Filling Field

This blog is going to show one way to fill in a plant association fields in a pre-existing observation. There is a bit of "side bar" information here but I think it helps to understand using  iNaturalist a bit better.

 In the Central Coast of British Columbia (2) getting some bee observations relatively close to Bella Coola, I made the below observation of a Bumble Bee (3) on August, 7, 2023 (1) which was suggested to be Bombus vancouverensis nearcticus by iNaturalist user Syd Cannings (4). We have a different subspecies on Vancouver Island so I spent some time to looking up information to confirm I agree (5) with his suggestion. The curved back of the tibia, the length of the antennae, and the terga suggested this was a male Bombus which can make identification a little more involved for me. Sex of the bee was selected in the annotations (6).

The task at hand was to record in a data field the plant that this bee is visiting, the host plant associated with this bee. Recording host plants can inform baselines on bee data such as giving an idea of preferred food resources of particular bee species and can inform host plants to be considered for restorations.

 

There are different ways to get plant identifications such as field guides or using Seek.

In this case I have decided that the associated plant is Tansy (I'll do another blog on getting the plant ID).

If one goes to the lower part of the observation on the right there will be place that gives a choice of Observation Field

 

 

When you select the choose a field box one can type in a desired known field. I often use Plant association, Lori uses Name of Associated Plant... there are others as well for this such as: feeding on or nectar / pollen delivering plant or nectar plant. I look at all of these fields when I am populating the project Associated plants for BC native Bees.

 

As one types in, suggested fields will appear, often times with your top 10 fields showing up first. Below you can see that I chose Plant association which now has a entry box for the plant species. Both common and Scientific Name will work here.

I filled in the Plant association field with the common name Tansy. Common names being what they are, there are a few choices so it is important to select the correct one. Beside each name it says View and by clicking on View another tab will open about that species Taxon page.

 Once selected, that choice becomes part of the observations record. Any iNaturalist user can pick fields to fill for any observation as long as the original poster has allowed it in their permissions setting (default).

Now that the information is there, by tapping the bold field name, in this case Plant association, a pop up box will appear with some choices. It also will say who added the field.

If Observations with this field and value is select, the below type of view opens up. In this case we see observation using the Plant association field on Tansy. 

If one had used Name of Associated Plant field with Tansy, the below would  open up. 

If one selected the choice Observations with this field, one would get all of the observations.

Finally, if one selects Observation field details from that pop up box, one gets more details about that field and what projects the fields are used in. Not all fields are attached to a project.

The Plant association field page can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/10524

The Name of Associated Plant field page can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/7807

As I think is evident, adding fields to observation can increase the depth of those observations.

Demonstration observation is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177590859 🐝