new user. been enjoying learning more about mostly my garden visitors. my thinking is to just observe & upload each new species once…. but then i was thinking that knowing a certain butterfly species is still flying or the hummingbirds are still in my MA garden could potentially be useful scientific data… so do most people try not to repeat observations & uploads? thank you
Not me! I repeat at will!
I don’t worry about whether or not anyone else finds my observations “useful”, that’s their business. I’m here to show what I’ve seen, as well as I am able, record the date and time and do my best to identify what I observe.
Welcome to the Forum!
Welcome!
Different users have different approaches… To each their own. Most all data is useful in some regard.
As you mention, I do personally prefer to have repeat observations of things I am interested in to create a timeline for my locale. Either way, enjoy and have fun!
Many people take a “one organism, one place, one day” approach to avoiding repeats: making one observation of one species in one place on a particular day is enough for them. But as someone who’s interested in insect-plant interactions, my definition of “one place” might be “on this particular tree" or “visiting this particular species of flower”. But I’ve also encountered people who feel one individual per trip is enough for them. Or maybe you want to show that different life stages or reproductive states are all present on the same day, so you do two observations, one for an adult and an one for a juvenile of the same species.
In the end, it’s up to you.
Personally, I repeat at will. Subconsciously, it’s less exciting to see something I’ve already see before, so I’ll end up observing common species less often, but I do see the value in re-observing common species. If I see the same species in a different “place”, depending on how I feel, I might re-observe it. If it’s too close by, or if I feel it’s too overwhelmingly common, I might not.
Sometimes I’ll choose a specific spot to try to iNat everything (or everything wild, or everything wild and interesting-looking, etc.) and I’ll get a bunch of common species that way, but may end up picking up some new and/or less common species. Other times, there’s a BioBlitz event and I’m like, I gotta represent the common species here, so I’ll go and observe them again.
And sometimes I still haven’t observed some very common species.
And sometimes the common species are charismatic and attractive to me and so I stop and take them. This usually means herps. Show me a lizard and I will probably stop and take a picture of it. Even if it’s the super-common anoles or curlytails.
(Also this pales in comparison to that one guy who I’ve heard of who actually follows the rules to the letter and takes an individual observation for every single individual of a species in a group. I don’t do that)
I generally upload anything that I find entertaining or that were captured in great details in photos. But, you can really upload almost anything that you want. Uploading multiples of the same species as long as they are different individuals are great for measuring species richness and species diversity in the area. Believe it or not there are plenty of biologists that use this data. We used to reference RG observations in college for a few different projects. In any event, do what makes you feel good. It’s Citizen Science after all.
Any and every wild thing is fair game to me. Some days I take photos of everything. Other days I just stick with the highlights.
I once uploaded over 100 Megatibicen resh observations in less than 2 months. Still one of my proudest moments, though I’m sure dan_johnson and other local bug identifiers got sick of seeing my name and profile picture.
Basically, upload as many repeats as you want if it makes you happy.
I take photos of everything, but will definitely prioritize unique organisms or ones I think I haven’t observed before. That being said, leaving work today I took pictures of cottontail rabbits and gray squirrels which I see ALL the time! It definitely varies, but like others have said, all data is worth it!
Post whatever you want (assuming it’s a wild organism, has correct date and place, and has some hope of being ID’d from the photo). Having multiple photos lets us know about distribution, about dates of flowering / fruiting, about interactions (e.g. pollinators and flowers). Don’t post the same individual organism more than once a day unless sometimes changed. Otherwise, post all you want. We don’t know what future researchers will want.
(but then you paid it forward, and helped to ID Megatibicen resh for others, and for your identifiers ?)
I quite enjoy filling gaps (or trying to, anyway) in the species maps, so that the finer-scale range maps are filled in better: this tends to result in me repeatedly recording common species in places where fewer people tend to go/record. That also feels worthwhile for recording species’ spread/movements, esp. in the face of climatic change. It also makes me look a little more at what’s around me wherever I am.
I do that, too. I figure if no one has recorded a really common plant from an area, there are probably many, many other species that have been missed as well.
As others have said, anything you feel like uploading is worth uploading. One thing I’ve found is that I’ll sometimes learn about a new species and go back through my old observations and find that I’ve observed it before, but misidentified it as a lookalike. So you never know which of those 100 observations of a “common” plant might actually be something different that you didn’t even know to look for! Not to mention old plant observations that I re-visit only to find a neat gall or leaf mine hiding in plain sight that I didn’t know to look for back then.
I have more than one approach.
For plants I will usually only post one or two observations of any given species in a particular place in any year. So, I won’t post dozens of observations of species X on my own property in one year, but might post it again the following year, and I will generally post the same species in every other location I see it.
For bees, butterflies and other pollinators, I will generally post almost all of the individuals I see, because I belong to a couple of projects specifically for studying pollinators. (although if a particular plant has multiple individuals of the same species, I will only post one or two, making sure they are actually different individuals.)
And I post everything that I’ve never seen before, because who doesn’t love a “lifer?”
Here’s a perennially popular thread:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-your-favorite-lifer-from-this-week/24219
Welcome to iNat and the Forum!
I’ve been using iNat for about 5 months now - for me, I tend to do about one species per day unless I get multiple members of the same species wherein theres noticeable differences. I’ll make exceptions for different genders, rare traits, etc. If it’s something that’s more rare, I’ll do different observations for each member of that species. If it’s something more common to the area, especially all year/most of the year, I might limit that to maybe once a month personally - but if it’s something that’s seasonal, I’ll stick to once a day even if it is more common at that moment in time. For all you know, it could be gone tomorrow! Any new species that you haven’t recorded before should always be uploaded though for sure.
The bottom line is: as long as you’re not observing the same species that’s around all year long 20 times in one day, I think you’re pretty set to do whatever works best for you :]
All data is good data in my eyes!
@bugbaer Ditto! I’m documenting associations, not (only) documenting presence. That’s my exception to my “all photos of one individual in the same observation” rule. If it’s associating with more than one other species - such as visiting different flowers - those are different observations!
@kc71 Welcome to iNat, and the Forum! The only site I might visit daily is my own garden. There, for me, daily observations are overkill. The phenology is important to me, so earliest and latest sightings, as you are thinking, and periods of abundance, are important to me.
When visiting other sites, I just photograph as much as I can while I’m there. (Which makes me wonder: How many different “sites” have I visited?!)
I think you got it right.
the better question is, what is not worth to upload.
I would say, dont upload homo sapiens stuff and dont upload geological stuff like minerals.
But every thing else that is life or a trace of life is interesting.
It can give a picture about season of plants or climate change or population, you can track if you get more or less neophytes or if you have more or less wild snails.
May it does not make sense in one moment but late after some time, so better you have some data then.
The freedom to do what pleases you as exemplified by the responses on this thread is why I love iNat.
Cicadas are still a little complex for me 
, though I’ve definitely tried my hand. I have, however, made almost 5000 identifications— mostly triaging unknowns, but some other things i’m more familiar with as well!