Sorting observations by place AND organize taxonomically

[Steven Daniel]

 I would like to sort my observations by place and by taxon, AND arrange results phylogenetically.    It appears the only way to get phylogenetic sorting is in the life list.  But it doesn't appear that the life list can be further sorted, e.g.  by place. It is a LIFE list for the world, I guess.  Further I find the life list clunky, and prefer to work on the observation screen.

It would be VERY USEFUL to be able to sort, say, butterflies observed in a state, country, province, whatever -  and then see them phylogenetically arranged, rather than in the relatively random order of date observed or faves that seem to be the only options.  This makes it impossible to look at particular Family (genus, superfamily, etc), say, and see what taxa are there in any coherent way, if there are many.   This seems like a pretty critical feature that should be available in INat.  It would certainly make it much more useful to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

[Charlie Hohn]

I would appreciate the ability to arrange taxonomically more places on the site too.

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 8:37 AM Steven Daniel <nat...@gmail.com> wrote:

 I would like to sort my observations by place and by taxon, AND arrange results phylogenetically.    It appears the only way to get phylogenetic sorting is in the life list.  But it doesn't appear that the life list can be further sorted, e.g.  by place. It is a LIFE list for the world, I guess.  Further I find the life list clunky, and prefer to work on the observation screen.

It would be VERY USEFUL to be able to sort, say, butterflies observed in a state, country, province, whatever -  and then see them phylogenetically arranged, rather than in the relatively random order of date observed or faves that seem to be the only options.  This makes it impossible to look at particular Family (genus, superfamily, etc), say, and see what taxa are there in any coherent way, if there are many.   This seems like a pretty critical feature that should be available in INat.  It would certainly make it much more useful to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Steven Daniel]

And if a ‘taxonomic’ filter is, for whatever reasons, not workable for the INat programmers, how about adding a sorting “alphabetically by scientific name” to “date added, date observed, faves”? That shouldn’t be too difficult to do (said by a non-programmer:-).  At least if one could sort selected observations alphabetically you could see all the taxa in the selection ordered by genus.  That itself would be a major improvement and make it much more usable to me.

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[bouteloua]

The iNat staff have said they do plan to incorporate a taxonomic view setting on the observations page. In the meantime you could try a URL like this (change the user_id from mine to yours and the taxon_id to whichever group you're interested in):

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?user_id=bouteloua&taxon_id=47157

Or just leave it blank:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?user_id=bouteloua

It can take a few moments to load.

cassi

[bouteloua]

Oh, and places, with place_id:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?user_id=bouteloua&place_id=24&taxon_id=47158 (insects I have observed in Iowa)

cassi

[Steven Daniel]

Thanks for this.

Couple of questions:

1)where do I find id’s for places and taxa?

2) Is it possible to see the images?  When I click on “view observations” in the results, I just go back to the observation page, essentially unsorted (not as in this list).  Not possible to see images of observations taxonomically?

Steven

[bouteloua]

Easiest place to find both is to go to "Explore" (observations page) and filter by taxon and/or place. Check the URL for the IDs.

I don't know a way to view your observation images taxonomically. Can you explain more or visually illustrate what that would look like? e.g. if you had 50 observations of monarchs and 30 observations of viceroys, all 80 observations would display within the taxonomic hierarchy for Lepidoptera?

cassi

[Steven Daniel]

Thanks again.

Let’s say I want to see the species of Papilionoidea (butterflies) in New York that I’ve uploaded.  I am not interested in total observations (so I don’t want 80 monarch images, just one), but I am interested in seeing the different species I’ve seen so I click on the species tab on that observation page and get a visual listing.  So far, so good.  The problem is that they appear as a mishmosh, based on dates uploaded, or taken, I think.  No meaningful organization at all.  

I’d like to then organize the results taxonomically (as they are in the life list), so I’d see first, say, the swallowtails, then the Lycaenids, Nymphalids, etc.  That is my first choice.  I think many users would find this useful.

If that is not possible I would at least like to have a listing of all the butterflies alphabetically, so I could see what species in each genera (even if they are not arranged phylogenetically) I have photographed (and thereby see which ones I’m missing.)  To a non-programmer, I would think the latter (sorting alphabetically) in the ‘filters’ would not be so difficult to accomplish.

Steven

[bouteloua]

Neither taxonomic nor alphabetical search is currently a feature on the observations page. But it's definitely on the site developers' radar.

For now your best bet is to do the URL "hack" mentioned above. On that URL, when you click "view observations" next to a particular species, it should only show your observations of that species in that place. e.g. in my Iowa insects example, click the link next to Polygonia comma and it leads to
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=24&taxon_id=54064&user_id=bouteloua

cassi

[Steven Daniel]

Right, but I can kind of do that now without the hack. If I choose Polygonia comma in New York on the observation page, I will get that one species to show. But If I want to see all the butterflies and click view observations the same problem persists.

Is there a way to get the attention of the ‘site developers’ on this? When I searched I found a note from 2016 saying they were working on it back then. Alphabetical sorting at least, just doesn’t seem to involved and would make a big and immediate improvement.

[Chris Cheatle]

There actually used to be a name sort function (not taxa, but name) on observation lists, and it was removed as it actually removed, as it did not work properly. So it may not be as easy as it seems.

If your end goal is to understand what species you are missing, you can use the unobserved_by_user_id parameter in a search.

For instance : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=species&lrank=species&place_id=6883&subview=table&taxon_id=47224&unobserved_by_user_id=cmcheatle&view=species

Generates a species level list of all the butterflies reported in Ontario that I have not observed.

• I dont think you can, but maybe though some combination of filters it is possible to further restrict the list to things you have not photographed
• by default, the list uses your Research Grade, for example Southern Cloudywing comes back on my list. I have observed it, but a person vote against it, so it is stuck at NeedsID and genus : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14347167

[bouteloua]

They are aware of it and do monitor this discussion group. The whole observations page apparently needs to be recoded, so even small feature requests like filtering by casual grade observations have not been implemented.

cassi

[Reuven Martin]

Another method is to create a life list for that given area (e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/835799-Ontario-List). Use the options "Reload from observations" and "Re-apply list rules" under "Tools" to make sure it's up to date (lists are kind of broken). You now have a list with your photos, which can be filtered taxonomically, and will show pictures ordered taxonomically (although it won't match any particular convention for order, so for butterflies the order is Swallowtails, Skippers, Brush-foots, Lycaenids, Pierids).

There is no direct link from here to your observations for that taxon.

[Steven Daniel]

Reuven,

This is very helpful!  Certainly will work until they observation filtering is redone.   I didn’t realize you could  narrow a life list by place. So..many thanks for this tip.

And congratulations on your black dash near Toronto!  I’ve been thinking it could turn up in western NY, but don’t know of any recent records.

Steven

[Steven Daniel]

Thanks, Chris.  This looks helpful.

I’m not seeing where you can filter by “unobserved by user”.  It looks like you sorted all butterfly species seen in Ontario, and then limited it to those species you haven’t seen.  Is that correct?  Where did you restrict to “unobserved by user.”  

Thanks!

[Chris Cheatle]

You can't add it by the user interface form, there are several dozen parameters that can be applied to a search, not all them are on the popup form, you need to manually add it to the URL string.

[cbgr...@hotmail.com]

Another vote for being able to sort observations by Name (preferably taxonomic name) and many thanks to the various posters who provided hack arounds in the interim.
thanks,
Bet Crooks