I observe and photograph any species around me (including biological footprints, feces, shells). I often walk very slowly because I am afraid of missing a species. I usually look at a green belt for a long time to see if there are spiders, aphids, moths and so on. In the wild, I look for the cocoon of a thorn moth, and whether it’s empty or not, I take it home, Because I’ve found spiders living in two cocoons I’ve collected! I also look at the bark for fungi and moss. I’ll take pictures of them with my phone, and I’ll try to get a clear picture. These habits I have since childhood, because I love the nature of any kind of life!
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Mostly, if it catches my attention and I can photo it, I do. But what else?
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Are you more likely to observe an organism if it’s been identified or gotten other engagement in the past?
Yes, but. I’m likely to post something if I think people have a particular interest in it. – but I photo a lot of things just because they’re there. Getting ID’s is encouraging, but I photo mushrooms and flies that are unlikely to be ID’d. Now that I’m aware of the project “Never Home Alone” I’m even more likely to photo animals in buildings including latrines than I was before. -
Will you pass up observations if a species is ‘common’? Both on iNat as a whole and your own personal observation count?
Yes and no. I try to record everything in a given park or other place I visit, whether they’re common or not. (I don’t feel a need to photo every one on every trip; I want a cumulative list to be complete.) On the other hand, Douglas-Fir are so common here that I rarely even notice them, much less photo them. I’m certainly more likely to photo something I perceive as rare or as new to me. -
Do you stick to taxonomical niches and only observe those? (i.e. Only observing birds)
Yes, but it’s a broad selection of favorite taxa. I like birds and photo them whenever I can – but I often can’t. I photo mostly plants because they’re slow and big enough to see. I photo more graminoids (grasses, sedges, rushes) than most people because I can ID them and therefore I see them where most people treat them as background, but they’re hard to photo well so I don’t take the time as often as I might. -
Do you look for new organisms after learning about their existence?
Yes. But I also learn about a lot of organisms that I don’t keep photographing.
Other things that influence my photography? Right now, I’m trying to post something every day, so iNaturalist is getting even more photos of squirrels outside my office window than before. If I perceive something as useful and I can easily photo it, I do, e.g. pollinators on flowers. I photo plants in flower or fruit on the excuse that people will be interested in phenology (when things happen), though that may not be my only motivation. Dead vertebrates may be of interest and I post them. As said above, I want to make a complete record of what’s at any given park – though really I mean complete for vascular plants and those other organisms that are obvious to me. I’ll photo any insect that is big enough, obvious enough, and slow enough for me to notice and photo – a short list.
Other factors – The organism must be near a road or trail. If I would have to get close to it to photo, it must not be in Poison Oak. I miss interesting things because I rarely readjust the habitat (e.g. turn over logs or rocks) to find subjects.
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It depends on the activity I’m doing. If I’m out specifically to go birding, I’ll generally post every bird I see (or at least one of each species), even the more common ones. If I’m just out hiking or on a walk, I’ll only take a photo and post if it’s something interesting - less common birds or a moose or something. I wouldn’t take the time to get a photo of the really common species. I’m not all that interested in plants, fungi, or insects unless I see something really unique.
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Are you more likely to observe an organism if it’s been identified or gotten other engagement in the past?
This is complicated. Sometimes I’m more likely to observe something if it hasn’t been reliably identified in the past, because I want to know! And sometimes I’ve been told that I failed to photograph distinguishing features, which encourages me to proactively attempt to get better photos next time.
But with other groups, the difficulty of identifying them does put me off somewhat; lichens in particular are a good example of that, and invertebrate/herp eggs are another example.
Will you pass up observations if a species is ‘common’? Both on iNat as a whole and your own personal observation count?
My personal observation count for a species does generally disincline me to observing it, yes - unless it’s a taxa of special interest to me. I enthusiastically observe every lycophyte I see, even if there are several within a small patch.
Overall commonness on iNaturalist doesn’t dissuade me, though; if anything, a common species I haven’t yet personally observed is tantalizing, and I will make efforts to find them. I keep a list of the most commonly observed local species I haven’t observed yet, for this purpose!
Do you stick to taxonomical niches and only observe those? (i.e. Only observing birds)
Not really. I enjoy observing as much as I can, and learning about new species and taxa; I’m especially interested in the evolutionary relationships between groups, both ecologically and cladistically, so I find variety enriches my experience on the platform. That said, my bias against things I’ve seen a lot does affect some taxa more than others (there are many local species of birds, angiosperms, conifers, and mosses that I seldom stop to observe anymore; but I haven’t observed that many of any given species of reptile, amphibian, lycophyte, fungus, or mammal that isn’t the Eastern Grey Squirrels).
Do you look for new organisms after learning about their existence?
Yes! Enthusiastically. Whenever I plan a new excursion I look at the area and see what interesting species are present that I’ve never observed or heard of, and I make an effort to learn a bit about them and try to find them. This is one of the most rewarding parts of iNaturalist for me.
Some other factors that I know bias my observations:
- Confusion. If I can’t immediately tell what I’m looking at, I do my best to observe it right away; a big part of what I enjoy about iNaturalist is learning about species, morphologies, or life stages that I wasn’t familiar with before.
- My camera equipment. I’m well-equipped to take pictures of sessile or slow organisms that are visible to the naked eye within about 5-10m of wherever I’m standing. I also have a good waterproof camera which also takes solid macro photos, which is something not everyone has! This leads me to taking more photos of things like springtails, live fish, or lake newts than I otherwise might. On the other hand, I’m poorly equipped to take pictures of organisms that are more than 10m away, organisms encountered during dark hours, or organisms that are moving quickly. This leads to my bird observations being rather lacking; I see so many of the common urban birds that I don’t observe them much anymore, and it’s so hard for me to get identifiable pictures of less-common birds that I also have very few of those either.
- In a similar vein, observing microscopic or underwater organisms is technically challenging. I’ve been scuba diving for less than a year and haven’t felt comfortable enough with my buoyancy to bring my camera with me until my most recent dive, and I only recently acquired a dip net and a little microscope; prior to accessing those options, I simply wouldn’t have been able to make those observations.
- I’m more inclined to observe organisms I can spot with a cursory visual sweep of the area, or a cursory close-up look at a specific substrate like tree bark or the underside of a log. I don’t spend a lot of time rooting through a small area to find things that are well-hidden.
- I’m definitely biased towards animal observations, even as a plant enthusiast; animals are exciting and I try to observe almost every live individual I see (except the aforementioned common urban birds, and the Eastern Grey Squirrel). I recently went scuba diving with my camera and ended up with over a dozen observations of black-eyed gobies, for no other reason than that I took pictures of as many as I could get close to and they were exciting; admittedly, I saw far more individual algae, and observed far fewer of them.
- While I understand their importance, I don’t enjoy sharing pictures of dead animals, or of decomposing/withered plants or felled trees. I’m also not inclined to record tracks, scat, eggs, or other signs of presence (partly because they’re less exciting, and partly because fewer people seem able to confirm IDs of them on iNaturalist), so I have fewer of those observations than what I’ve actually seen.
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Are you more likely to observe an organism if it’s been identified or gotten other engagement in the past?
Absolutely - there are several groups I observe frequently just because I know some people who will get excited about them, even if I’m not personally that attached to them - it’s fun to know someone is interested.
Will you pass up observations if a species is ‘common’? Both on iNat as a whole and your own personal observation count?
It depends on how I’m feeling day by day - sometimes I just want to focus on new things, but usually I try to observe at least one specimen of the common species I’m passing.
Do you stick to taxonomical niches and only observe those? (i.e. Only observing birds)
I like to observe everything, but I do tend to focus more on plants than other things - I can ID them more easily than other groups, and they never run away while I’m getting my camera out.
Do you look for new organisms after learning about their existence?
The unobserved_by_user_id= search string is one of my favorite uses of iNat, and I often go out of my way to find things in my area that others have spotted.
Some of the other factors I notice affecting my own observations:
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General identifiability - I generally avoid making observations I think can’t be identified to species. For instance, I almost never photograph mosses, because 99% of them need microscopic views to ID. And I usually avoid lichens as well unless I’m out with someone who is showing me specific ones that can be identified without microscopy.
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Prevalence of identifiers for that taxonomic group - I rarely photograph mushrooms unless I already know what they are or they’re particularly unusual, because I know there are very few mushroom IDers and they’re already swamped, so I feel bad asking them to ID stuff. Same goes for a lot of insects / spiders / etc.
I’m sure there’s more, I may edit to update if I remember what they are.
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These are great questions. The answers are not always straightforward.
E.g., sometimes I deliberately make lots of observations of “common” species. Last spring, there was a local project here in eastern Massachusetts to track Symplocarpus foetidus, which is pretty common. But given that there was a well-designed project, I went ahead and posted lots of observations of S. foetidus. It helped that I knew there were lots of IDers ready and willing to ID those observations.
So I guess part of my answer to your questions is that I look for interesting well-designed projects, and do my best to contribute to them.
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It all depends on where I am, personally.
If I’m 2,000 miles away from home, I’ll be aiming to get as many different species as possible, and I’ll quickly start ignoring things that I’ve already photographed a few times that day, just because I figure my time is best spent looking for something new.
If I’m at my local park, I tend to photograph and submit just about every plant species I notice every time I’m out. I want to have pretty fine-scale maps of where plants are growing, when they’re flowering, etc., around the parks, so I’ll gladly submit 20 observations of the same grass species in the same powerline cut to get a view of which sections of the cut it grew in that season. With enough data, one can zoom in and get an idea of different microhabitats and patches of different plant species. If I just reported the first few individuals I saw of a species in a day and then stopped, it would look like all the common species only grow around the trailheads, because by the time I got away from the trailhead I’d be ignoring them. If Black Walnut grows along the entirety of a trail, I want the range map for Black Walnut to show dots along the whole trail. But again, this is only for my few local “haunts” where I care about seeing this sort of map data. I’m mainly interested in moth diversity, and being able to pinpoint precisely where host plants do and don’t grow along various trails can be vital to locating moth populations. I’m not going to spend my Colorado vacation photographing every single spruce tree that I walk by.
So I guess my point is, just ask what you’re hoping to personally get out of your submissions.
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I didn’t realize so many people had goals or things they want to prove while making observations! Personally I’ve only ever had a few, like wanting to show how common grasshopper mites are in my area, or getting some pinecones to dissect in the hopes of finding a specific wasp species (Megastigmus albifrons). Most of my motivation behind observing things is to fill out the list of species in the nearby mountain ranges, my area is relatively ‘unexplored’ when it comes to the amount of observations here, and it’s a nice feeling being able to find something that wasn’t recorded here before! I have plans to visit a lot of other places I haven’t checked previously (like a few lakes!), as well as revisiting older hiking locations to be more thorough.
Good luck!! I plan on getting into benthic macroinvertebrates soon (hopefully early march!), as well as looking at pond critters under my school’s microscope!
Oh cool! I’ve kept my involvement with projects to a minimum unintentionally, as I don’t know if it’s ‘worth’ joining any or if I’d contribute anything useful, the few I have taken part in are some BioBlitzes in areas and communities I was already familiar with.
I’m happy I asked these questions! It’s amazing seeing how many different perspectives and opinions there are on the same set of questions, as well as how they’re influenced by personal biases and environmental factors, and I’ve definitely learned a lot from reading everyone’s answer!
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iNat is an outlet for my natural curiosities but with a purpose beyond my own self interest so I’m willing to “shoot” anything I find.
As a life-long birder I report what I can but don’t have a long lens to do that well. iNat isn’t a substitute for eBird and vice versa. A while ago I stopped keeping personal state/county bird lists and only casually keep a life/yard list. Birds in home habitat are more interesting than out of place rarities and aren’t worth spending extra carbon/$ for a personal/ego list. Even here, it was nice to get 2,000 confirmed but that is because I like zeros, not because it is necessarily meaningful.
What do I report? Anything new (new life stage) in an old location (house…), anything in a new location/habitat, date/season etc. Highway rest areas (minus the cultivated) are often rich sources of something worth reporting, including invasives in need of documentation. Anything that might matter to research.
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I mostly do vascular plants, and on one observation outing I will try to get at least one example of everything (native or invasive) I see. If I return to the area, I still do the same thing, sometimes visiting the same individual plants I captured before. I’m also interested in phenology (the state of plants at different times of the year) so will also be interested in whether the same plants are e.g., leafing out earlier than in previous years. I will do birds and fungi (which I am bad at ID’ing) if I see them, but not as systematically and I mostly use my phone which is not great for distance or close-up.
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My interaction with nature is reflected in my observations. That is the purpose of iNaturalist, to my understanding.
The factors are weather, rare “other things” to do and mood/energy level. I do know I see much less on low days, high days I can barely cover any distance for the abundance of observations.
What I observe is (what I consider as) who shows themselves to me. What/how other people use the observations is up to them.
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