Welcome to the "South Australian iNaturalists" collection project

Welcome to the "South Australian iNaturalists" collection project.

Scope
This collection project has been created to bring together all the active iNat users from South Australia. As with all collection projects anyone can join, however this project will only collect observations from those users:

Who reside within South Australia (or have in the past)
Have uploaded at least 20 observations in South Australia
Who wish to join the project and have their observations included

Active Local Users
As is typical of online platforms, the number of active users is only a small fraction of the total. Of the 1058 users who have uploaded an observation in South Australia only 140 have uploaded more than 20 observations. Of these, only 89 have been active in the last month and a rough estimate suggests around half of these are visitors to SA.

What's included
As the focus of this project is to create a place for active local SA users, there are no taxa restrictions. All lifeforms are included.
As many organisms cannot be IDed to species from photos alone, observations at both Research Grade and Needs ID are included.
The project will only include observations from members that were recorded in SA

Posted on July 24, 2019 11:12 AM by cobaltducks cobaltducks

Comments

Excellent project concept,criteria and inception,
Well done,
Cheers,
Dave Muirhead

Posted by davemmdave over 4 years ago

I've been finding a lot of Mygalomorphs over the last week or so (it's very unusual).
One of them a red-headed mouse spider. I realized my previous sighting had a different coloured head. Upon researching this variation it seems the different colours indicate different species.
I found this key which helps, but is hard to decipher. I think the "pars" means "side"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4042711/

This is the only photo which I can find to describe the "pars" terms:
http://bugsinthenews.info/the-brown-recluse-spider/

I think my previous one matches this one from Volker:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/australianspiders/36050563893/in/photostream/
But is wrong location, so more work to try and decipher
www.ellura.info/Spider/Spider/DSC05923E-Red-headed-Mouse-Spider-Missulena-occatoria.html

As such, I think these are miss-identified (1st one is yours Ralph)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13377607
&
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16190096

But wanted to check with people before I change it.
I'll post my other Mygalomorph sightings later.
Hopefully this is part of the intended use of this group Geoffrey? A friendly chat before jumping feet first in ;-)
Cheers
Brett

Posted by ellurasanctuary over 4 years ago

I’ve been thinking about how we can best use the ‘News” section within the project. It is designed as a newsfeed and not a general discussion board, so it lacks a lot of features if we intend to use if for discussions. Posting is limited to project admins/managers, but anyone in the project can add comments. Also, there is no search feature so valuable discussions and links may get buried.

Around the beginning of each month I will make a few posts that can act as “discussion areas”. That way anyone in the project is free to start discussions within the comments sections. At the end of each month I will repost the discussion areas for the new month. Hopefully as the project membership is small, this won’t get too messy/cluttered. I will start with some broad discussion areas:

Nature Talk – An area to discuss local species and places.

Taxonomy Talk – An area to discuss more technical aspects of identification and classification.

Observation Stories – An area to post your favourite personal observation from the previous month and share the story behind it.

Posted by cobaltducks over 4 years ago

Again, thanks in advance for your highly focused and very practical suggested modifications /ways to make this project as enticing and navigable as possible, and I like all the above, if that's of any help,
Cheers Dave Muirhead

Posted by davemmdave over 4 years ago

Thanks Geoffrey; your point about buried info is exactly why maintain our Ellura web site, so the info is easily searchable by species and stays as a permanent link. However, it's all one sided and doesn't allow any sort of conversation/correction. Like Dave, I like your suggestions but am concerned it may be a lot of work for you. Time will tell. Another possible thought is to break it up by, eg, class. I can well imagine people interested in fish would not be interested in spiders :-) It depends on how big it grows. Is there another feature/area of iNat that some of this could go under? Parts of my comment above could go under Mouse Spiders if there is such a facility? I've always liked blogs where people make a permanent link, but then others can comment. Just doesn't allow the taxon layout that I was able to set up with our web site.
Cheers
Brett

Posted by ellurasanctuary over 4 years ago

Hi Brett, some good points there. I agree regarding not everyone wanting to receive notifications about discussions of taxa they may not be interested in. I hadn’t considered the ‘notifications’ side of things. (I’ll explain in a post soon how members can turn off notifications and emails from the project).

At present I don’t think iNat has a general area for discussing specific taxa (although iNat “curators” might have specific areas).

I’d like to keep this project as a comfortable space for non-experts (like myself), so perhaps I’ll drop the idea of a “Taxonomy Talk” area.

I think there is value in the “Nature Talk” area to provide members with a space to ask those beginner-level questions about species and places and receive a general (not too technical) response. And a space for people to share any interesting observations they have made during the month. (This might be a good spot for you to share any new species you find at Ellura).

Regarding project size, the scope is limited to SA residents only, and only those active iNat users. So I don’t expect any sudden increases in project membership.

Thanks for your input.

Geoff.

Posted by cobaltducks over 4 years ago

Happy to help Geoff.
I joined up to this recently https://forum.inaturalist.org/ Can't remember why.
But there's a naturetalk area in there that possibly suites my comment above better:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/c/nature-talk
It's a separate log on, so outside of iNaturalist proper.
Cheers
Brett

Posted by ellurasanctuary over 4 years ago

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