Tracking down missing observations in GBIF

General
1

I’ve been looking up data in GBIF, and I understand that iNaturalist exports data (perhaps once per week) and that GBIF may or may not ingest all of it. I’m trying to understand precisely (if possible) what observation data I should expect to see in GBIF. In particular, while looking up Odonata in Delaware, I noticed that there are 4 observations of Cordulegaster maculata (Twin-spotted spiketail), now called Zoraena maculata (GBIF hasn’t updated this genus to reflect this change, to my knowledge).

These observations are listed here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=4&subview=table&taxon_id=1578649

Now these are fairly old observations. They are location obscured (presumably due to some curation rules, and not due to the observation authors setting it to obscured). I would expect these records to have made it to GBIF, even if the coordinates are low-precision / accuracy (I guess both would apply here). But a search yields nothing:

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search?taxon_key=1421217&gadm_gid=USA.8_1

I’m wondering if I’m using either tool incorrectly, making incorrect assumptions, or what else might explain this discrepancy. Thanks!

2

They are all in GBIF (each iNat obs has a corresponding ‘GBIF’ icon and link, scroll down a bit), however not filed under ‘C. maculata’ but rather as ‘Zoraena maculata’ - and the taxon name in orange at GBIF reveals it’s an improperly-placed name (due to unclear synonymy for example), thus filed under ‘Zoraena’ genus.

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3

besides what you’ve noted, when filtering, GBIF interprets these as being in states other than Delaware because it’s using the obscured coordinates as the basis for filtering locations.

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4

Thank you for mentioning that. I hadn’t noticed this.

5

Great, thank you. At a glance, it feels like there’s a TON of messy data floating around, and I wish I could help make it less messy. Alas!

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