Since making this post I managed to get the person I had previously mentioned on this post mark their cultivated plant posts. It took them a long time however as apparently there isn’t a quick way to do this on the app? I’m not an app user so I’m just relaying what they said to me.
I also located another user. I’ve tried to get this user to mark their cultivated observations but they never do. A majority of their observations are cultivated plants photographed in display gardens. I’d estimate easily over 50% of their observations are cultivated plants, which have been uploaded as wild observations. Some have even obtained research grade status. I tried commenting on their posts previously to teach them how to mark their observations are captive / cultivated, but no progress has been made as they didn’t respond. Is there a way to try and get through to them or are they a lost cause destined to be terminated?
1 Like
Many of the things I plant are locally native species that are part of a native restoration I’m doing on land that I own. It saddens me that these plantings are observable but go un id’d. To answer your quote… YES, sometimes an interest in non-wild organisms is a genuine interest in nature.
The distinction between cultivated and wild seems increasingly silly to me. Eventually, the transition to the anthropocene will mean FULL acceptance of cultivated native plants or there will be fewer wild organisms supported by them.
5 Likes
Why would you assume that an interest in non-wild plants must have nothing to do with nature?
If I have a community of insects in my backyard, is it not relevant what plants they are on?
If an invasive species has escaped cultivation, is it not relevant when and where it was cultivated?
7 Likes
I “can’t be bothered” to find a mention because I identify a lot of things, and iNaturalist follows every single one of them. If you know of a way to filter notifications for just mentions, or a setting that makes iNat not follow everything, then please by all means let me know. I honestly have no idea how other people keep up with their mentions.
Maybe they will notice and remember, people can think I’m annoying if they want to. The point is useful usable data, and this seems to be the method most likely to get that.
Also no, I didn’t see where you disagreed with me. I’m not sure what relevance that has to this thread?
and notifications will sometimes be - please reconsider, because a taxon specialist has explained why this is or isn’t …
Never mind.
1 Like
The other thing that is being lost by ignoring cultivated observations is the potential for future scientists to understand the provenance of restored native plant communities. If a large colony of trillium flexipes is found growing in an urban woodland 100 years from now, it might be interesting to know that restorationists 100 years prior re-established trillium flexipes in that same area during a woodland restoration. If we don’t track cultivated native plants, we won’t know the degree to which assisted regeneration worked. Future scientists will think natural regeneration was more powerful than it actually was.
3 Likes
In order for iNat to reach its full potential, protected areas will need to get over their aversion to “collection”. This doesn’t mean I’m an advocate for willy nilly collecting. It means that it’s in everyone’s interest to have “collections” of genotypes offered within the private market whose provenance is PUBLIC and traces back to the few remaining precious and carefully guarded wild places. Most of these few remaining wild places are parks and preserves… the stewards of which should be increasingly open to collection because of the newly offered ability to track provenance using iNat and “big data”.
When I go to native plant sales, I always ask where the genetics of the plants being sold are from. Close to 100% of the time I get a vague answer. Something like… oh they are from this local area. Ok, well where exactly? Can I link to an observation of the parent colony when I make an observation of the cultivated one? Because that’s what I want to do. Not that it matters if all of the newly established child colonies are hidden from the future historical record.
2 Likes
and notifications will sometimes be - please reconsider, because a taxon specialist has explained why this is or isn’t …
Never mind.
If it’s so important, then tell me how you do it. How do you keep track of your notifications when you ID zillions of things and iNat follows them all?
Edit: Removed some stuff because I read your comment as way more aggressive than it was probably intended and got kind of snippy, I’m sorry.
1 Like
https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_observations_updates.html
3rd party interface by pisum is one way used currently
I stuck with a homebrew way that works with my game controller, but I can also go over to pisum’s if I accidentally click wrong with my way. It’s great backup. You can go back to originally-missed notifications by changing its display filters.
3 Likes
Thank you, I will see how this works Edit: this is fantastic, thank you so much for sharing it with me!
2 Likes
In my first year here, I didn’t realise that notifications weren’t ‘FB Likes’
That there were questions that needed answers and responses. iNat is a learning curve. Now I work thru each notification.
And I hope that after waiting four years already, iNat will, one day give us a way to manage notifications. It is a mission to keep up if you choose to ID a lot.
3 Likes
I simply scroll through all of them. If the observation got to Research Grade, I usually don’t look at it – whatever I did didn’t get the in the way too badly. I try to look at all the ones that still aren’t RG because I may learn something or need to change an ID or something. Yes, it takes a long time. (And at the moment I haven’t done it for 3 days and close to 400 have piled up, not including observations from people I follow. Not sure when I’ll catch up.)
5 Likes
But scientists can only know that a now-wild population descended from cultivated plants rather than existing wild populations if the original cultivated plants are recorded as such. On iNat, this means that users need to be marking plants that are known to have been planted as “not wild”.
4 Likes
I’ve been having internet issues the last few days, so I wasn’t able to look at my notifications more than once a day, if that. I was rather horrified to see that one day I had over 500 notifications and over 300 another day. Now, most of those were because a couple of identifiers were going through just a few species and clicking agree on RG observations, so I could easily skip those notifications, but still, it was more notifications overall than I can easily deal with.
2 Likes
Correct, and there is no INCENTIVE to do so if the cultivated observations are hidden from gbif.
The setting with the most impact is probably to not give notifications for agreements - this cuts down a lot. You can also unfollow (though I prefer the above first if you haven’t done it yet as unfollowing can lead to missing some potentially important notifications).
The can also use this tool from @pisum:
https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_observations_updates.html
or check out some of the ideas in this current thread:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-to-do-about-many-notifs/44599
Edit: sorry I see others have suggested this, only saw one response to this initial post with the question, not the subsequent ones.
2 Likes
I don’t think it’s correct to say that they are “hidden” from GBIF - GBIF doesn’t want them - it’s a pretty significant difference. The alternative is incorrectly categorizing these observations as wild and sending them to GBIF - erroneous data which is worse than no data at all. And of course the observations are available via iNat direct export for anyone who is interested.
I also don’t think that the incentive of having data included on GBIF matters much to many users - certainly it matters to some folks who are scientists who know what GBIF is, but many users likely have no idea about this IMHO.
7 Likes
I was being generous, but you are correct. They are refusing this data. I’m pleased that iNat is inclusive of it. Especially as it relates to cultivated native plants with local genotypes.
1 Like
The world will always be a place full of wild organisms. And it is not necessary to go in a jungle or to climb a mountain.
I am not writing about you, but if certain people insist on not seeing wild organisms, it will mean that they will miss a large part of the biota.
I am not writing this about you, but if certain people insist on not seeing cultivated organisms, it will mean that they will miss a large part of the biota.
1 Like