As the title suggests I want to known which projects you all use the most or have found the most useful as well as which projects you think I or anyone else should join if they haven’t already.
Personally I frequently use arachnids and myripods of North America quite often.
I believe every bird-loving naturalist should be in these groups:
The most interesting to me are the projects that assemble observations that would be otherwise difficult to find using the filters, like the Dead Birds project. Here are some I’ve come across (with one I started mixed in):
Global Roadkill Observations
Challenging Bird Identifications
Birds on Ships
Found Feathers
Amazing Aberrants
North American Caterpillars
Leafminers of North America
Galls of North America
Leaf and Plant Galls
European Plant Galler Faunistics
I believe you should build up the local bio-diversity by joining any such local groups for your county or area. After that you should join as many specialty projects as you like.
I actually am the biggest contributor to a local project in my area making up about 30% of the total observations in the project. So I agree everyone should take a look in their local areas for projects to contribute to.
Skulls and bones – maybe this will eventually get covered under an annotation, but until then I find this the easiest way to gather skeletal photos.
I especially like projects that do more than just collect observations in an area or of a particular kind, but whose leaders - both the creators and those who follow the project - make a real effort to respond to and engage with observations that fall within the project. Found Feathers is a great example, but so are Scatology, North American Animal Tracking Database, and Tinctorial. Knowing that there will be a concerted effort to take a look at and evaluate observations by interested people encourages me to add both my observations and other people’s observations to these projects.
I love my local projects, and have made very major contributions to them: NYC Ecoflora and Biodiversity of Randall’s Island. Also a very new, very local one, which I hope to help expand, Carl Schurz Park Biodiversity. But I must say, Leafminers of North America is really, really great – I love finding Leafminers.
Microscopic Microbes is the largest catch all way of grouping together microscopic lifeforms, many of which are difficult to ID even to kingdom so it’s very needed.
Some more projects I’ve come across that collect observations you can’t easily search for with filters:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/audio-observations-from-around-the-world
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/euromediterranean-alien-species
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/alien-parrots-observatory
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/camera-traps-trail-cams
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cal-cam-california-trail-cams
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/hand-feeding
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/dead-animals
It’s really hard to find the interesting projects, since there is no good way to search for them, you just kind of have to randomly stumble on them.
I’m also a fan of the unique projects, here are two that document interactions between species:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/butterfly-moth-nectar-plants
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/butterfly-moth-host-plants
Another one that collects things that filters can’t:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes
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