What is the number of observations for a given taxon?

General
1

This has probably been asked before but I can’t find an answer. The taxon page and the Explore page report different numbers of observations for a given taxon. I believe the latter is the number of verifiable observations but what is the interpretation of the numbers on the taxon page?

Here is an exaple:

Taxon From taxon page (2020-10-30) From Explore page (2020-10-30)
Clintonia 12,551 12,118
C. andrewsiana 1,442 1,404
C. borealis 8,060 7,792
C. udensis 47 46
C. umbellulata 584 561
C. uniflora 2,218 2,148

The numbers on the taxon page are consistently greater than the numbers on the Explore page. How are the numbers on the taxon page generated? Thanks!

2

Are you referring to the numbers in the taxonomy tab?

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I believe those include casual grade observations:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=51647&verifiable=any (1443 as of the time of writing)

3

Oh, I see now. You have to uncheck the “Verifiable” checkbox in the Explore interface to get all of the observations, including the casual observations. I didn’t know that, thanks bouteloua!

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8

In contrast, every other data item on the taxon page is based on verifiable observations, so the observation counts on the “Taxonomy” tab are inconsistent with the rest of the page. I created a bug report that suggests verifiable observations be used throughout.

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