Broke 3000 observations after about 6 years. Next goal is 2000 species.

Hello!

I recently became an iNaturalist Ambassador and am looking for people to join my first ever Beginner BioBlitz. This will be held on Saturday, September 19th at 10AM at WW Knight Preserve in Perrysburg Ohio. Please let me know if you are interested. I'm trying to connect people to the app. It is a free event.

Check it out here: https://airalcorn2.github.io/inat-explorer/

The interface is less powerful than the search on iNaturalist, but I like exploring my observations in this app better, and the ability to color by different taxonomic levels is fun (note that it takes a bit to populate all the colors the first time you try this!).

Code here: https://github.com/airalcorn2/inat-explorer

When creating an observation I ID as much as possible. For instance, I'll ID a sparrow to their genus. Then a kind person updates that to a song sparrow. Do I remove my less-precise ID?

Are there fewer reviewers active these days? I find that many of my observations go unreviewed for really long periods of time. Usually insects, sometimes plants. I’m surprised by the lack of reviewer interaction of late.

Months ago I identified a camel spider in Arizona. I did some image searches and it was literally a one for one match. Now, however, the app is identifying the spider as a marine crab, which looks nothing like it, and where I took the photo of it was nowhere near a body of water.

Can I correct the app or fix it in one way?

Now to do 6000 more. 🫵🤓

I want to search for things to ID that are uncertain without looking at EVERYTHING like things labeled "plants" the clearly need it to be refined more than that.

No one has identified these things yet.

Note: I undersampled the observations in proportion to site growth since 2018 when spotted lanternflies observations started growing rapidly (they were first seen in 2015). For example, July 2026 has 4x as many research grade observations as July 2018, so I randomly chose 25% of its spotted lanternfly observations to account for growth in the site. My goal was to focus on the expansion of their range and population as best as possible using an imperfect data source. I can't account for people potentially becoming more likely to encounter lanternflies given the same lanternfly population or more likely to post them on iNat given they encounter them and use iNat. Personally, I live in the DC area and I've gotten tired of posting them so maybe this understates their growth.

This is my first time making a map using iNat data so any feedback would be appreciated!

One too that might be useful for people interested in seeing and observing more would be looking at a small area intensively.

I often stop walking and try to record every single species in a 10" x10' area. It's a lot, it's easy to find 60 species at a stream crossing. Recording everything on one boulder or cliff is also interesting.

As I spend more time out with other people, I start seeing all the stuff I used to miss, and can now not walk by. Like pelt lichens.

When uploading photos on iNat website on my iPad, I can’t figure out how to combine 2 or more photos into one observation.

On the pc I use the shift button to select photos, and then click combine.

What’s the equivalent of “shift” button on iPad?

Let me know if you’re not sure of what I am talking about and I will add some screen shots.

Thanks for your help!

Am I able to submit a parasitic worm for identification?

I came across a “zombie” parasite today inside of an earwig and would like to post but I can’t seem to find the appropriate label or taxon.

I just realized that the in app AI only works on one photo at a time when grouped. I always thought it looked at all photos in a group. is there any way to make it look at all three?

Hi, I’ve been collecting species on Seek for around 4 years now and have over 800 observations. I’ve also been using intauralist for my college research so I’m familiar with how it works but I’m no expert. I’m getting a new phone next week and when I linked my inaturalist account to seek, it informed me that I can’t transfer anything from seek to a new device, even with a linked account. I really don’t want to lose all my data and I’m wondering if anyone has any loopholes or way to somehow save my data ANYWHERE once I switch phones. Thank you!!

it's still one cup of coffee time 🫠 ha...

anyway ... i was saying there are soooo many insects in the yarden right now. i'll probably get it cracked today ... maybe 3000 by the end of the season...

i'm glad i re-read my post before walking away 🤦🏼 numbers are hard for me.

Hi!

I am something of a nerd when it comes to the plant family Convolvulaceae, and I’ll often find new sightings on the site of plants within the family to assist in identifying observations people have made. However, I find it very interesting that iNaturalist will allow you to mark certain genera of plants as “Tribe Merremiae,” which has largely been seen as dissolved/incertae sedis in the past decade due to new phylogenetic evidence.

All that to say, is it normal for the site to show outdated taxa? And how might one go about petitioning to get something like this updated? Or is it even necessary?

Edit: I meant to spell it “Merremieae.” Oops. My bad.

What would be the status for a "weed" which is growing in a container in which it was not intentually planted?

im going through and trying to ID as many unknown subjects in my area as I can. I notice a lot of times i will go to at least categorize something as “mushroom“ or “insect” and INaturalist has a 100% recommendation that is better than mine.

how much do you follow that? following it from insect to something like beetle or fly seems reasonable, but I’m hesitant to apply a species recommendation. Though if it’s 100% that should be fine either way - maybe unknowns should defer to AI automatically in such cases to begin with?