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I am completely addicted to iNaturalist. I haven't discovered any new species, but I've learned a lot. Not too long ago there was some news about some high scho

I am completely addicted to iNaturalist. I haven't discovered any new species, but I've learned a lot. Not too long ago there was some news about some high school kids having used it to discover two new species of scorpion. It claims to be a social network, but it's user interface isn't engineered to keep your attention like others do - so there's a little bit of a learning curve to really figure out how to get the most out of it, but I'm a total addict now. [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-california-teens-discovered-two-new-scorpion-species-180980827/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-california-t...

flandish 4y ago
I totally agree! I use both of their apps and sometimes the bird apps by Cornell. iNaturalist claims “seek” uses on device “ai” to help find species.
- daveslash 4y ago
  I have the app on mobile, but I really don't use it... I shoot all my photos with a traditional camera and upload them to the website. It might sound silly, but I'm approaching it like Pokemon - gotta catch em all! I'll identify some taxon and then try to go get as many species as possible. For example, I'm now aware of at least 5 species of Sea Urchin local to me - I've got 3 on iNat. I've seen the other 2, but didn't get a photo, but I know how to find them so I'm headed back out. I didn't even know there were at least 5 here, let alone be able to name them. It's intellectually really addicting.... Something that surprised me is how many subspecies there are of checks notes everything! It almost seems like in the narrowest sense, almost everything is endangered (if you're considering subspecies and phenotype). Very interesting stuff. I promise I'm not a paid promoter!
  - flandish 4y ago
    Oh neat idea! I am most often mobile - but might try this approach. The Seek app is slow to start and has a warning dialog every time.
    - daveslash 4y ago
      Pro-tip: If you're uploading on the web browser and your pic doesn't have GPS coordinates, set the location before trying to identify the species. Setting the location helps the AI limit it's suggestions to the geographic area. Another buried feature is being able to view your observations and species in a tree view. Go to Dashboard -> Profile -> Species (under your profile picture) Here's mine [0]. I really like how I can drill down the taxon tree and filter to see just species and/or observations at any level of the tree. Edit: Oh, and be careful if you're worried about metadata in your pictures. iNat doesn't strip it out. I actually kind of like that -- after poking around, it helped me identify my next camera purchase. But Somebody could totally dox me (well, de-anonify me) with the metadata in some of my pictures.... [0] https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/dolfindave?view=tree&tree_mode=full_taxonomy https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/dolfindave?view=tree&t...
      - flandish 4y ago
        Ohh cool. Thanks for the insight! Yeah a photo in a park is fine… a photo in a home, maybe different lol.
        shagie 4y ago
        When I've done GPS stuff with photos in houses, I've lopped off decimal digits until the circle which it represented was sufficiently large enough. I typically lop to one decimal digit to give "close enough, but not exact". http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees
        daveslash 4y ago
        That's interesting... I didn't realize that it worked that way. For example, I just assumed that something like 32N, saved in an int, would be interpreted the same as 32.00000000N -- I didn't realize that the number of decimal places implied precision/significant digits. I suppose it's not surprising, and it makes sense, but I hadn't really thought much about it before. I also suppose there are probably systems out there that don't work with Decimal-Degrees and do assume 32 == 32.000 because the devs weren't aware. Thanks for sharing!

flandish 4y ago

I totally agree! I use both of their apps and sometimes the bird apps by Cornell. iNaturalist claims “seek” uses on device “ai” to help find species.

daveslash 4y ago
I have the app on mobile, but I really don't use it... I shoot all my photos with a traditional camera and upload them to the website. It might sound silly, but I'm approaching it like Pokemon - gotta catch em all! I'll identify some taxon and then try to go get as many species as possible. For example, I'm now aware of at least 5 species of Sea Urchin local to me - I've got 3 on iNat. I've seen the other 2, but didn't get a photo, but I know how to find them so I'm headed back out. I didn't even know there were at least 5 here, let alone be able to name them. It's intellectually really addicting.... Something that surprised me is how many subspecies there are of checks notes everything! It almost seems like in the narrowest sense, almost everything is endangered (if you're considering subspecies and phenotype). Very interesting stuff. I promise I'm not a paid promoter!
- flandish 4y ago
  Oh neat idea! I am most often mobile - but might try this approach. The Seek app is slow to start and has a warning dialog every time.
  - daveslash 4y ago
    Pro-tip: If you're uploading on the web browser and your pic doesn't have GPS coordinates, set the location before trying to identify the species. Setting the location helps the AI limit it's suggestions to the geographic area. Another buried feature is being able to view your observations and species in a tree view. Go to Dashboard -> Profile -> Species (under your profile picture) Here's mine [0]. I really like how I can drill down the taxon tree and filter to see just species and/or observations at any level of the tree. Edit: Oh, and be careful if you're worried about metadata in your pictures. iNat doesn't strip it out. I actually kind of like that -- after poking around, it helped me identify my next camera purchase. But Somebody could totally dox me (well, de-anonify me) with the metadata in some of my pictures.... [0] https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/dolfindave?view=tree&tree_mode=full_taxonomy https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/dolfindave?view=tree&t...
    - flandish 4y ago
      Ohh cool. Thanks for the insight! Yeah a photo in a park is fine… a photo in a home, maybe different lol.
      - shagie 4y ago
        When I've done GPS stuff with photos in houses, I've lopped off decimal digits until the circle which it represented was sufficiently large enough. I typically lop to one decimal digit to give "close enough, but not exact". http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees
        daveslash 4y ago
        That's interesting... I didn't realize that it worked that way. For example, I just assumed that something like 32N, saved in an int, would be interpreted the same as 32.00000000N -- I didn't realize that the number of decimal places implied precision/significant digits. I suppose it's not surprising, and it makes sense, but I hadn't really thought much about it before. I also suppose there are probably systems out there that don't work with Decimal-Degrees and do assume 32 == 32.000 because the devs weren't aware. Thanks for sharing!