Undescribed Species and Range Extensions
To collect all those undescribed taxa that only get identified to genus or tribe or family. Either those in the process of getting described or those shelved for some future when someone might be interested.
There is also a field for significant range extensions.
And also a field for unusual forms (e.g. colour morphs, aberrants, etc.)
Please give the reference if it exists: e.g.
Cape Plants II: Struthiola sp. 2.
For range extensions, please mention the distance and a reference.
To extract the data use filters. e.g.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=113055&taxon_id=1210966&field:Unusual%20forms%20and%20variants=rare%20light%20phase
(in this case the taxon = BB Jackal and the field is
Unusual forms and variants = "rare light phase")
Comments
There is also the field "Undescribed species", https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/5737 which is useful for grouping observations of the same new/undescribed species together. Tag names referencing the species are added to the list of allowed values so they can be selected when the field is added to an observation.
This project already uses this field:
"New species reference and name"
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/8546
which is useful for grouping observations of the same new/undescribed species together.
It is free format, which allows new taxa unknown to curators to be added.
Currently has is 7 times more data than field 5737, mainly due to Fabaceae and Nudibranchs.
We have lots of moths (in southern Africa) that might go here, but they tend not be commonly collected, or are difficult to identify.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that one. There are probably other variations and reinventions of the field in other languages too. If you ever change your field to having a list of values rather than free format we could merge the fields into one :-)
The curatorial work of adding fields is too large.
Specifically managing the allowable fields is too difficult. We need a better format for editing allowable field values - and also specifically of changing values (and detecting non-allowed values).
Yes observation fields are another "abandonware" feature on this website, no longer any real support, and definitely no development of the feature. Its never going to be improved, we'll have to make it work as is. Having a list of allowable values does make it a lot easier to add the right value rather than subtle (and problematic) variations, not having a prescribed list would seem to mean you will have a built in maintenance workload (trying to detect and correct typos) forever. But, yes you don't want to ever edit individual entries in the prescribed list as you will orphan existing instances. I do find maintaining a set list of allowable values less work than trying to fix mis-typed fields. If you ever do want to make the change, I'd volunteer to help implement it :-)
Do you realize how many entries you are going to have to create worldwide? Just our southern African moths - based on our national list and LepSoc data, list would go into several hundred names, and there would possibly be conflicts with other lists (e.g. Afromoths) and new editions of the same lists.
And then there is the issue as to what to do when they are described: should they be scrubbed or just ignored (my choice)?
Abandonware:
Yes, it would be nice to have a few additional features. For instance, a way to display a genus with the observation field. e.g.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=table&taxon_id=83365&verifiable=any&field:New%20species%20reference%20and%20name=
if only the observation field could be added. There is no other way than downloading the data to get at this information easily.
Range extensions:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/9938
or
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Range%20extension%20documentation
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