel
47. Creosote Bush
48. Wild Turkey
49. Green Anole
So 41/50
An interesting topic, thank you, @birdwhisperer! I’ve lived in many parts of North America, so I’ve seen all of the top 50 (and all but a few of the top 100). You have to go down quite a way before finding anything that does not occur in either California or New York. However I’ve only been using iNat for 1.5 years, so I’ve not Observed many of the top 50.
For the world, I am missing:
15. Common Dandelion (I know I’ve seen this, but have no iNat observations)
17. Western Fence Lizard
18. Mourning Dove (I know I’ve seen this, but have no iNat observations)
20. Red-Winged Blackbird
26. Song Sparrow
27. Garlic Mustard
28. White Clover (I know I’ve seen this, but have no iNat observations)
30. American Toad
31. Yellow-rumped Warbler
33. Mule Deer
34. Common Garter Snake
38. Dark-eyed Junco
40. Cabbage White (I know I’ve seen this, but have no iNat observations)
42. Osprey
44. Common Milkweed
45. Double-crested Cormorant
47. Creosote Bush
50. Red Clover (I know I’ve seen this, but have no iNat observations)
So I only have 32/50 overall. So even though the bulk of my observations are in North America, and I have 4 years on iNat, I’m still overlooking stuff (or it’s just not as prevalent in my neck of the woods. Eg., I see lots of White-tailed deer, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Mule Deer)
Right. For Europe I reached 76. World list is different - too many American species in tops. But for Africa I reached top 35, except leopard and marabou. Leopard being most annoyng case: I missed it by bare minutes three times.
Since you mentioned locality, I decided to see what’s my “score” on Oregon’s Top 50, since it’s the state I’ve been living in since I started seriously using iNat and the results were surprising. I’ve only seen 31/50 of Oregon’s, contrary to my 41/50 globally.
There’s already a query for this. Take the link below, replace rowan_m with your own user id, and change the place to be whatever suits you. It will show you all the species in that place which you never observed on iNat
That’s nice, thank you. But do you know - if you look at the top species lists of different areas, there are such crazy biases towards certain species or certain groups. It would make a very interesting research object.
