Becoming an iNat curator

You’re welcome :nerd_face:

@spiphany helped me with an Austrian entomologist’s beetle description from 1920 recently, which helped me identify one named species and reveal two likely unpublished taxa.

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One of the challenges working in these areas is that even when locals know the names, they may not actually be helpful in finding the binomial, or even the plant family. In addition there are often a range of names used, many of them extremely regional.

As an example of the latter, where I work in Vietnam it’s an island around 27km by 20km, most of it national park. Even on this small island people in different villages often have different names for some of the plants and even animals.

They also mis-classify things all the time. The local word for ferret badgers is the same as that for civets, northern tree shrews are usually called squirrels, any black snake is usually called a cobra and any thin green snake is usually called a green tree viper, etc And this is even by folks who were once poachers and now work with us to prevent poaching, and who know the plants and animals of the area very well.

Local familiarity helps with local identifications, but doesn’t always help with international scientific identifications.

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There are actual universities in most countries. Scientific institutions! So I was thinking about actual scientists, local scientists, local biologists, local naturalists. We certainly have have those, even if they might not be present in every land plot 27 by 20.

In sum: They are not endemic to one place in the world.

Of course there are multiple common names for things. Those exist in the US and Canada and Europe and everywhere. They are an issue for anyone who comes from a non-scientific background and has to learn the way. And yet slowly we manage to learn.

Here all small lizards are referred to as iguanitos in casual conversation even though none are iguanas, but I guarantee that there are multiple local people who somehow have managed to learn to classify them into anoles, geckos and even species, even if in conversation they would still never say, “Look at that Anolis sagrei on the wall!” but rather, “iguanitooo!”

The idea that there are too few identifiers and then dismissing training or encouraging those in the actual countries, is wildly shortsighted. I suggested:

To not do so is a bit like the parent who does not let a child tie their own shoe because it takes so long and the parent can just easily tie it. Eventually you end up with a frustrated parent who wonders why they have to take two minutes to tie shoes every morning and why the child is going to school without being able to tie their own shoes. This is to say: let even untrained locals learn and make mistakes, encourage and repeat with kindness, and we will slowly learn.

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I wonder what the demographics of (active) iNat curators are. If curators reflect observer demographics (rather than First World identifiers) ?
I live in a First / Third World country, so I have a foot in each.

This is a very interesting topic, especially as I’ve considered becoming a curator myself, but I overall understand the direction this thread has taken that highlights the value of IDs and the curatorial situations where people are most needed. As a (somewhat) generalist in one of the most densely populated areas the United States, I’m still lucky to have 53% RG observations. I agree that the current lack of identifiers is a serious issue (which makes me a bit disappointed that I haven’t made more IDs). There are even certain taxa that I specifically avoid observing because in all likelihood they will never receive any specific IDs. On curation, I’ve made the 5 flags necessary for eligibility, though just barely. It wouldn’t be hard to make more, as I’ve already noted several dozen species to be added to the database in my random scouring of research papers. At the same time, I don’t have the knowledge to confirm that these would be legitimate or valuable additions. This makes it hard for me to convince myself that becoming a curator is a good idea.

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Yes I’ve definitely learned how important identifiers are now and that their almost just as important as curators.

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almost? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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Hahaha :rofl:

Relating this back to the OP, that is an important consideration. iNauralist policy in fact discourages adding every species of highly speciose and/or seldom observed genera. But if you have the knowledge to, say, predict that a certain species not in the database has in fact been observed and usually misidentified, that would be a use case for adding it and going through its genus to look for it. Or the other way 'round.

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You are wildy misrepresenting what I said and the point I was making.

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I think there’s sometimes a fallacy academics fall for where they assume “local knowledge” will be more in-depth, or otherwise better, than research done by others simply by virtue of people being local and/or indigenous. Doesn’t always work that way.

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Local knowledge in Podunk, Amazonia is like local knowledge in Podunk, United States. There are some people who are interested in plants and animals, who are very attentive observers, who have years of experience and whose knowledge is extremely valuable. There are other people who don’t give a hoot, their interests lie elsewhere.

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Yeah, exactly. We still have people in Podunk, United States, who think eels are evil, crows are a bad omen, and chestnut horses are crazy, so I’m not sure why some folks assume people will be any different elsewhere.

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I guess at times the difference can be at the other end of the spectrum, as @ItsMeLucy is pointing out - it’s all too easy to feel superior just because ‘we’ have lots of universities, or some such logic. Realistically, that doesn’t make people smarter, nor does the absence make people less so - and knowledge of what’s around you can be entirely independent of formal education. Personally, I went to uni and learned relatively little. I then didn’t use any of it for an unspecified number of years and forgot it all. Recently, I found an interest in plants, and have been learning on my own far more than I was ever taught, because I actually have an interest now.

(At the same time, I’ve definitely come across the assumption that ‘local knowledge’ is inherently better than formal research, and find it utterly unconvincing.)

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I’ve come across this a lot, plus the assumption that indigenous people always make the best management decisions, which also isn’t always true. There’s a group of people where I live who has been caught inflating populations numbers for a species they “manage” that they trap and skin, so I think people need to remember there lots of factors affecting these things.

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This has gotten way off topic and I think the original question was answered a while ago so I’m going to close the topic.

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