Useful tip for collectors who like to see, what species is already in there photo collection

If you're like me, you enjoy collecting species. But the site does not provide such functionality so that the user immediately understands whether he has this type in the collection or not.

For example, on sites where birders publish their photos, there are check boxes next to the name of the species so that you can see whether you already have one in your collection or not.

There have been attempts to add such functionality on iNat, for example in this topic:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/checkmarks-for-species-on-life-list/9400
But this was never implemented.

What do I use, and what may be useful to you if you also want some kind of tick in the species that you have already observed.

We will need a browser plugin

Highlight This

Firefox add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/highlightthis 7

Chrome add-on page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/highlight-this-finds-and/fgmbnmjmbjenlhbefngfibmjkpbcljaj?hl=en-US

This plugin highlights text from a list. It can highlight text only on the iNat website, or everywhere, or Wiki + iNat, what is more convenient for you. Sometimes it's interesting to read Wikipedia and know whether you have this species or not. Unfortunately, the list will have to be updated manually. I don’t know how to make it download automatically from iNat website.

First you need to upload a list of your species:

You can choose to list only verified sightings or all of them.
Choose the lowest rank, be it species, genus, or something else.

Uncheck all the boxes except the scientific name or common name, depending on which name you want to highlight.

Next Export. After this, you need to wait and after a while you will be able to download the archive inside with a CSV file. You need to extract the archive. This file can be edited in any spreadsheet editor, Excel online, Google Sheets or others.

Next, you need to remove duplicates. I don’t know, I think it will work this way, but it seems to me that there will be less load on the browser if you remove duplicates. In Google Sheets this is done menu Data → Data cleanup → Remove duplicates
And copy the entire column with names.

Next, we create a new list in the plugin, or edit the old one. When creating a new one, you can make it take data from an external file (Web, Pastebin, Google Sheets), or you can manually insert values into it.

We set the colors with which the plugin will highlight names and you’re done, everything works.

If you have questions or suggestions on how this method can be improved, do not hesitate to write.

Posted on October 3, 2023 02:37 PM by deniszp