these groups of insects are very large of species, but not so typical ones are usually left ID-ied only to order or family
There’re lots of experts in both orders on iNat who id thousands of observations.
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@edanko @zdanko @trinaroberts @matthewvosper and many, many more
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The not-so-typical ones are generally the most interesting and actually get identified quicker! As far as flies go, most of the observations stuck in order are common species that we don’t prioritize. Family ID should not be scoffed at, as a lot of images aren’t detailed enough to go further (or, at least, those of us on iNat can’t identify them further).
With all that said, certainly, a lot of cool flies and beetles get lost in the tons stuck at order, and when that is the case one must either accept that there is a huge backlog, or if someone has said that you can tag them on interesting observations, do that.
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Even within these orders there is a great deal of variation. In the flies Syrphidae may get ID’d quite quickly and often to species. Sarcophagidae will rarely get beyond family (but that does not mean there is no reason to post them). Records, especially with good pics, are valuable regardless of whether they ever get to species. There are many things that simply can’t be ID’d to species from photographs because they require dissection or something - others can rarely be ID’d from photographs because they require very specific details to be visible from particular angles.
It will also depend where you are in the world as to how well scientifically described the fauna are, and who knows about them. There are many interesting observations around the world that will take a while to get ID’d because the knowledge of them is only gradually getting dug out of obscure old papers and so forth - they may in fact be relatively easy to ID when the knowledge becomes available.
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re: “many, many more”
@borisb , @treegrow, jeanfrancoisroch, @nanofishology , @ianswift , etc…
You can also check the leaderboards & from there check the profiles of the identifiers. Many people will say in their profiles what their ID strategy is.
Eg. @sbushes profile mentions taxa they are interested in, and says they tend to ID from order to family.
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You can also see the number of observations stuck at order as a motivation to help with identifying!
( This is exactly how I got started ) Even if you just begin with helping shift obs from order to suborder you soon start to learn how to place lower down the tree to family.
Btw, one of yours is stuck at order due to ancestral disagreement. To fix that, you can tag in the disagreeing identifier and ask them to withdraw. This will shift it to genus where it belongs.
You have several other Diptera observations which are stuck at family level or higher - on those you need to withdraw your original autosuggested ID if you wish to let the identifier ID place it to genus/species.
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