How we're using the data

Is this intended to replace "Interactions S Afri" ?

This is great Bradley!

I am looking forward to see your results. I was wondering about parasites. They are also living off their hosts, but I do not see any mention about that kind of eating. Are you interested it that too, or should that be left out?

I suspect there are also a lot of the observations under "visiting a flower" that should be part of the Eats Who? project.

@colin25 I do not think this project is intended to replace Interactions. This is showing how useful the data collected in that project is.

To me it seems Who Eats Who? is a global project, only collecting data about feeding habits. Interactions is more general, not just data about feeding.

I would suggest one keep on contributing to Interactions and add Who Eats Who? when appropriate.

Sorry, there are other pages with comments & queries but to clarify:
Add parasitic-type relationships?
Pollinators?
And with the thing being eaten: Does your observation feature an animal eating a plant, fungus, or another animal? I presume the answer here is No on this side and Yes on the eater side?

Thanks all for the questions. See below for answers.

This is NOT intended to replace "Interactions S Afr." That project is run by a different group and is interested in collecting a more diverse suite of interactions within a single geographic area. Our project (Who Eats Who) is interested solely in feeding interactions and is global in scope. Additionally, thanks to the observation field parameters for this project, we are specifically set up to be able to analyze feeding interaction data and produce food web visualizations quickly and easily.

Yes, parasitic interactions are definitely appropriate to add here. At some point I will need to code those separately but since that is a feeding interaction it is something we will want to include.

Yes, pollinator-host interactions are definitely to be included as well. Again, I will end up needing to code these slightly differently when analyzing the data but that's not something contributors to the project have to worry about. We want ANY observations of animal feeding.

Unfortunately, we do need links to both sides of the interaction. I realize that this is cumbersome, but it's the best way for me to validate the two observations when coding.

The answer should be Yes for "does your observation feature an animal eating a plant, fungus, or another animal?" for both the "eater" and the "thing being eaten." This field is there to ensure people are only submitting observations to the project that are appropriate (feeding interactions). If there is a different way this could be phrased that you think would be less confusing I would be happy to hear it! I could even just get rid of this observation field if we think it's causing more confusion than it's worth.

Yes, please add observations to both Interactions S Afr and Who Eats Who (see # 1 above). The two projects are concerned with answering different questions.

Let's not add observations from Larders & Caches project for now, since the photographs only feature the prey. I realize that the predator here is presumably always a shrike, but for this project in general we would prefer to actually see both predator and prey in the photos.

Whew, ok I think that's all! Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions and thanks again for your work on this.

Hmm that's a good point. @i_c_riddell . So the question is what to do when one "eater" is eating multiple different species. For the "eater" observation you should be able to just list two different observation URLs for the two different species being eaten. Say, if a bird has both a lizard and a snake in its beak then under the observation field "URL for partner observation" you can just list the observation of the snake and of the lizard. Is it not letting you add two different URLs to that observation field?

Hi @bradleyallf

Only seeing this project now, it does seem to be quite a duplication of effort. The 'Interactions (s Afr)' project was brought from the iSpot Community where it was a programmed component on the website. All the projects created when this community migrated where given the (s Afr) suffix so that members could easily find projects they were familiar with. Not all of the (s Afr) projects geographically bounded, and the name really excludes more widespread adoption and use. Interactions are global.

Since it appears that "Who Eats Whom?" is literally a subset of 'Interactions (s Afr)' and uses the same linking technique, I think its better to try and combine efforts (it makes sense to use the larger project). The data are all available for anyone to use in any case. Why not join 'Interactions (s Afr)' as a manager and launch that project as THE global interaction project? Will need a bit of rebranding though. @tonyrebelo