Yeah, for the most part it’s easy to annotate lepidopteran lifestage even if they’re not familiar species. That’s useful for downstream identification, since an identifier will presumably be using different resources for caterpillars vs. adults, and being able to filter on annotation makes it easier to identify them in batch.
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There’s a good tutorial on Using Identify to Annotate Observations and I created a wiki to collate Community Annotation & Observation Field Challenges.
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I know it’s not the same as annotating, but there are a few projects for mating:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/mating-in-wild
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/mating-behaviour
You could track yours in there, as well as with observation fields.
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I do not do it because to me it seem simplistic, and it does not apply to groups of two or more individuals, in tracks or traces. I think it applies in only a small number of vertebrates, and in some good observations. Despite it have some importance mentioning what is a male or female, what is the final point of to do it?
That’s exactly where I’d like to see feed-back from iNat staff, ie what specifically is meant here, and why. I’d prefer if the focus would be the taxon rather than an “individual organism”. The latter becomes quickly very fuzzy when dealing with clonal organisms, and it would allow mixed categories as suggested by @jayswildlife
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It can help some people with data sorting.
E.g. there was an iNat blog post re: a researcher who used iNat observations as a source for looking at wing coloration differences in male Blue Dasher dragonflies in different temperature zones.
It didn’t say if he used the male annotation to help filter out what he was looking for, but I could imagine it would help him look through the thousands of observations.
Plus, it helps with the “It doesn’t look like the [ X ]s I’ve seen” comments to be able to point to annotated examples in the gallery and show there is sexual dimorphism, just as life stage can demonstrate that weird spiky crawling bug is indeed a “baby” ladybug to people who have only seen adults.
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I find that as well - adding annotations to identifications increases the time spent on each ID. A lot of times I need to go into the observation to see the details of the moth I’m identifying - it’s possible to pick up where you left off since the last observation will have a line under it. Since I often write a lot on observations, adding the slow loading annotations often gets left behind. I know more data are better, but so are more id’s.
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I usually annotate when IDing, or when I go back to an observation after a notification (usually that someone has refined my course ID).
Occasionally I stumble across a taxon with only a few observations (100 or less) that doesn’t have annotations and I’ll use the gear on the taxon chart to add annotations to as many as I can.
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I notice this a lot with butterflies. It’s not an issue looking at individual photos but when trying to use only butterflies and not caterpillars, it is hard to compare data due to how many are not annotated. Especially with large datasets such as species data for the entire year, I end up manually sorting through the data which is a pain. If anyone has suggestions for other ways to do this I would be interested.
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I have tested this and it seems to be in large part a UI problem. After I select an annotation, I can close the window or leave the observation (on the web or the app) before the wheel stops spinning and the annotation generally still gets applied. Sometimes an annotation fails to show up after I select it, especially if I select more than one at once while the wheel is still spinning, but upon closing and reopening the observation, it shows up correctly. I don’t wait for the wheel anymore.
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The problem on the Identify page is that if you click a life stage and then click on the right-arrow (or use the k/board shortcut) to go to the next ob while the wheel is still spinning, then you find the life stage spinning on the next ob, and then things get really confused and nothing eventually takes, and you have to start all over again. By that I mean refresh the whole Identify page!
On slow lines this is too frustrating! And what’s interesting, from this thread I’ve learnt that it’s not just on slow lines either. It’s not just me! Who knew?! 
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Usually, when I go to the next ob if I go back to the previous it is there, but sometimes when I leave while the wheel is spinning the annotation I added is not there when I check again (from the ID page or the observation itself), so now I just wait out the wheel, which is indeed frustratingly slow.
Not to toot my own horn, but I am really good about annotating lepidoptera life stages when I ID 
That’s mostly because:
- they have very easily distinguished life stages
- I suspect @k8thegr8 filters on larva (and a few other observers on adult), so I get that dopamine hit of seeing my coarse ID mean something when it gets refined quickly because it was annotated.
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A bit off topic here, but if you want to ID Canadian moths, use Moth Photographers Group, select Plate Series, select group and then filter for Eastern or Western Canada. I’m not sure what they consider West or East, because I’m in the Centre (Winnipeg) and have always used Eastern moths.
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I try to annotate as much as I can. Especially cicadas, spiders and certain moths. But for whatever reason, the annotations can take a while to load, even in high-speed internet time. I’ve had nights when annotations were taking 10 to 15 seconds each to register. Another problem with this is when you try to check all three categories at once only for 2 of the 3 to be canceled out, and you have to recheck them once or twice more. They seem pretty buggy right now. If annotations were more streamlined and reliable I’d feel a little more encouraged. But sometimes I just don’t have time.
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I totally agree. There are very good reasons why a given observation often includes both male and female, both adult and young, etc. I understand the logic that in theory each iNaturalist observation is supposed to be about one individual, but in reality that isn’t true.
Oh, well. When I upload, for example, a mating pair of dragonflies I just don’t mark it either male or female, and I move on. Saves me that very real issue of slowness plus unreliability, anyway.
(I have no wish to post the same pair twice, once for each individual, but that would be an option.)
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Many observations also contain more than 1 species, yet the same record can’t be identified as a list of things.
While I too get frustrated that I cant enter multiple things under one record, be it genders, tracking abundance in an area etc, I understand the thinking of trying to maintain records as being of 1 thing only.
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Another general comment about annotations: sometimes I hesitate adding annotations because it triggers a notification, and I don’t want the observer to feel ‘spammed’ by my annotations…
Regarding the issue where multiple individuals of the same species are present in the observation photo, I have felt the want/need for animal observations and the categories of ‘Sex’ and ‘Life Stage’ to be treated the same as plant phenology categories, where more than multiple annotations are possible (i.e., you can choose evidence of Flowering AND Fruiting). So, if a moose cow and calf is observed, I would like to add adult AND juvenile.
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One doesn’t get notifications of annotations added by others. So no one would know that you’ve done it, and won’t feel overwhelmed by notifications.
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Thanks, maybe I’m confusing it with Observation Fields.
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That’s because the same individual plant can be exhibiting both states. The same individual moose cant be both an adult and a juvenile etc.
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