Sunbathing birds is sure a fun one!
I’ve recently looked through some of my observations and some of them were of silhouettes. I was curious if someone had already made a silhouette based project and lo and behold, there was!
Does anyone know if there are any existing projects for same-sex animal/insect couples? Whether for bonded pairs or misguided hook-up attempts?
I’ve come across a few observations of male bees trying to mate with other males and it seems like it would be worthwhile to collect them somewhere, but I thought I’d check first whether there is already some project I failed to find using the rather frustrating project search function.
There is a new project I instantly looove and I wonder, why nobody had this idea before
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/observations-with-id-tips
Ooh, I’ve been using Favorites for this. I’ll add the ones I’ve collected to this project. What a great idea! @Ajott, thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I did the same and now do the same… putting those favourites to the project
Why are there so many projects with similar names? Can they not be merged together?
• project Observations With ID Tips
• project Observations containing ID Tips
• project Helpful ID Info
And then this forum idea https://Create “Journals” Tab on Taxon Page for Quick Info on Taxon was fantastic additionally but not sure if it actually is happening
Because different usrs independently came up with the same idea.
No, because they were created by different people; it would be no different than merging different users’ observation pages.
We can’t merge projects but I believe that it is possible to set up an umbrella project that collects observations from different projects. I don’t know how it’s done, though.
Its a shame that it’s only for Europe!
I’ve made a project that combines the existing ID Tips projects: ID Tips Umbrella Project. Please let me know if there are any I’ve forgotten.
To actually contribute to this thread: my favorite project at the moment is Flower-Visiting Wasps of the World. Wasps are so cool and they’re much more important for the ecosystems they’re in than people realize.
Great!
This is my favorite: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/bitter-about-litter
So much litter these days it hurts my heart to see. What kind of of world are we leaving for future generations. Keep the World Beautiful!
Now that I know about that project, I may be less fastidious about keeping the litter out of my observation shots.
I join two kinds of project: those that are just for fun, and those that have more serious scientific goals.
My favorite just-for-fun projects are “Blue!” and “Arthropod Faces”
My favorite serious projects are:
“Vermont Wild Bee Survey”
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/vermont-wild-bee-survey?tab=about
and “Pollinator Interactions on Plant (PIP) of the NE US”
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pollinator-interactions-on-plants-pip-of-the-ne-us
Both are projects ot the Vermont Center for Ecostudies
https://vtecostudies.org/
Arthropod faces
Oh, that’s mine! Thank you so much!
I’ve been kind of obsessed with going through projects lately! I just wish they had a way to filter search results, like searching the name only, excluding limited time events, etc… Anyway, here are some of my faves that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned here yet. A lot of them are unknown and underutilized!
Pretty:
- Abstract Beauty
- Nature / Design Interface
- Metalloids - I was shocked that this was the only project I could find about iridescence. And it’s also about metallic textures.
- Colourful Observations
Cool:
- Animal Eye-Shine and Animals at Night. Similar concepts!
- Bioluminescent Organisms - GLOWY CRITTERS!
- Black Water - Critters in the dark depths of the open ocean. Also: Deep-sea fishes.
- Camouflage and Mimicry and Camouflaged Animals. And Mimicry Gallery.
- Casually Cool - I really like the idea of this one. It’s just for highlighting casual observations that you think are cool. Such as creatures that are…
- …Extinct in the Wild, which will always be marked “casual” on account of being captive or cultivated. There are other projects but this is a traditional project so you can add ones that the others are missing from their lists.
- Last Photos: Observations Of Extinct Organisms - More sadness.
- Reintroductions - Putting them back out there.
- Cave Dwellers / Cave Wildlife / Subterranean Biology Project, and, more specifically: Cave and Subterranean Fishes of the World & Decapoda Subterranea.
- Cryptobiotic soil
- Lightning Strikes - Trees with lightning damage. And one observation of some poor sheep or something. But mostly trees with neat scars!
- Power Line Pruning
- UV fluorescent organisms
- Undescribed Species on iNaturalist / Undescribed Species and Taxa
*Flightless Birds of the World
PLANTS:
They get their own category.
- Arbres Exceptionnels / Outstanding trees - That’s my jam right there.
- Unique Trees
- old trees - Yes, please.
- Holes made before the leaf (or flower) opened.
- Lacey (skeletonized) leaves
- Lots of carnivorous plant projects! Carnivorous Plants and Sphagnum Moss / Carnivorous Plants of the World / Carnivorous Plants Worldwide.
- Vampire Plants of California That Prey on Plants (Holoparasites)
- Mycoheterotrophic Plants of the World or Myco-heterotrophic plants of the World - Plants living off fungus that lives off plants!
- Myrmecophytes of the World - Ant plants! That’s just fascinating.
- Plant vivipary - Seeds sprouting in pods and stuff. These kids think they’re so grown up.
- Seedlings of the world! & Seedling Catalogue. Learn what to pull ASAP.
- Seeds of the world! for when you forget what you’ve stored away.
- Variegated Wild Plants
- Weird places
- Plants photographed from far away
- Painful Plants of the United States
- Trees Eating Things
- Virtual herbarium
(Subjectively) Funny:
- Animals In Places They Shouldn’t Be - So far lighthearted and fun from what I’ve seen.
- Animals that Can cause pain - That odd capitalization choice and the description, “Discover the cool and really painful animals of the whole world”. Also taught me that a lot of animals can hurt you that I didn’t know about! The list is definitely not complete though. But the person who made it also has projects about most painful stings and creatures that they find disgusting.
- Debatably an Organism - “The worst of the worst. Submit your crappy photos of taxa that can still be identified.”
- Screenshots, Snaps, and other Silly images - More incredible wildlife photography.
- Cursed Nature - This might be THE favorite.
- Large and In Charge - Absolute units. I’m enjoying adding non-animals to it. Some thicc plants out there.
- Mistakes have been made - I’m sorry for laughing at some of these because a few of them could have been bad. But they weren’t! And they show that venomous animals aren’t out to get anybody.
- People Gripping Animals Like They Owe Em Money - It’s like these life forms aren’t tame or something? This wins funniest title, hands down.
- Steves of the World - Not as funny as Geralds. Birds missing tailfeathers.
- UFOs - Unidentified Flying Organisms
- Organisms Celebrating Holidays
More Niche, Regional, etc:
- Bald Moths - What’s up with that?
- Big Wall Botany - Plants on Yosemite Valley’s walls and cliffs.
- Biodiversity of U.S. National Monuments - Same reason as the National Parks ones.
- Domesticated Biodiversity Project - For interesting observations of domesticated species.
- Epiphytes of Honolulu bus stops - Love it.
- Hot springs - Add your observations of critters at hot springs.
- Invisible Insects - When you’re taking a photo of a plant and you don’t even notice the bug in it!
- Life in Storm Drains
- Radioecological Reserves Around the World
- Taxidermy/Mounted/Preserved Specimens
Oh dear, that’s a dangerous list, 'cause I’m gonna spend a lot of time looking at some of those…
I wouldn’t want to self promote but I recently created the project Winter Twigs Although the name is winter twigs, any deciduous including drought deciduous plants are welcome.
I found there weren’t any projects collecting dormant branches of deciduous trees and shrubs so I set out to make my own. My inspiration was a course I took in college called winter twigs that focused on identifying plants in their dormant state.
So if you have a species not already in the project, please include it to help identifiers
@Spifferella what an extensive list! Thanks for sharing
Love this one! I added my photos from college ornithology class and one of my friend who caught a hawk trying to eat her chickens.
I love finding plants growing in weird places. It may take me a while to go through all my obs to find ones for this project.
I have a couple of these
Good repository for all my undescribed galls