Use of iNaturalist
This page provides some guidance on how to get the most out of the iNaturalist app and make sure that your records are being received by organisations such as RECORD.
What is iNaturalist?
iNaturalist is a global wildlife recording platform. You can use it via an app (iPhone or Android) or via any internet browser. If you make an account and sign in, your
observations are available across all your devices.
What are the advantages of iNaturalist?
- iNaturalist is easy to use and intuitive. It is great for beginner wildilfe recorders, but is also used by many 'prolific' recorders.
- iNaturalist is based around photographing wildlife - if you like taking wildilfe photos on your phone or camera it is a great tool to use.
- iNaturalist has built-in photo recognition software. This means you can ask it to suggest what it thinks you've seen, based on your photo and potential species nearby.
This can be an excellent starting point for identifying what you've found.
- Anyone across the world can help to identify your sightings - the only credentials needed are to have an iNaturalist account. This means
that observations will often get identified or confirmed very quickly. It also means you can help others with their observations.
What are the disadvantages of iNaturalist?
- Whilst it is possible to add observations to iNaturalist without photos or sound recordings, this is not recommended (see below). Of course not all wildlife is easy
to photograph!
- Whilst it is very good, the automatic identification feature is not always correct. Unless it is a common species where you are confident of the identification already, we always recommend checking what it
suggests against another source of information if possible.
- In the same way, because anyone on iNaturalist can help to identify your photo or sound, errors do occur. Whilst there are some expert iNaturalist users,
well-intentioned non-experts can make mistakes.
- Observations submitted to iNaturalist often do not make their way to LERCs such as RECORD due to not meeting certain criteria. Read on to find out more.
How are iNaturalist records shared with RECORD?
- In the UK, all iNaturalist records that meet certain criteria are automatically imported to the iRecord platform. You can find out more about this process here
- We then download the data from iRecord and clean it so that the format matches data going into Swift.
- We import this cleaned data manually into our main database.
What are the problems with iNaturalist data sharing?
Time
The above process does take some time, so if you are entering data into iNaturalist it may not appear within our database or data outputs for quite some time (potentially years). We don't mind waiting,
but if you want data to reach us quickly, please use Swift or email it over instead.
Criteria needed for iRecord transfer
If records do not meet certain criteria they are not imported into iRecord and therefore do not reach us. These criteria are:
- Records must have an appropriate license to allow them to be shared with iRecord.
- Species recorded must match to the UK Species Inventory (this is a recognised list used by most record centre's and many other organisations that manage wildlife data). Unless you
are recording very unusual species, your records will generally match this list.
- Records must have reached 'Research grade' on the iNaturalist platform. To reach 'Research grade' records must have all the essential information such as date and location; not
be of a captive or cultivated organism and, crucially, have a photo or sound recording attached to them. This is the reason that iNaturalist records without a photo or sound recording never reach us. Records
must also reach a stage where 2/3 identifiers agree on what species (or taxon) it is. This means you will need at least one other person to agree with your identificatiton, and if there is disagreement amongst identifiers then at least 2/3 of people must agree on one thing.
Licenses
Every observation submitted to iNaturalist has a 'license'. The licenses dictate who can use the information contained within your record and how they can use it. This is really positive
in that it gives you as the recorder control over how the information you collect is used. However it can also be problematic as many recorders don't realise that their observations
are licensed under conditions that prevent organisations such as RECORD from using them. There are a few things worth bearing in mind:
- Media (i.e. photos and sound recordings) are licensed separately to the information that makes up a record (date, location, species etc.). This means that you can choose to share your observations without needing to
have an open license on your photos.
- Licenses work on the Creative Commons system, which is internationally recognised and easy to navigate - there is lots of user friendly information about what the licenses mean online.
- When you first sign up to iNaturalist, all your records are set to a default license setting until you change it. RECORD cannot use data with this default license, so if you want to share records with us through iNaturalist
you need to take extra action to do so. This action should only take 30 seconds or so - see below!
- RECORD (and all other LERCs) gain income to support our charity by providing data searches to the ecology industry. This counts as 'Commercial' use of data and therefore means
that we cannot use anything under a 'Non-commercial' license.
- Additionally because we do not share recorder names in our data outputs, we are unable the fulfil the 'attributing' requirements of some licenses.
- Because of these reasons we can only use iNaturalist data under a CC0 (No Copyright) license.
How can you make sure that your iNaturalist records reach us at RECORD?
- Ensure that you are signed into your iNaturalist account whilst recording. It is possible to record via the iNaturalist app without signing in, however if you do this the records
will remain on your phone and will not be shared with anyone other than yourself.
- Make sure that your records are reaching 'Research grade'. See above for how to do this and find out more here
- Update your iNaturalist observation license to CC0 - follow these simple steps to do so.
- If you'd rather not update your license on iNaturalist but still want to share iNaturalist data with us, please instead fill out this
quick permission form to allow us to use your data.
What about Seek?
Seek is a separate app, developed by the same organisation as iNaturalist. Whilst originally aimed at children, Seek is now used by all ages.
It has great automatic identification technology to help you identify what you've seen in real time, plus lots of fun challenges. However if you want to record wildlife
rather than just identify it, Seek is not the best app to use. Whilst it is possible to link Seek to your iNaturalist account, for adult users we recommend recording through
iNaturalist rather than Seek. You can find out more about the differences between the two apps here.
