Locating Camas observations through iNaturalist. Introduction and pointers.(Camas found here)

A question came up about, on iNaturalist, how to search for a location of a specific flower eg. Camas. We will search for Camas from the point of entering iNaturalist on the web platform starting at https://inaturalist.ca/home or https://www.inaturalist.org/home depending on how your preferences have been set up. This URL will take one to their "Dashboard". From here we are going to select "Explore" as indicated by the red arrow below.

Once in Explore, we will limit the search to just British Columbia. (1) below points to the "Location" search box. Starting to fill this out will cause a drop down menu that will give likely candidates - select the correct candidate (2) here.

Now that the map is limited to British Columbia, select the "Species" search box as indicated by the arrow below.

As the "Location" search responded before, starting to fill in the "Species" search will result in a drop down menu of likely choices. Camas shows up as indicated by the arrow and we will select this.

As one can see on the map below, in British Columbia, Camas has been observed on iNaturalist in a specific geographic area. Understand that where observations on iNaturalist have occurred is only a subset of the possible range of the organism. There are other tools to look at for other recorded distributions but for this topic we are going to stick to iNaturalist as a source. Also understand that absence from the record only means undetected.

Now that we know the observation distribution in British Columbia, we can further limit our search to a desired area by using the rectangle boundary tool indicated below by the arrow.

In the application of the rectangle boundary below we can see that the political boundary has been dropped and both Canada and US observations now appear within the search below.

Using the mouse to "Hover" over one of the observations showing up on the list on the left below (1), shows where the location of that observation is. We can also select a "Grid" view (3) of the observations.

The grid view will result in the below view of the observation. We can return to the map view by selecting "Map" as indicated by the arrow below.

From the map view we can zoom (1) in a desired area to further explore. selecting Gabriola Island as a desired place to further explore Camas we can now type in that as a location (2)

Below, we see that just observations on Gabriola Island are now showing up by the green (plant) pins. The pins with the white dots a have been agreed to by at least a minimum consensus of two identifiers to be a particular species, becoming "Research Grade" of RG. RG consensus are not always correct and can be reviewed to see if a possible further correction needs to be made.

A further refinement of the search parameters can be made by using the circle boundary indicated by the arrow below (1) and using the tool to set the desired boundary placement (2)

Select list from the choice indicated by the arrow below.

Below is the resultant list. From this one can see who observed the organism and also the date of that observation.

Returning to the Map one can also choose other ways to set boundaries by selecting "Places of Interest".

Selecting this will result in a list of "Standard" locations as well as Community Curated places. Standard locations are those that would normally show up on Google Map searches and in the Location search of the Explore page. Community Curated places are places that have been created by iNaturalist community members. Below as indicated by the arrow we are selecting the Gulf Island National Park Reserve place.

Having selected this place we now see observations that have occurred there.

Further refinement of the desired plant (1) we will now select Leichtlin's Camas (2) to see where it has been observed.

To find out more about this particular species, one can select View as indicated by the arrow below.

Selecting "View" will take one to the Taxon page which will give more details of this species. This species is native to British Columbia (1). We can filter this page by place/location (2) . There is a Leader Board (3) of Top Observer, Top Identifier, Last Observation, Total Observations that are all limited by whatever place filter has been selected. The "About" tab (5) will give one information about the organism that is usually based on its Wikipedia entry. There are also other sources listed on the left. The "Map" tab (6) will also show the observation distribution. We'll look at the arrow marked 4 more closely following the below image.

The below area of the taxon page should be of particular interest for those wishing to observe bees associated with a particular plant. At rest, "Seasonality", the organism (this Camas) is shown with a graphic when it is observed (recorded) the most - the more charismatic it is the more it seems to be recorded, in this case likely when it is flowering. Select the Plant Phenology Tab as indicated by the arrow.

Now that the selection has been made we see the different phenologies, however, we need to hover the mouse over the dots to see the key and the breakdown in the way of numbers of observations annotated with the different phenologies. Note in the below that 2.3K of the May observations have no annotations.

The above was a general overview of the plant but now we wish to filter the specific Phenology for British Columbia.

Notice that the Place below now says British Columbia and that the leader board has changed - this is something to pay attention to especially if you wish to call on a top identifier for a specific area (tapping on the top identifier leaderboard will take one to another page with a list. If one looks at the Phenology graph for BC it is noticeable that there is an under representation of annotation that have been made (1). Tapping on the cog symbol (2) to the right of the Plant Phenology tab will bring down a list of choices (3) - of note here is if one is not logged into their account, only "Show relative proportions..." and "Hide No Annotation" will appear - to make changes to annotations one must be logged in. Wanting to give back as a member of the iNaturalist community, we are now going to select to add Annotations to plant Phenology.

If we have annotated these before or if we have been doing some Camas identification we want to deselect reviewed (1). We can now select the first observation (2) to open up the identification modal for that observation.

The identification modal is now open and has a few tabs at the top on the right.

Select the tab that says "Annotations" as indicated by the arrow below.

From here we can select the appropriate Phenology

Or perhaps there were two phenologies present because of the timing in that season. Once done we can tab to move to the next observation.

As in this case we may wish to select another phenology. In this case no indication of (active) flowering, My thought is here that it is not fruiting either.

Once selected, again we can tab to the next observation, and so on.

Another way to help is to go to ones own observations or other individual's observations and fill out the phenology in the Annotations as indicated by the red arrow below.