Journal archives for September 2018

September 1, 2018

Curating Needs

Last updated January 11, 2019

Partially using this as a note to self, but thought I'd throw these out there rather than only squirrel the links away as bookmarks. To any curators or potential-curators looking for a task, here are:

If you're not a curator but interested in lending a hand with the site taxonomy and/or other needs, read through the Curator Guide (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide) and shoot an email to help@inaturalist.org. : )

Common Flag Resolution Recommendations

  • Pornographic images or anything that needs to be deleted swiftly - You can hide this type of inappropriate content by flagging as spam (hides from anyone who isn't an iNat curator/admin). Then email help@inaturalist.org requesting deletion.

    * Spam - 99+ times out of a 100, spam flags should be left unresolved. iNat's definition of spam is anything clearly intended to make money. If it is actual spam, like blocks of text intended to drive search engine rankings, links to commercial websites, or blatant product advertisement, leave the flag unresolved.

    * Flagged as spam, but it's not spam - There is a "3 strikes" rule with spam flags. If a user's comments, observations, messages, or other content is flagged as spam 3 times, their account is suspended. Sometimes people are suspended when they shouldn't be! If a comment or message is flagged, I've found that more often than not, those flags are false positives. If a comment doesn't look like spam, resolve the flag. If a message is flagged and the user looks legit, there is a boilerplate response here. If inappropriate content is flagged as spam, resolve the spam flag and reflag as inappropriate if needed. Spam flags should only be used for content intended to make money.

    * Duplicate observation - Check if it's actually a duplicate. Sometimes the user has uploaded the same photo but observed 2 different organisms. Otherwise, iNat staff have instructed us to flag duplicates and leave the flags unresolved.

    * Missing taxon or taxon changes - follow the Curator Guide and add the taxon or commit the taxon change, if appropriate. Be sure to check the taxonomic policies every once in a while as they do change.

    * Not an organism - If it's a new user, guide them toward appropriate use of iNat and mark it as no evidence of organism in the Data Quality Assessment section (DQA).

    * Observation of a human - just ID as human and resolve the flag.

    * Trolling - It's usually best to just ignore someone who's clearly trolling. You can use the DQA to mark it as not wild or no evidence of organism if appropriate. If it's a pattern of bad behavior, especially if it's affecting other users' observations, send an email to help@inaturalist.org explaining the situation, with URLs.

    * Observation rather than photo is flagged as copyright infringement: Resolve the flag and flag the photo(s) as copyright infringement directly.

    * Incorrect, but well-intentioned ID is flagged: Resolve the flag and let the user know that IDs shouldn't be flagged unless they're clearly malicious or purposefully incorrect.

    * Photo on taxon page incorrectly identified: Remove the photo and/or let them know how they can adjust the photos themselves.

    * Taxon needs to be marked as native/introduced in a certain place: Change the status and provide instruction on how they can do this themselves, which are listed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#flags


    Previously on: Dealing with low quality observations and inappropriate content on iNaturalist

Posted on September 1, 2018 11:46 PM by bouteloua bouteloua | 1 comment | Leave a comment

September 26, 2018

Asteraceous Illinois: September 25th, 2018 Illinois Botanists Big Year Update

It's late September and the woodland asters are in full glorious bloom. The heat is finally starting to subside, but the mosquitoes are not. Anyone else getting just totally eaten alive??? I've gone through almost a whole bottle of bugspray just in the past week. o_o

Current Illinois Botanists Big Year Stats:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/illinois-botanists-big-year-2018 (help identify)

28,479 observations
1,357 species
1,691 observers
792 identifiers

We've added 39 new species since last month and we're about 40 species shy of last year's total. There's still time of course! All these stats are only counting Research Grade observations, so there are likely plenty of species hiding waiting for ID or ID confirmation. Can you lend a hand? Help identify at this link!

Recently-observed Favorites


Fruits of puzzleplant aka Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoensis) by @ever1earn.


Fringey cap of burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa) by @kennedy9094. Have you ever felt the inside of a burr acorn cap? So soft.


Lovely ol' stiff gentian (Gentianella quinquefolia) by @skrentnyjeff.


Glowing fruits of cranberry viburnum (Viburnum opulus) by @sanguinaria33. If you squint hard enough you can see that you can forget there are two subspecies you're supposed to care about.


Harbinger-of-fall, the I'm-not-in-New-England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) by @kae91

Below are links to what we as a group have found in 2018 so far compared to what has been documented on iNaturalist before 2018. The lists in the links below will update automatically as people continue adding observations throughout the year. iNaturalist's compare tool limits us to check 500 taxa at a time, so these are broken into several chunks.

Non-flowering plants
Monocots excluding Poales
Poales (grasses, sedges, rushes, & friends)
Plants in Asterales (sunflower family and friends)
Plants in Fabales (pea family and friends)
Plants in Lamiales (mint family and friends)
Plants in Rosales (rose family and friends)
Plants in Brassicales (mustard family and friends)
Plants in Ranunculales (buttercup family and friends)
Plants in Caryophyllales (pink family and friends)
All other (eu)dicots except the groups above

See what species you haven't observed yet in Illinois with the following link. Just change it from my username (bouteloua) to yours:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=species&place_id=35&taxon_id=47125&unobserved_by_user_id=bouteloua&view=species

-cassi

Posted on September 26, 2018 01:55 AM by bouteloua bouteloua | 3 comments | Leave a comment

September 30, 2018

Splitting Pleopeltis polypodioides (resurrection ferns)

iNaturalist current policy/guidelines currently inform us that genera that start with the letter P and ferns are not quite complete on Plants of the World Online, iNat's taxonomic authority for vascular plants. Here's one that fits both those categories.

Proposal:
Split Pleopeltis polypodiodes (sensu lato) into --->

  1. P. polypodioides (sensu stricto)
  2. P. michauxiana
  3. P. ecklonii
    (see drafted taxon change)

This also includes first merging P. polypodioides subsp. ecklonii into P. ecklonii.
(see drafted taxon change)

The split is in accordance with the following references and per the discussion recently taking place on this flag:

Pleopeltis polypodioides (sensu lato) is a widespread species, occurring in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and southern Africa. P. polypodioides (sensu stricto) in in the proposal here is a taxon with distribution in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, but excluding most of the United States--excepting extreme southern Florida--and southern Africa. See Sprunt 2010 above for more information about this split, which was proposed on the basis of limited overlapping ranges, phylogenetic, and morphological analyses; of the latter,

Even though no single morphological character can be used to distinguish among all taxa, a combination of characters can be used to identify each taxon. The most important characters include the presence or absence of scales on the adaxial surface, the location of the gland (or hydathode) on the laminar surface (Fig. 3.3), the presence and length of the sclerotic band in the rhizome scale (Fig. 3.5), leaf venation (Fig.3.4), and rhizome scale margin.

The resurrection fern covering the southern United States, eastern Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean has been elevated to species status as P. michauxiana and the southern African species is P. ecklonii. See the atlases below for rough ranges. Mainly, there are several hundred observations of resurrection ferns in the southern United States on iNaturalist that will be reassigned to P. michauxiana once this split is committed. Note that in Sprunt's 2010 dissertation there are several additional taxa raised to species level. At this time, this split only includes the elevation of P. michauxiana and P. ecklonii based on the published names and recognition in regional authorities as well as Plants of the World Online.

Review the output taxa atlases prepared by myself, @coreyjlange, and @choess. Identifications of P. polypodioides (sensu lato) will be automatically reassigned to one of the three output taxa based on these atlases. Where atlases overlap, identifications of P. polypodioides (sensu lato) will be reassigned to genus.

  1. Atlas for P. polypodioides (sensu stricto)
  2. Atlas for P. michauxiana
  3. Atlas for P. ecklonii

The purpose of this journal post is to gain rough consensus on going through with the split despite the current policy. If there is anyone that disagrees with it, please do include the basis of the disagreement. See also previous discussions in which everyone seemed on board with accepting P. michauxiana, which was accepted by the then-iNaturalist regional authority Weakley 2015: a flag and taxon change from ~7 months ago.


Pleopeltis michauxiana in Mississippi, US

Tagging in some of the most active curators, members of this project, and top Pleopeltis and Polypodium observers and identifiers. My apologies if I missed tagging you here. If you're not tagged, please do include yourself in the discussion. :) @aaronliston @ajwright @alexiz @americorp_jeffrey @aztekium_tutor @berkshirenaturalist @bobby23 @bodofzt @borisb @boschniakia @brownsbay @charlie @choess @cmcheatle @coreyjlange @cosmiccat @crothfels @dgreenberger @duarte @efmer @erikamitchell @erwin_pteridophilos @graysquirrel @grnleaf @gwark @hfabian @hkmoths @jakob @jasonrgrant @jdmore @jonathan142 @jrebman @juancarloslopezdominguez @jwalewski @kai_schablewski @kevinhintsa @kokhuitan @kueda @leonperrie @loarie @mangum @marykeim @mateohernandezschmidt @maxkirsch @mikepatterson @milliebasden @monifern @mrfish33 @nathantaylor7583 @norm_shea @philjrenner @reallifeecology @rfoster @robertarcher397 @ryan84 @ryancooke @sea-kangaroo @sedge @stevejones @tiggrx @tonyrebelo @treichard @tsn @valerietheblonde @wdvanhem @whiteoak @wisel

To view the project where this journal entry was posted, and join it if you wish, head to the iNaturalist Vascular Plant Working Group homepage and hit "Join" in the upper right corner.

Posted on September 30, 2018 04:07 PM by bouteloua bouteloua | 17 comments | Leave a comment

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