What to Post?
This spring, my sister Donna joined the Bogus Run Corridor Project in earnest – so far she’s been concentrating on documenting birds; but also insects and amphibians. She’s already contributed some interesting observations and some really outstanding photos. She recently got several beautiful photos using her new telephoto while standing in a few inches of water at Lena Park Marsh – an experience she says she likes because, “no ticks!”. That’s a pretty good reason.
At dinner a couple of days ago she asked me for my thoughts on what kinds of observations are appropriate to post, especially if the species has previously been documented to the project. What to leave in, and what to leave out – it’s a question that never goes away, but it’s certainly worth thinking about.
To me, the iNaturalist platform seems best used as a notebook or journal. The design makes it easy to capture and preserve observations in an orderly and credible way. When posting photographs, dates and times are captured by the camera, and the images are given a unique identifier. With the addition of the location data, a solid observational data point is preserved.
The observations then become accessible to experts and researchers, and to the interested public as well. This is particularly important when doing a project at a place like the Bogus Run Corridor, where the land is privately owned and far from a major university. Few government or academic researchers venture out here, and many would assume there’s “nothing but corn” and therefore not bother to look. It’s like the part of an old nautical map labelled “dragons be here”. They might be – nobody really looked.
The mission statement of the Bogus Run Corridor project is:
To build an orderly, usable and attractive overview of some of the highlights of the flora and fauna in the Bogus Run corridor in Starke Co. Indiana.
It’s not envisioned as an all-inclusive catalogue of life-forms; it’s intended to document highlights, those deemed interesting in some sense. The orderliness and usability are largely contributed by the iNaturalist platform. But it’s up to the contributors to decide what constitutes an observation that is sufficiently useful, interesting or beautiful to be considered a highlight.
Overall, the project is primarily focused on native flora and fauna and their interactions, and to a lesser extent issues associated with invasive or persistent non-native species that may interfere or degrade the indigenous ecosystem. This native oriented viewpoint is, of course, vulnerable to criticism, but at least I’m acknowledging it.
So, given that POV, the appropriateness of posting an observation intended for the Bogus Run Corridor Project can be analyzed in regards to three criteria: (a) usefulness, (b) interest and (c) beauty.
Useful observations can provide salient data both to us for future reference, and for others doing research on a taxon represented here, or the geographical location or an ecotype represented here. Interesting observations show life stages or interactions, or feature species of particular interest or concern. Beautiful observations are those that are of outstanding technical and aesthetic quality, even if the content has been previously documented or is unremarkable.
Applying these criteria, I came up with a list of observations appropriate for posting as iNaturalist observations:
- New species photo
- New species audio
- New form of species (immature, male and female forms, flowering)
- New interaction between species (insect and host, predation, parasite and host)
- Dates establishing the calendar range during which the species is observable (e.g. FOY bird photo)
- Evidence of reproduction of species on site (nest, fledglings, breeding behavior)
- Additional observations of species of special interest or concern
- Observations documenting mortality, especially non-routine mortality
- Outstanding photo, audio or video captures of previously documented observations
- Any of the above that was previously documented by another’s observations, but not by yourself
The Bogus Run Corridor Project is not primarily intended to appeal to non-participants, but identifications and confirmations by others is at the core of the iNaturalist architecture. This works better in some areas than in others – birds, butterflies and odes are popular and well known. They usually get quick expert attention. Flies and beetles are another thing entirely – they seem destined for an eternity under the cloud of a “needs ID” tag. And yet these more obscure observations may prove to be of more scientific value -- someday. Also, part of the stated project purpose is to help move the project area into the mainstream of regional natural areas study and preservation. For both of these reasons, we want to measure the pace and quality of our posted observations.
Frequency of posting is another potential issue. Too many posted observations -- particularly too many of poor quality or low interest level -- could result in experts becoming unwilling to invest more time to plow through them. Posting too infrequently could cause a fading of interest too. There’s a sweet spot there somewhere. My thought (with no basis whatsoever) is that two to four per day per observer is a good rule-of-thumb. Saving something for the long nights of winter can be good anyway.
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