Unintentional Bias: How do your subconscious habits influence the data you gather?

[eyekosaeder]

I am a big fan of the Year In Review page. I find the diagrams really help motivate me and understand how I use this platform (also, I could click through the sunburst diagram for hours). Today, I was looking at the growth diagrams at the bottom of the page, and I noticed that they showed a pretty clear pattern to my observing.

I think it will very quickly become obvious that I observe far less in winter, which makes sense, but there are also smaller patterns within a single season. For example, I seem to be very active in late spring, but then as soon as Summer starts, the curve becomes visibly less steep with a slight activity boost again at the end of summer.

Now of course, I haven’t been on iNat long enough for any of the data being statistically relevant. However, I think it is interesting to think about how our habits (not just those concerning the time of year) might affect the data we gather.
For example: I personally tend to observe more on fields than in forests, usually in the afternoon, and I look more on flowers than on leaves and even less on bark/stems. I noticed, even tend to look more to the right side than the left (though I doubt that will affect anything except my long term neck health).

I have set myself the challenge to try to break at least one of these habits and see how that affects my observations. It would be interesting to see this for other people too, so do feel free to join me with this. :D

Also, I am curious. Have you noticed any of your habits influencing what you observe? Have you ever broken one of those habits to find an entirely “new world” that you have missed before (like finding a surprisingly rich ecosystem some place you’d never thought to look)?

[lj_l]

My total species graph has an even clearer pattern! The dramatic increase starts at a different month each year though. Sometimes I have motivation to post, other times I don’t.

Another bias I have is undoubtedly the places I look. I have a consistent route that I always walk. Maybe I should walk a different direction to see what organisms I’m missing!

[kildor]

Well, as habitant of moderate climate zone I obvious have much less observation at winter time (November-March). And obviously, May and June are the most productive months. Later, fatigue starts to accumulate and your eye becomes blurred, you stop paying attention to the usual species. Of course, I’m not talking about any trips where I try to shoot everything.

BTW. This graph shows new observations by adding time, not observation time. And as for me, my uploading starts to lag by mid-summer, and usually I upload Jule somewhere in the middle of September.

If I make a chart from all my observation, I’ve got this.

[gcwarbler]

I think this is a great question, and clearly the answers will differ among each and every iNaturalist. Personally, I tend to be big/broad-scale focused since my educational and professional training have mainly been geared towards birds and habitats. However, I like studying insects and it turns out my wife has a talent for much “smaller” focus and is always seeing interesting bugs that I’ve walked right past. Hiking with her frequently reminds me to turn my attention to the small. I also envy the skill set of someone like our beloved “cat lady” here in Texas, @k8thegr8. She finds larvae that all of us have overlooked on a bioblitz! I have to admit I just don’t have the patience to search through foliage to see them.

The other “bad habit” I’ve acquired over many years of nature observation and a decade of iNat feedback is that I tend to disregard or spend little time on groups of insects for which the identifications are difficult to get below family, subfamily, or genus level. There are folks out there who have those skill and knowledge sets, but I don’t and I get frustrated putting up observation after observation of just “midges”, “click beetles”, “common lichens”, and so forth, so I tend not to document them as frequently as I do more identifiable taxa. My bad.

[kildor]

@gcwarbler

My bad.

So am I. I’ve almost completely stopped to observe spiders, most of fungi, lichens and mosses. Also Carex and Salix are in my blind zone, even if I travel somewhere far away from my home area.

BTW, this is another bias and constant fail. When I’m traveling far from home, I keep forgetting about the twin views. It is far from certain that an almost identical plant as the one under my house belongs to the same species.

[HappyBird44]

I’m weather biased. I don’t go out on very hot days or in very heavy rain.
I don’t mind very windy days, but I’ve found that those are not productive for observing. Other weather (including cold) is not a problem for me.

I also get discouraged observing species that are not likely to get identified (slugs, brambles, a lot of spiders/ants) so I still record them but less often. I also record the very common species less often. (is there a reason to record 100’s of mallards a day?)

[eyekosaeder]

@gcwarbler

I tend to disregard or spend little time on groups of insects for which the identifications are difficult to get below family, subfamily, or genus level.

Interesting. I am sort of the polar opposite. I have made a lot of fly and bee observations lately in the hopes that there’ll be a few among them that can be IDed to species. I keep trying to ID at least some of them myself with various keys I have found on the internet, but it is difficult. (And yeah, probably impossible for most).

@gcwarbler

I tend to be big/broad-scale focused since my educational and professional training have mainly been geared towards birds and habitats

That is something that I’m not good at, but definitely want to get better at because I love birds. I went on a field trip recently to study mudflat fauna and a few of my fellow students were very into ornithology. I think they saw/noticed more species of wild birds during those 10 days than I have in my entire life. Since birds have far lower diversity as insects, I tend to often “dismiss” slight differences and assume they are the same species. So it is a similar problem to this:

@kildor

It is far from certain that an almost identical plant as the one under my house belongs to the same species

[eyekosaeder]

@HappyBird44

I’m weather biased

True, I think that is a very common bias as well.

@HappyBird44

I also record the very common species less often.

And I think this is a very common thing too. There is currently another post about butterfly under-/overrepresentation in the US and in Canada in iNat observations. I’ll link to it in the edit because for some reason my browser won’t allow multiple iNat forum tabs at the same time…
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/interesting-paper-on-which-butterflies-are-over-under-represented-in-rg-observations-in-usa-canada/53788

@kildor

Later, fatigue starts to accumulate and your eye becomes blurred, you stop paying attention to the usual sights.

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far. haha
But there has to be something like that going on like that because Juli/August/September/Oktober should be months where there is still fairly high activity (in the northern hemisphere)… It would be interesting how the diagrams would look for people who live close to the equator and whether their “fatigue” patterns follows an annual cycle or not. Haha

Also, perhaps if iNat would reschedule the City Nature Challenge to September, the curve would be different and there may be an increase in observations of species that are currently observed more rarely. (Not saying they should, but it would be cool to see what happens).

@lj_l

Another bias I have is undoubtedly the places I look.

True. It’s always interesting to look at the map of observations and see clear routes I went on. :D
I also think that even on deliberate iNat-hikes, I’m subconsciously drawn to similar habitats everywhere. People around me seem to find a lot of rarer plants, for example, that I think I would notice too, if I came across them (Orchis sp., for example), but everywhere I go to there’s just Daucus carota, a few Cirsium species and Ranunculus acris and repens, even if I’m further away from areas with a lot of human activity

[kildor]

Just noticed. “you stop paying attention to the usual sights.” should be read as “usual species”. // I should double check after online translators :-D

[lynnharper]

I like to think of myself as making observations of everything I see, but that is SO not true.

Obviously, if the weather’s bad, I don’t make observations. I love seeing moths, but I hate staying up late, so I set out no-kill moth traps rather than setting up a sheet with lights. I can get a good night’s sleep, then check the traps in the early morning.

I rarely make observations of birds - I don’t have the right equipment and lots and lots of other people are making bird observations.

I have a waterproof camera, but do I get into my local lakes and rivers, even in hot days? Rarely, if ever.

I do photograph lots of common plants, but I ignore graminoids, for the most part.

Fungi and slime molds are wonderful, but I don’t photograph them often. Ditto lichens, especially crustose lichens.

On the other hand, the gall guys on iNat have fostered a strong interest in galls in me, so I’m always turning over leaves and photographing oddly shaped bumps. I find lots of caterpillars, tree crickets, beetles, sawfly larvae, and other invertebrates along the way. And leafmines, obviously.

I’ve become obsessed with learning mosses and liverworts in the past year, to the point of making proper collections to donate to an herbarium. So I’m making lots of observations of bryophytes, but I need to improve my photography skills!

And most of my observations are within an hour or two drive from my home.

[DianaStuder]

@eyekosaeder

reschedule the City Nature Challenge to September

We have. We call it the Great Southern Bioblitz
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2024-umbrella

[jjbuegge]

Before we all get too down on ourselves for biases or neglected taxa (difficult or not), we should remember that any observation is a good observation. The better the quality, the more valuable it will be. But who knows how all these observations will be used. It is the collective sum of all these little parts that become greater than any person or lab could achieve on their own.

Don’t get me wrong - I do think about my biases and try to fight against some of them. But I thoroughly ENJOY making observations and sharing them. If worrying about what I’m neglecting, that clouds my mind too much and I will probably give up or make fewer observations. Ultimately, that is less useful to the bigger goal of sharing a love for nature together.

Happy naturalizing everyone!

[brewbooks]

Great topic, I started thinking about my subconscious habits and biases. Here’s a brief list:

1. Common species that are hard to ID for me - I will walk through an alpine meadow and ignore common species such as lupines, grasses and sedges. Meanwhile, I focus on species that are easy to differentiate. Thus, I undersample key species in a habitat and oversample uncommon species.
2. Observations near a trail - I hike in parks; my observations are usually near an established trail. I don’t want to be a meadow stomper, in a delicate alpine tundra the damage can take years to repair.
3. Phenology - For plants, I tend to capture mostly the flowering state of a plant, nest the fruiting state and rarely when there are no flowers or fruit. For insects, mainly the adult state of pollinators.
4. Geographic - I live in Washington State, USA; 65% of my observations are in Washington. 88% of my observations are in the USA
5. Gaps in posting (Mind the Gap) - I looked back at my observation posting over time and noticed that I have gaps, see the graph and table following. For example, in the summer of 2019 I was posting a lot, once doing 1000 observations in 39 days. Why, I don’t know. Between 2021 and 2023, it took me 560 days (about 19 months) to post 1000 observations. Again, I am not certain why this happened.
   
   

[jasonhernandez74]

@eyekosaeder

I also think that even on deliberate iNat-hikes, I’m subconsciously drawn to similar habitats everywhere.

Yes. Although I am aware that grasslands and other open spaces have their own biodiversity, I tend to be biased toward woodlands.

[nataliewaddellrutter]

I just want to know where you find your yearly stats

[lj_l]

https://www.inaturalist.org/stats/2024/lj_lamera

Replace “2024” with the year you want and my username with yours

[eyekosaeder]

@jjbuegge

Before we all get too down on ourselves for biases or neglected taxa (difficult or not), we should remember that any observation is a good observation

I agree. “Bias” may be a loaded term but I don’t think these biases are bad and I didn’t intend to portray them that way. I mean, many people have intentional biases of observing only certain taxa (or at least over-representing their favourites), and that’s just as valid as any other use of the platform, IMO.

For me, a big part of making observations on here is to document as many species as I can, and I think for that use case thinking about biases is useful. It might help me look in places where I haven’t yet looked and discover new (to me) species (lifers).
For example, in order to get to a sunny field with lots of wild flowers, I always walked by a small shaded glade. I never stopped to look what lived there because to me shadow meant uninteresting at that time. When I did, I discovered like 3 lifers fairly quickly.

[DianaStuder]

You and I. My bias - What can I see that I haven’t already put on iNat?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/222832434

[jnstuart]

Ditto. Although I like getting better photos of organisms I’ve previously photo’d, the real fun is photoing something totally new to me. And also that it’s identifiable to species. Photoing insects that can’t be IDed below family or genus? Not so fun.

[catchwords]

Seems like there must be a massive bias towards creatures active during daylight. My biggest observation change occurred when I found a buddy to go night-spotting with. Many stream and insect species only come out of hiding at night here, so that has made for a massive change. The small circle of light is also good for concentrating attention on the smaller things - not just insects, but tiny fungi too. On a still night, I’ve had the magic experience of seeing fungi spores drifting, as they were pale and stood out against the dark. Also handy is that my buddy has much better macro gear than I do, so if I struggle to capture an ob of something I’ve noticed, he’s been very obliging in taking pics (there’s no way he’s going to let me use his gear!!) that he is happy for me to upload, as I’m the one who observed it.

Similarly, some of the issues I have with recording fast moving critters like butterflies, birds etc is having the skill and quality camera gear to catch them as they pass. I don’t have the knowledge or confidence to safely capture and release these sorts of species for better photographs. So my obs are biased towards plants and sluggish species like resting seals.
So societal factors like access to money, financial priorities, knowledge and skill all make a difference too.