Duplicate observations across datasets

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Something that I often hear repeated on iNaturalist and BugGuide is that posting the same observation on both platforms results in the observation being ingested twice by GBIF. However, I can’t find any actual examples of this after looking at a number of observations cross-posted on both sites. So, does GBIF de-duplicate between datasets? If so, is it based on same date/time/location?

E.g., an observation cross-posted on both platforms but that is present on GBIF as only a single occurrence record:
-On BugGuide Spider in Covington Georgia - Micrathena gracilis - BugGuide.Net
-On iNaturalist Spined Micrathena from Newton, Georgia, United States on July 29, 2015 at 01:22 PM by Jesse Rorabaugh · iNaturalist
-On GBIF Search

My apologies if this is a question that has been discussed already ad nauseum – will delete this topic if so. I’ve checked the FAQ and searched for duplicate/duplication within the forum and not found this addressed explicitly (at least in a way that made sense to me). Thanks for helping me understand this!

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Hi @gmontgomery,

GBIF doesn’t deduplicate the occurrences between the datasets.

In fact, it seems like this observation is indeed twice in GBIF:

As far as I can see, the observation from BugGuide isn’t associated with any coordinate. This is why it didn’t come up with the query you tried (the administrative area is inferred from coordinates).

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I see! That makes total sense. Thanks for taking the time – really appreciate it.

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