Dedicated observation field for queens.
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Hi all, sorry for tagging a bunch, I just want most of the active ant identifiers to get to see this (feel free to notify others if I missed any). There really hasn't been a consistent way to mark queen observations, besides using one of the few observation fields with some mention of queens, or tags. I feel like it'd be better to standardize this, so I created the field Gyne(s) present?. It's a simple Yes/No, in which the "No" is pretty redundant. I suppose "No" can be helpful to specify on observations where someone thinks a major/other worker is a queen, when it is not, but I expect it won't be used much. The field defaults to "Yes" when selected, so you can pretty quickly assign it to observations with queens. A few hundred observations have been added so far, and hopefully more soon. Of course, what's the point of logging queens if you can't search through the logs, so here is how you can look through it:
- Go to the observation field's page
- Select "Yes" (mostly unnecessary since the vast majority will be "Yes" anyway, but for consistency you can)
- Scroll down to and select "View more search options" (you can just copy this link); there's another method but I want to keep this relatively succinct
Type in whatever taxon (and/or location) you want, and view queen observations :)
For example, here are Camponotus queens
As of 2/2/22 I have found out that you can simply add the text &field:gyne(s) present?=yes to the end of any observations link and that'll accomplish the same job.
e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=arman_&verifiable=any to https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=arman_&verifiable=any&field:gyne(s) present?=yes
If you want to look at everything in the project, simply swap the & for a ? (first parameter is always a ?) and put that over inaturalist.org/observations
I used the term gyne, which I believe means it can be validly used for all eusocial insects, so feel free to do that if you want; I added some Bombus and Vespidae observations of my own (maybe worth showing some of the other Hymenopteran identifiers?). I'm open to any criticism with the field too; maybe there's a way to reduce redundancy, but for now I think it'll be effective. When using the Identify tab, observation fields can be selected under "Annotations" to the right of "Info" on each observation you go through. I'm still looking for a way to go through IDs I've made with the comment "queen/rainha/reina" etc., to add to the field, so if anyone has ideas for that it'd also help.1 For observations with a keyword mentioned in the tags or description, you can type the keyword under "Description / Tags" under Observations or Identify. Hope this helps and wasn't too wordy, feel free to ask questions if there's any confusion.
Thanks,
Arman
1 The https://www.inaturalist.org/comments may be helpful for this, so big thanks to @oneanttofew for bringing that up. I'm currently trying to figure out if this can be used for comments attached to IDs.
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Nice! I've wanted something like this for a while.
Good idea!
I decided I'll leave the other method of getting the link here in the comments.
When you're on an observation with the field already applied, you can click on the field, and select the highlighted text to view the observations list. You can also click on details to be brought to the field's info page.
If you really want you can also just go to https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields and type in gyne.
Nice! I used to use the female tag to indicate the female sexuals (and just leaving it empty for just worker observations) but this seems much better and accurate. Sadly, it seems this featureis not available on the mobile app.
Much needed. Well done. Works easily, I have added some.
Thank you!
Already over 2,000!
Thanks so much. Yesterday I worked through most of the Australian ant queens with "queen" in the notes field and did use the No option, mostly for males. Now I'm working on all those observations where I commented "queen...". You can view your comments here: https://www.inaturalist.org/comments. A search box pops up once you choose Comments by me. I found the link through this very handy tutorial https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63.
Ooh, I'll try to see if I can make that work on comments attached to IDs. That will be very helpful, thank you.
Good idea, I'll think about it during my identifications.
Thank you !
Well I just found out there's a super easy way to add the field to the end of an observation link. Originally I thought you'd have to type out &field:Gyne(s)%20present%3F=Yes which is a bit hard to remember, but apparently &field:Gyne(s) present?=Yes works just as well and automatically fixes the formatting when you load. You can even ignore the capitalization.
e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=arman_&verifiable=any to https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=arman_&verifiable=any&field:gyne(s) present?=yes
Question: is it possible to make a graph(img below) of seasonality in the inat with only the queens of a gender to have an idea of when + - nuptial flights occur?
For example, from Pheidole's observations, being able to select only those marked "Gyne(s) present?" and then generate a graph to see in which months that genus/species usually has nuptial flights in X place
I think it’s possible to collect the data and create graphs and such from them, but I’m not exactly sure how. I’d also keep in mind not all gyne observations are of nuptial flights, some are of inside colonies. It seems to vary by species, sometimes people mostly find queens from flights in certain species. I considered making part of the field “Nuptial Flight” / “Other” rather than Yes/No but it can be a bit tricky to accurately determine when a flight is happening from an observation. Sometimes alates come out and then don’t fly, sometimes it’s a photo of alates just sitting inside a nest, etc.
Yes, about the observations of the winged ones still in the mother colony and etc, you are right, but I don't think it would be difficult to ignore this, since in this graph we can see what these observations are, and even if it is a little laborious, it would solve this problem
In this case, it would be easier to distinguish the queens who are actually on a nuptial flight from those who have not yet done so than to differentiate the observations of these queens from all other observations with workers and so on.
Well, in my opinion, it would be good if we had a resource of this type, we would be able to raise the level of importance of inat for science itself without harming those who are here only to register species, in this case, to make inat better seen by the science in general, and can be a way where researchers can collect data about these nuptial flights, have a better idea where to find X species and so on. I say this because I know that many scientists belittle (I know myrmecologists like that) the inaturalist, and I would really like scientists to see how important it is, and the ability it can give us to generate knowledge about the biology of species.
I think the simple answer to this problem is to look at when males fly. They are so much more indicative of flight times for most species and that is already built into the graphs on the taxon pages on iNat (so long as we fill in 'male' in Annotations).
Any graph of dealate gynes won't tell us anything about flight times for non- or semi-claustral ants. In Australia, that means at least Myrmecia and Polyrhachis. In my corner of the continent new queens of various species fly in late summer and early autumn and then forage for months before producing daughter adults in late winter/early spring.
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