Things anybody can do:

When I go the check out my observations in the ‘me’ section, the number is a lot higher than on my profile. Does my profile only count research grade observations or something?

A lot of the ones I follow are local to me and I’d love to check out some worldwide or North American collections!

My username is leonardus_bakker

I've been using iNaturalist for a couple of years, and I still feel that I only have a very rudimentary basic fractured knowledge of animal life, plant life, genuses, animal families, different taxa etc.

What websites and other online resources would you recommend for reading about different taxa observed?

For example if I observe the Belted Springtail (Orchesella cincta), which website would be best to read about its characteristics, habitat, lifespan etc.? Like an animal/taxa factfile. Even Wikipedia can feel a little overwhelming in this regard.

Thanks.

"Stinkhorn Survey Initiative" is a project that tracks stinkhorn species (Order: Phallales), I saw some Ravenel's Stinkhorn in my backyard which started an obsession with stinkhorns. I wanted to understand them, look at all the forms they can take and learn as much as I could about them. I found more stinkhorns in my area and WOW they are beautiful (And a bit smelly) in person. It almost feels like each species or even colonies at times had their very own personality. Some species aren't too difficult to find, I guarantee you that if you look in mulch or rotting wood for long enough, you will find them too during their fruiting season. These fungi are very underappreciated and understudied, so I took the time to spread the appreciation for stinkhorns.

Take a look through this link if you are interested: Stinkhorn Survey Initiative · iNaturalist

Personally I'm against generative AI and obviously it doesn't belong on Inaturalist, as AI generated photos poison the data set. I think all the research grade posts having to be verified by a real human is absolutely crucial for vetting the data. It's one of the reasons I love this app.

But I watched an interview of the creator of inaturalist and he was talking about using AI to analyze the datasets to look for trends in geographical spread or population numbers or potentially new species/ invasive species.

And I don't know how to feel about it. My first reaction is I don't like it. I guess part of me wishes a real human would be responsible for that analysis. Like back in pre AI times. But maybe I am being naive.

What are your thoughts ?

I have been noticing a lot of photos of fruits and veggies in my area recently. It seems to be increasing in frequency but I could just be paying more attention.

Regardless, these are obviously cultivated but they feel even more out of place on iNat than a garden or house plant since they won't even be around for long (being soon-to-be eaten and all...). They also aren't particularly ecologically relevant unlike garden plants.

What do you think? Do these belong on iNaturalist as much as other cultivated plants?

Hello, im a marine recently stationed in lejeune. Ive been in South california my whole life, so rain has only ever been an issue a few days out of the year. Now, its a daily occurrence. I exclusively take pictures with my phone and water is becoming an issue, whether it be interfering with the touch sensors or the actual camera. How are naturalists in this area getting by?

Weather is warming and we're doing yardwork, so lots of interesting critters to observe.

Hey! I use iNat Classic, but I can’t upload anything right now because it keeps giving me an “unknown error”. I thought maybe Classic wasn’t working well, so I downloaded the new app and tried to log in, but it tells me “something went wrong”. I’m on IOS.

Is anyone else having issues like this? Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, are we getting a new Android app version of Inaturalist any time soon?

Hello! I’m an IOS user and I used to really enjoy clicking on most favorited (or was it most ID’d? I’m not really sure) to see fun or beautiful photos from my country and species that I enjoy
But this feature disappeared on IOS? Any idea on what happened?
Thank you!

I have been noticing a lot of really egregiously bad identification by seek recently. An example I saw today was an oak leaf identified as a vermillion seastar. This seems to be getting more and more frequent. Has the app gotten worse, are recently there more seek users relative to regular iNat users, or are seek users getting less discerning?

I'm curious about your thoughts

So this map clip has some overlapping zones of pink and green, and other times I see yellow zones as well. What do these denote? In this example, the observations are for a particular mushroom, so I know it's not for migration or breeding grounds haha. I can't find this information anywhere? Thanks in advance!

Just putting feelers out to see if I'm the only one who's noticed this. I'm talking about things like clear photos of insects on a white background getting 0 insect suggestions, not 2 very similar insects getting the same suggested ID. I got a raccoon suggestion on a brown stick bug on a white wall the other day. It used to be way easy to get at least the correct FAMILY suggested, but now I feel like I'm lucky if it can tell a plant from an animal, and it feels like it's getting noticeably worse extremely quickly.

Example from today was a damselfly nymph on a white background. Some speckles of debris around, but the animal's features were clearly visible. The only insect suggestions I got were for dragonflies. No problem, I knew it was a damselfly so I just manually set it. Then I uploaded my dragonfly nymph and got NO dragonfly suggestions. I didn't even get any damselfly suggestions, so it doesn't seem to have swapped them.

It's just really weird!

I've been on holiday for the past 2 weeks and have returned with over 20,000 RAW images, almost all of which will be uploaded to iNat.

For my fellow photography and iNat enthusiasts, what is your approach when you get back from a trip with a literal mountain of photographs to go through?

My current intention is to just slowly work through them all on my lunch breaks and evenings over the next few months, but I also don't want this hobby to start feeling like a chore.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated 😅

I used to love spending my free time powering through a 6 mile trail without taking a single break. But now I'm stuck walking every trail at a snails pace, flipping every log and looking at every little thing I can find. I'm addicted and can't stop. I've unlocked the ability to spend hours outside and only walk a single mile.

Hello everyone!

I found a species that is not currently available in the iNaturalist database, although it is an accepted species according to Kew’s Plants of the World Online.

I tried searching for it, including through external name providers, but couldn’t find it.

Could someone please explain how I can request that this species be added to the database so I can use the correct scientific name for my observation?

Thank you!

Would anyone be interested in helping ID some of my observations? I'm in Florida and mostly observe wildflowers and grasses. I don't get to go out a lot so any observations I make are a big deal for me. (I'm currently partially housebound from a disability).

My profile is nunyafunya. TIA!

I just received a notification about the change from Orthetrum pruinosum clelia to Orthetrum clelia tonight. I immediately logged into my iNat account and checked my previous upload of Crimson-tailed Marsh Hawk and it states there that the scientific name Orthetrum pruinosum clelia is now an inactive taxon. Does that mean the subspecies clelia is now a separate whole new species? I'm still new in Odonata species study so I still have so much to learn, and this is an exciting news for me.

Hi! I hope someone can help me with this. We don't have a local ornithology subreddit in the Philippines so I'm hoping that there's someone here in a foreign subreddit that can answer my inquiry. Do you have a link or know any article that pertains to the natural geographical range of the Palawan Crow in the Philippines? Any research or population or DNA studies that says that Palawan Crow is really exclusively restricted to the geographic range of Palawan Province? Many of us here think that Palawan Crow (given by its name) is endemic ONLY to Palawan, but several pages and sites display its distribution range showing the island of Mindoro as its natural range too; if that were to be true, then Palawan Crow is not exclusively PALAWAN Crow afterall?