Wonderful info here! My apologies for the word choice. “Explosive” may not capture what I’m trying to get across. “Dramatic growth in areas where it is most needed and may have greatest impact” might be better. In any case, profit is clearly not the objective. Growth in all the good things INat does is.
That means accumulation of knowledge about the natural world; dissemination of that knowledge; inclusion of all in scientific research; growth in the number of people across the world who feel a personal stake in biodiversity; growth of a community (and political movement) of environmentalists across the globe–growth of all these goods, whether dramatic or explosive, sounds just great to me, if for no other reason because can counterbalance the explosive growth of environmental destruction over the past two centuries.
If exploitation is growing explosively by design, while environmental science and preservation are growing in a very modest, deliberate, purposely small-scale way, I foresee trouble.
One thing I’ve learned from this discussion is that the question of managing that growth is a huge issue, both in technological terms so the system doesn’t collapse, and in the way human effort is allocated, balancing observation and identification. On that issue, I have no knowledge to contribute, only continued interest.
My sense is that the problems associated with dramatic growth are issues that big, evil, for-profit entities like Facebook have learned to manage pretty well. My wish is that smaller, righteous, non-profit entities like INat could steal some of that mojo and use it for good.
To develop species identification expertise is a process that takes time – and excursions and trainings, both offline and online are an important part of this process – maybe we should think about how Inaturalist can shape the process a bit more proactively?
HUGE chunks of the world are not covered by usable literature, only by decades- or centuries-old books and papers, so identifications skills are in a downward spiral…
We need some iNaturalist-centered tours where a group is brought to an interesting spot and set free to make observations, with minimal help and guidance. There could be natural history lectures on rainy days and the evenings could be spent doing IDs. Bird-watching tours can be great, but I want to see and make observations of more than just birds when I go to the tropics.
I feel like broader adoption of iNat will lead to better understanding of ecology on the individual level, which would then lead to better efforts in respecting these ecologies in the communal and regional level. So, I guess I tend to think that fast growth for the platform would be in everyone’s interest in a big scale. If the bottleneck for growth is funding, the iNat community should step up and work towards getting that funding.
Perhaps this is something natural history museums in the tropics could organise. When I go to a game reserve or park, I dont want to see more elephants, rhinos, hippos or lions. I want a guide who can tell me all about the different grasses, sedges and dung beetles spiders. Sadly I dont think many guides have that knowledge. That is a reason why park guides could be making use of iNaturalist to extend their knowledge beyond vertebrates. Perhaps @lynnharper you could attach yourself to a tropical museum for a while, a museum where staff are highly committed to iNat and have a greater interest in the smaller lifeforms, Could this be a money-maker for cash-strapped museums in the tropics if they provided a service like this ?
Try the missionaries. I’m a missionary in Haiti and I use inat in my spare moments to gain some peace and solace. I’ve been on here sin August and so far I’ve found several endemic species, one of which hasn’t been seen in a century. I love this hobby.
I laughed aloud during the part of the Year in Review Deep Dive when @loarie states this year’s 56 million IDs is “more than enough” for this year’s 40 million observations. Of course I can’t be sure exactly what IDs staff included in the number 56 million; hopefully that’s an “IDs for others” number rather than an “all IDs on anything” number, but either way I’m assuming it includes IDs made on observations older than this calendar year (because of course we have a needs ID backlog!) and IDs made on observations already at research grade (yes it seems strange to me, but dogpile agreeing exists in some taxa). Even if the number 56 million IDs is restricted to needs ID observations only, and only observations made this calendar year (aka the stated 40 million observations), at the very minimum it takes 2 IDs to make an observation research grade (assuming no high taxon IDs and no disagreements), so you need at minimum 80 million IDs for the 40 million observations! Or in reality, many more to account for high IDs and disagreements.
Two and a half times as many IDs to allow for the ones that get tangled.
Especially since CID demands MORE than two thirds. That racks up fast!
(I loath watching videos … I wonder if we will get a written to be read version @loarie ?)
PS okay so I did skim the video, with subtitles for ey naturalist (which got mangled in many variations)
I hope, I wish, that new staff in 2024 will help to shift the focus from - 2/3 of our obs are plants. But let’s look at these little creatures instead … But the icebergs of Needs ID are melting slowly.
I’m not sure if this has been said yet (I haven’t read this entire conversation, nor have I been using forums for a long time), but the reason identifiers aren’t as common could be attributed to the lack of concrete and easy to access research journals and keys.
When trying to ID basically everything I’ve observed, I’ve had to jump through so many hoops and visit hundreds of different sites and journals to try to find information, and still end up with old journals from the 1800’s filled with old unused synonyms for modern day species names, paywalls, or books I have to order in person because PDF’s of them don’t exist on the internet.
Granted, I only observe and try to ID arthropods, so I’m not sure if this struggle is applicable to every taxon, but it’s certainly the one that’s stopped me from trying any identifications myself, as, even when I find appropriate and accurate information, I’m still wrong most of the time.
I have that same problem IDing ladybugs. There’s a lot of taxa, many are obscure and little studied, and the information is scattered throughout the internet. You have to specifically look for identification guides to get anywhere. That’s not even counting the lack of research in many areas, language berries, and just the difficulty of categorising the overlapping and variable species appearances.
I ended up putting together a journal that collected useful guides and put them into one place. I think it would be great if other prominent identifiers did the same with their respective taxa. It would give newbies a strong foundation for helping out with identifications and a space to ask questions to those who are more experienced.
Does Thompson Rivers University allow the general public access to their library? If so, that could be a source for the kinds of materials you refer to.
I am not a scientist. I take the IDs as far as I can.
Which, since you say arthropods - might often be as broad as spider or beetle - that is enough for taxon specialists to filter them out, and the IDs move.
It is team work - and sometimes that team can expand briskly to double figures!
Oh I’m not actually sure! If it is I’ll have to see if I’m able to get some friends to check out books and journals I need. I can’t access the university myself as it’s more than a 2h drive away from my current living space.
I can see that for arthropods … very high number of species, few guides for IDing them, many species poorly known, many fewer specialists. By comparison, for vertebrate animals, it’s relatively easy to get an ID. While it would be interesting to get into arthropods more, I find those limitations to be frustrating, so I tend not to take as many photos of them. But I commend those iNatters willing to tackle them.
That challenge does make it very rewarding though. As someone who has a love for research, I have a lot of fun finally being able to identify an obscure species. A large project I undertook this year was identifying lady beetles of India. There were lots of observations and many were untouched for years! I’m happy to say, that I was able to cut the number of Needs ID observations in half! Maybe more!