When and where of Biodiversity photo

Many times when we post a photo of beautiful butterfly or bird on social media we are asked when and where did you see it. Many a times this is taken very casually but this questions are very important. Here is why? 

When you post these photographs, they may automatically become in a crude sense biodiversity occurrence record (Barve, 2014). Though this is not ideal method to post a record, since we are doing it anyway, why not make it complete. 

First of all, let us understand what the person is behind by asking these questions. When or Date will tell the seasonality of your record. Sometimes Birds or Insects migrate or have seasonal color forms. Where is trying to understand the locality and habitat with full bearing of geography. This will help us understand the distribution of the species, or sometimes decide which sub species etc. 

These should be answered is specify complete date. i.e. 2017-10-27 rather than ‘Today’, ‘Last Week’, ‘Oct 2017’ etc. Even for old photographs, in digital age, we have dates associated to the files. And for location, Village/Town, District, State and Country. Country may be dropped on groups / forums specific to a country or region. 

One should not stop here, but should go ahead and make the photo records available or portals like 

• Butterflies of India (IFB)
• Moths of India 
• Odonata of India 
• Reptiles of India
• Amphibians of India
• Birds of India
• India Biodiversity Portal (IBP)
• iNaturalist (iNat)

More about the biodiversity portals coming soon.

References:

• Barve V. (2014) Discovering and developing primary biodiversity data from social networking sites: A novel approach. Ecological Informatics, 24, 194–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.08.008 or here
   

iNaturalist : Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do I need a separate login id for iNaturalist ?

- No you can use your exsting ids like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google, Yahoo or SoundCloud.

2. Can I import my photos from other web sites.

- Yes you can import your photos directly from Flickr, Picasa and Facebook. You can also upload photos directly from your computer or tablet.

3. What are the details I need to enter with the record.

- Photo, Date observed, Place observed are MUST. The location of photo taken is better as precise as we could get. A description and few tags are always good to have. Even if identification help is required, specifying the identity to broad level is always good, like if you are not aware of even the family of the moth, it is always good to specify that it is moth  Butterflies and Moths(Order Lepidoptera)  to start with.


4. How should I help with identification?

- Here is a complete article about the identification process. Confirming / Suggesting identifications on iNaturalist,

 

5. What are the Projects I should post my records?

 Here is the list of projects for DiversityIndia. iNaturalist Projects documenting Biodiversity of India.

 

6. Do I need to add project name for each upload I do?

No. It is not a must. But highly recommended, to increase visibility and usability of the data we have posted. More people see it if it on projects and more comments and identifications to confirm the records.

iNaturalist Projects documenting Biodiversity of India

Here are some projects for documenting biodiversity of India on iNaturalist.

IndianMoths

ButterflyIndia

DragonflyIndia

InsectIndia

SpiderIndia

InvertebrateIndia

ReptileIndia

Amphibians of India

FishIndia

BirdIndia

MammalIndia

FloraIndia

• Confirming / Suggesting identifications on iNaturalist

Photo of Year 2012

Happy New Year 2013 to all. This is the time of year when we share Photo of the Year on all the DiversityIndia groups. So here is the call for posting the Photo of the Year. If you are not familiar what it is here are the guidelines.

• Photos taken during 2012 are posted for this, up to three best photos by each member for each taxon group like Butterflies, Moths, Dragonflies etc.
• Please post them with clear subject line "GroupName Photo of Year 2012 : Your Name" eg. ButterflyIndia Photo of Year 2012 : Vijay Barve Photo 1
• Photos are posted with usual specifications and metadata like size less than 1200px the larger size and information like date, place and scientific name of the organism etc. Ref: How to make most of your biodiversity photos
• Remember, the photos that are posted may be uploaded on DiversityIndia websites and blogs.
• Members are encouraged to also post them as Biodiversity Occurrence Records on websites like http://indiabiodiversity.org/ , http://inaturalist.org/ etc.

Please check some of the submissions for earlier years at http://diversityindia.org/photo or http://diversityindia.blogspot.com/search/label/Photo

How to make most of your biodiversity photos

I have been participating in DiversityIndia cyber communities for more than 10 years. In recent months there are more interactive options like Orkuk, Facebook and Google+ have become popular. There are increasing number of members and posts on these communities every month. I have been thinking of making all the good information more useful and available to people who are concerned about environment and want to use this information for that, rather than merely showing off the photos and replying with like or + and wow and beautiful.

When we take a photo of any plant or animal in the wild (outside a zoo or botanical garden), we create a record of that organism being present in that place at that point of time. This is very important information for scientists who study

• Geographical Distributions
• Ecological Niches
• Invasive species
• Behaviour
• Microecology

and so on

By simply specifying the date and location we can help all these people to understand and protect our natural heritage.

It is important to specify the date and place in proper format to avoid confusion. To let people know when it was clicked use date of photo like 2012-08-15 for 15th August 2012 rather than “this month” or “this year Independence Day”. Similarly “my backyard” is not useful at all, rather use “Bangalore, Karnataka” or “Niphad, Nashik Dist, MH”. Specify time if you can, sometimes it adds an interesting dimension in behaviour. So in consultation with some experienced members we are trying to develop a very simple yet powerful format to document these photos while posting.

The format looks like this:

###
Scientific Name:
Common Name:
Locality:
Lat: , Lon:
Date:
Remarks:
###

If a member does not know the name of the species, first two fields of scientific Name and Common Name are left blank for the time being. They are filled in by the member once someone helps with the id. Locality is descriptive information about where it was seen. It starts from village or locality and goes all the way to state and country. Lat and Lon values are very simple to obtain now with the technologies we have. There is no need of expensive GPS. We can use Google maps (https://maps.google.com/) for this. Just zoom in to the location you had been for photography. Make sure you zoom in maximum possible and then use right click menu What’s here? It will display Lat Lon values on top in search box. Date should be in formay YYYY-MM-DD so it is simple for computer to understand. Remarks is the only optional field in this format. We can use it for information on Habitat, weather etc.

Members can always add more fields like Sex of organism, Life stage, association with other species etc. If we all just start filling this for every photo we post, within few months we would have a very important and useful data repository in place. And by doing this you will contribute to conservation efforts too, because the data will be used for research which will lead to better understanding and protection of the species.

It is not sufficient to add this information on photograph itself, because that may not be read and understood by automated computer scripts, and does not show up in the searches.

Note: This format is NOT final and suggestions and comments are welcome. Specially problems filling out would help us refine it. Remember we are trying to make it simple to fill yet powerful.

InsectIndia : Photo of Year 2009

Here are the Best Photo of 2009 by members of InsectIndia. Click on the image for full size.

This is my favourtite pic of the year 2009, taken at CEC, just before the monsoons, when the forest was heaped with dried leaf litter, and was all a-buzz with the chirping of Cicadas. The mating Cicadas is symbolic of the joy of life, of propagation of species.
katie bagli [katiebagli@yahoo.co.in]

Soldier fly: This fly looked quite ordinary however upon close
examination revealed an incredibly beautiful eye. I was lucky to
capture it before it flew away.
Location: Mirik, Darjeeling.
Parag Giri [heavyhans@gmail.com]

Photo of Year 2009

To post photo of the year to relevant group, please follow the conventions:

Please re size the image to 800 pixels on longer side. More details here.

Mention your Name and Email id with the image.

A short write up or story behind photo informing why you feel it is "The photo of year 2009" is integral part and is posted with the photo.

Remember to make the subject line of the message as Photo of the Year 2009

And remember you have to send only One or Two of the best photos.

If you want to check out some archives are here. 2008 for all groups and ButterflyIndia Photo of Year 2008.