I’ve been going through Diatoms pretty intensely since getting into the ID game. A really common error is people selecting the genus Diatoma instead of the class Diatoms. Sometimes a misclick that is fixed quickly, but more often the observer never returns to fix the problem, which requires more people to get a more accurate community ID. I totally understand why the mistake happens, but is there a way to prevent this from happening so often?
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Not really, because it’s just simple human error that even experienced users, including those who are aware of the similar pairs, make. I still sporadically click on Chloris the finch genus instead of Chloris the grass genus when making IDs, and then have to fix it, because I wasn’t paying full attention and was on semi auto-pilot mode. I realise my mistake straight away and correct it straight away, but I still make it in the first place regardless because it’s such an easy misclick/mistake to make in the first place.
And the problem is that there are so, so many of these. There are plenty of Australian ones I encounter all the time, like
Echidna the mammal vs Echidna the moray eel genus
Platypus the mammal vs Platypus the borer beetle genus
Eremophila the plant genus vs Eremophila the lark genus
Grevillea the plant genus vs Grevillia the beetle genus
one that trips up a lot of people is Spinifex, because both instances are grasses and both are common and widely distributed in Australia. But one Spinifex is the genus name, for a group of coastal/sand dunes grasses, and the other is a widely-used common name for a group of arid desert grasses (genus Triodia). The latter is named ‘False Spinifex’ on iNat, which definitely helps, but you still get plenty of people observing a Triodia, knowing that grass as ‘Spinifex’ because that common name is used in many books and guides, and entering an ID of the genus Spinifex.
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From the Pre-Maverick (2 against 1) project. We run the code every 6 months.
Tweak the filters to suit. Does not solve the problem, but an easy way to find them.
For the plant versus lark you can use Kingdom Disagreement - since those are trapped at Life and need identifiers to do Life.
19K waiting including the obligatory candid picture of a schoolgirl intent on iNatting while being outed. Flagged …
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I think it would be fun to put together a list of these for prospective identifiers to look for. Some that I see in the insect world are:
-“Cabbage Moth” when people mean the very unrelated “Cabbage White” butterfly, as they’re colloquially called “Cabbage Moth” by some Americans
-The genus “Cicada” used instead of the family name for Cicadas
-The moth called “Mallow” used for plants called “mallows”
-The names “Red Twin-Spot Carpet”, “Alfalfa Looper”, and “Cross-Lined Wave” are each used for two different moths on iNat
-The subfamily Lymantriinae is labeled “Tussock Moths”, but most of the common moths with “Tussock Moth” in their name are not in that subfamily
-When you type the moth name “Pero”, the first result is always Domestic Dog
-The genus Sphinx gets used in place of the family level for sphinx moths
I’m sure there are others that aren’t coming to mind right away. I check these taxa pretty often to make corrections.
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I have also noticed, mostly because I’ve been catching my own error, that within fungi there are three levels of classification that are aragic------- and I have frequently selected the wrong one. Its annoying but I’m trying to make sure I’m staying on top of it.
I also have to be patient with myself I know I’m a perfectionist but I also understand that noone is perfect.
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I think in the case of Diatoma and Cicada, it would be helpful for users if they had common names in more languages, so that users could easily see that this taxon refers to European cicadas for example. Sorry, I don’t know a common name for Diatoma.
Many users of iNatualist haven’t had any taxonomic training, so they don’t understand taxonomic structure and may not understand the ‘Genus’ label that shows up with those taxon names.
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Definitely not a common name for Diatoma unfortunately. The only thing I could think of is if “Diatoma” didn’t show up as a suggestion until it’s fully spelled out, but that seems silly even to me.
I think this would be such a cool reference to have when I’m tired of my “usual” stomping grounds for IDing things. Something like a journal post with /identify links or project that lists these for people to save and find again would be really neat.
When I saw the thread title, I thought it was going to be about the flag I was dealing with last night: observations of the cultivar Philodendron ‘Burle Marx’ are almost always misidentified as Philodendron burle-marxii, a rare species which looks nothing like the cultivar. I ended up subscribing to the species just so that I would be notified of every new misidentification that comes in, and writing a copypasta for that case.
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