People aren't recording cattails?!?!
I was taking a walk along Farmington Lake in northwestern New Mexico yesterday and stopped to take a picture of some cattails (probably Typha latifolia, but I haven't paid enough attention to be sure), and decided to submit it as an observation. Which led to a discovery I found much more surprising than the presence of cattails along this particular lake. iNaturalist has very few observations of cattails in this region!
One of the things I'm interested in is what people choose to record on iNaturalist, given the opportunity. More specifically, given all the possibilities where an observer is, what's the probability that they'll choose to record that species rather than another. Obviously, individual observer preference has a lot to do with this, but on average I suspect that showier, more photogenic or charismatic taxa are preferentially recorded. Which brings me back to cattails. I wouldn't say they are one of my favorite taxa, but they do look kinda cool, and they're certainly not inconspicuous, and they aren't uncommon along standing water in the region. So why so few records?
I got somewhat fixated on this question, so I decided to go for a run later in the day in a place where I was pretty sure I'd find more cattails along a well-traveled foot path. They weren't in the first place I looked, along the pond by the Farmington Nature Center (cattails may have been removed from there), but I did eventually find them along an irrigation ditch further down the path. I may have to go for more runs along standing water in the near future.
תגובות
הוספת תגובה