Cole Gaerber Curator

Joined: Jul 23, 2016 Last Active: Oct 23, 2024 iNaturalist Canada

I currently have a large accumulated backlog of notifications to go through. I sincerely apologize for any missed pings or PMs; I will work over the next few months to get through all of them individually. Apologies for the late replies or changed IDs; please DM me for anything pressing.

All-around amateur naturalist from Vancouver BC, presently studying Geological Sciences. Primarily interested in disjunct populations, ultramafic/serpentine endemic flora, glacial refugia, and long-term species population trends. I'm always trying to get out into the field as much as possible and learn further how to ID different groups of taxa. Like many others it all started with birding, but (thanks to iNat) I've become a generalist and look to ID anything in nature I don't recognize.

I became a curator to add missing species to iNaturalist taxonomy and fix establishment statuses/common names/etc. - If you see a missing taxon that needs to be added, species to be marked as introduced, common name changed, etc. feel free to PM me instead of waiting for a flag to be addressed. Happy to add any taxon providing it's accepted by the taxonomic authorities that iNat follows and isn't otherwise controversial or already flagged.

Please tag me if you want me to explain or review/retract any ID I've made, as I still make mistakes like everyone else.


iNat tips/tricks:

iNat Search URL Filter tips/tricks:

  • How to use iNaturalist Search URLs Wiki - Immensely useful resource to narrow down your searches. A few shortcuts below:
  • &hrank=species&unobserved_by_user_id=yourusername - filter for only species you haven't seen
  • &introduced=false&hrank=species - exclude introduced species (only show natives and those not yet marked as introduced or native within a jurisdiction)
  • &per_page=200 - on Identify pages, change 30 results per page to 200
  • iNat Compare Tool - Use search filters to create different lists and find the differences between them. Extremely wide range of uses from tracking out-of-range observations to finding species only recorded in a place in the current year. Example - species of a few dicot orders that had their first research-grade observation in British Columbia in 2022.

Various Projects and Lists:

British Columbia-specific:

Projects:

Lists of endemic taxa from various regions, mostly remote archipelagos where I could find no complete list of endemics online, also serving to check for species missing from iNaturalist taxonomy at the time:

Other Lists:

All my photos are free to use for any non-commercial or educational use, so long as credit given. Please let me know though; I'm always curious where they end up!

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