What determines if an area in the "map" section of a species page is orange or green?

[i_henderson_404]

Here is the map in the species page for the beetle Calosoma frigidum, zoomed in to southern Manitoba. Some census districts are green due to research grade observations, other census districts are not coloured in due to lack of research grade observations, and some other districts are coloured gold and contain research grade observations. What decides whether a district is coloured gold or green on the map page?

[egordon88]

Any colored map region corresponds to a checklist or atlas. I think yellow means there are no records yet, but the checklist indicates it is present.

[thomaseverest]

Welcome to the forum! This has been asked several times before, and you can probably find your answer elsewhere. Such as:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/map-legend-what-does-the-orange-color-represent/3573
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/colors-coding-on-maps/13795/4

[i_henderson_404]

I actually didn’t find my answer, the two previous threads said that orange areas have no RG observations but have observations from another source, but orange areas here and elsewhere have RG observations within them. In the example I screenshotted, the three gold districts in south Manitoba each have one observation and are gold, while the district between the lakes also has one RG observation, but is green.

[mrtnlowr]

Let’s be a little more explicit here. The orange areas indicate there are no RG observations for a taxon in the listed_taxa table for a particular place. Like all lists these too are ‘buggy’, in particular they don’t update automatically when an observation becomes RG so a place can remain orange even though there are RG observations. This is exactly the case for Division 7, MB, CA as shown here:

You have to update the list manually. Go to the URL shown in the image, select the ‘Observations from this place tab’ then click ‘refresh’ on the left. Wait a little while and the once orange area on the taxon’s map page will become green.

HTH :)

PS: I’ve left this as a little exercise for you; I didn’t refresh the list.

[i_henderson_404]

Thank you! Is it a worthwhile activity to go in and refresh taxa pages for particular places if I see it hasn’t updated?

[cthawley]

I think if it is a place that you intend to use or which the info would be valuable for, that is fine. I wouldn’t just go through and refresh place pages in bulk. Reindexing places is fairly data intensive and places put a high burden on iNat infrastructure. This is one of the reasons (I think) why places don’t just autorefresh all the time to stay updated.