3.14 - Pi Day

Ohio Odonata Data

It has come to my attention that some Ohio Odonata observations in iNaturalist were not in the Ohio Dragonfly Survey project. After some sleuthing and further follow-up there are several instances where observations are not picked up, as follows.

1) When observers are not adding their observations to the project - this happens, and while not optimal, we generally pick things up by using the iNat Curator tool "Find Suitable Observations." But! It seems that there are some exceptions to our processing.

2) Initial wrong ID - an observation gets submitted and the observer isn't sure on the ID or makes the wrong ID. Example, they type in something like "Azure Bluet" and iNat cheerfully plugs in the first Azure Bluet on it's list, Houstonia caerulea - which is a flower, rather than a bug Enallagma aspersum. This observation is located in Ohio, but isn't eligible for the survey because it's not identified as Odonata. Most of these subsequently get the correct ID, but they fall through a crack and don't make it into the survey.

3) "Private" location - it is understood that some locations need to not be made available to the wide world. But, in marking an observation as "private", it can also escape attention to the project Curators. Some my be marked Ohio, some the even more generic United States. Another crack, another fall...

4) iNat user limiting the use of their observations. Some observers prefer a measure of control over their information. Not a problem, other than unless they join the project and add their observations, the data can be locked out of inclusion in the survey. We try to get people to play along, but not always successfully. It's interesting that some of the locked observations are for people that joined the project.

5) We generally want IDs to species for inclusion in the OOS database, but there are both historical records and recent observations that are only at the generic level. This can impact observation counts. A similar situation exists on location data - not everything is located to a county. Better observations make for better data.

6) Along these same lines - we occasionally have iNat users leave the system - and their observations disappear. For better or worse, while we have captured the data and imported to the OOS database, we no longer have an original source to go back to. We treat this similar to historical data that was reported by individuals without a voucher.

What to do? Please add your observations to the project as they are entered into iNaturalist. If you have entered private location observations, please check a couple to see if they're in the project. If you have a photo of an Ode from Ohio and you can't get it to add to the project, check your ID and location - may be there's a discrepancy in your ID of the observation or where it got dropped on the map.

Posted on 14 de março de 2023, 08:34 PM by jimlem