I enjoy adding annotations and observation fields to observations, so if you have a particular focus that I can help with, please let me know! I am good with birds, plants, and mammals. I understand basic insect behaviour/organisms and can recognise age groups. I’m most familiar with Europe and Sou…

I already am adding life stage to Lepidoptera as I go through Unknowns, so am happy to help with this specific project, too.

Ok! The Lepidoptera is a straightforward one, I can get onto that. I’ll also look into northern cardinals and see how accurate I can be :)

I like to add the observation fields: Host plant and Host plant ID (both together) for leaf mines, galls, viruses, fungi (mildew or rust fungi for example) - anything on a plant. I add both because different users prefer either one… Overall I prefer Host plant ID. These fields are always helpful. …

[image] IDfanatic: for example when I search Polistes observations for Xenos parasites You might also add the observations to this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/hymenopteran-hosts-of-strepsiptera

Spiders are often not easily annotated, but if you ever feel really bored… Lycosidae are easy to sex and mark adult when carrying egg sacs or spiderlings on their back - obviously adult females in that case. I ran into several cases where I had wished for better seasonality charts as some species a…

You can easily distinguish male and female flies of the family Platypezidae* by their eyes. In males, the eyes touch each other in the middle, whereas in females, they don’t. Also, in many species the males are almost completely black, where as the females are more ornate. I had done a lot of annot…

[image] eyekosaeder: same goes for other flies as well, but not all of them, I believe I think the general rule with flies is that if the eyes meet at the top of the head, it is a male. If the eyes don’t meet, you need other criteria to determine the sex. Oddly enough, this also applies to a…

Interesting! And some amazing closeups of eyes among the observations!

Well… since you offered… Odonata. I’m looking for nymphs. Start here.

Annotations - happy to help

General

nyenyedzi December 30, 2025, 8:54pm 9

Ok, so if you have a spider with an egg sac, do you annotate as “adult female” or “life stage: eggs”, or do you add an observation field for “spider egg sac?

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Annotations - happy to help

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