I’m not particularly an expert in any of these, but these are the annotations I’ve used to ID in the past or are annotations I noticed would be helpful while learning to ID (even if I failed to learn…). I don’t know how common it is for IDers to use annotations to search for unID’d observations, but I definitely do.
Pterygota (most insects): Life Stage*
Bivalves: Alive or Dead (Just shells are always dead)
Birds and Mammals: Evidence of Presence
Amphibians and Reptiles: Life Stage (if you don’t know, annotating with Evidence of Presence could still be helpful)
Plants: Flowers of Fruits
Mushrooms: uhhhhhhh
it’s also worth noting for all animals, some IDers occasionally search for Alive or Dead if they aren’t in the mood to see dead animals on a particular day.
*Galls and Leafmines need annotated with Evidence of Presence and correct Life Stage options might not be available until the ID starts getting refined
(Plants) I sometimes use annotations when I’m trying to look at fruit or flower characters that are hard to see on a picture of a mounted specimen, but I’ve noticed that a lot of observations are lacking annotations. I’m certainly part of the problem, I rarely annotate observations unless its a feature that is rarely captured (e.g. inconspicuous fruits). I more often use observation field to try and find observations with certain characters (e.g. ligules, winter buds), and those I do try to use on my own observations.
There’s a problem with this. The direct children of Pterygota are the orders; Hemimetabola and Holometabola are missing. If I see something that’s not yet identified to order and I can’t tell whether it’s a sawfly skadden or a caterpillar, or a maggot or a grub, I have to choose one or the other to annotate it as larva. Likewise if it’s a stick insect or mantis nymph. Something identified as Pterygota, but not an order, cannot be identified as nymph or larva, but IIRR as juvenile, which disappears once it’s identified to order.
Plenty of people. Particularly if you are using the keyboard shortcuts in Identify or one of the external tools, it is possible to annotate quite quickly.
Some people even annotate as a way of helping out if they don’t feel they have enough expertise to provide IDs. Or they annotate because they want a break from more challenging activities.
First, annotations won’t help attract me to ID observations because I very very rarely use them for that. I doubt most identifiers do, but I could be wrong.
Second, I do think annotations are important for figuring out phenology (when things happen). Therefore, I think we should add them and I sometimes do, both to other people’s observations and my own.
Third, I do feel like I don’t have time, so I no longer try to keep up with annotating even my own observations. I’m so far behind it would take months to catch up. Overwhelming. But I would totally agree that I should.
I haven’t paid too much attention to what annotations work but I’ve annotated all of my observations (that I know how too*) and annotated a few species round TAS (trying to do every Eucalyptus at the moment).
Flowers and fruit are very useful but I doubt many ID’ers search for it since most species (in TAS) have <10% annotated (often <5%)
I tend to annotate only as part of a project or when something about the observation is ‘non-standard’ (like bones, feathers, constructions or tracks instead of the organism itself, or a juvenile vertebrate, or if it’s dead). Not a very scientific approach, but I have found that it can bring in specialist identifiers in certain things. For example, earlier I uploaded a photo of a skeletal limb, and within an hour an identifier specializing in mammalian bones was able to ID it because I’d annotated the evidence as ‘Bones’ and they were presumably filtering for that.
Some people even annotate as a way of helping out if they don’t feel they have enough expertise to provide IDs.
That’s me! I annotate as much as I can. Sometimes I don’t do Life stage because I don’t now if its an adult or a juvenile, but for animals I like to add Live or dead, Evidence of presence, etc. And for plants I add if they have flowers or flower buds.
I started adding the annotation ‘Feeding on’, to have an idea of the flowers that support more biodiversity in my garden, and I discovered they appear in https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/, and now they are being annotated with ‘Interaction->Visited flower of’, which maybe is a bit of a duplicate but I am happy to contribute to this more precise knowledge.
I never felt annotations help my observations to get IDed, but I feel they help to get them ‘reused’, added to other projects, etc.
It is probably less relevant for plants, but for animals annotations can often be useful for filtering for identification, as there are some identifiers who specifically work on particular life stages or types of evidence but can’t help with others.
For example, I know there are at least a couple of people who focus on larvae of Lepidoptera or Symphyta. Since these are taxa where there are often also a lot of observations of adults, having the larvae annotated helps them find the relevant observations.
Likewise, there are people who specialize in identifying galls or leafminers (for arthropods), or tracks or feathers (vertebrates).
i tend to take a similar approach. its worth noting for some taxa what’s “non-standard” can be quite unusual. For some more elusive mammals (e.g. shrews) a large percent, sometimes even a significant majority, of observations are dead individuals. for that reason I tend to try and fill out alive/dead on mammals when I remember to. similarly while “evidence: organism” is usually the “default” so to speak it might be a pretty rare and useful annotation for some gall-forming species or leafminers (of course i think you should also always try to annotate evidence of presence: gall/leafmine where applicable, because people do filter at higher taxa for those).
As someone who has recently taken up observing, ID-ing and studying Lichens and Biological Soil Crusts. There are annotations lacking for these species. But i’m realizing that some of the annotations for lichen could also be attributed to desert species like ocotillo or resurrection ferns - or desert ferns in general considering (reviviscence/dessicated)
Fair warning – we have a separate, very long, thread for annotations we want / need. I cannot even pinecone, since that is not ‘fruit’. But you can search to see if yours are already waiting … https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627
A good point from @spiphany : Some people identifying animals do use the life stage annotations to filter the observations because they are working hard on caterpillars or other larvae, etc. Also, some people specialize in bones or feathers or tracks. Annotations are therefore very useful for animal ID.
The situation is different for plants. If there are recognizable flowers or fruits, observers usually do photo them, often with enough of the foliage for us to tell that the leaves were green. Our biggest problems are out-of-focus or not close enough photos of those flowers and fruits (especially for graminoids) and the lack of good leaf photos though leaves are often essential for identification. Annotations don’t help us with these problems. (Though annotating for cones might help for those who ID conifers, were it possible to annotate conifers for having cones.)
As someone who enjoys identifying and observing temperate deciduous trees and shrubs in winter, I’ll make a plug for the ‘No Live Leaves’ annotation. The CV is pretty good for tree leaves and fruit, imo, but really not for bark, twigs, leaf buds and leaf scars. If you’re observing trees in winter, you’re often better off ignoring the CV (or taking it with a huge grain of salt) and instead going to the photos on the taxon page and sorting by ‘No Live Leaves’—that will hopefully give you some nice leaf bud, bark, etc. pictures for comparison.
Admittedly it’s not as useful when identifying because, as others have said, the number of annotated observations is relatively low, so I’ll just sort by the winter months when IDing for others.
@aaravmishra – It turns out that @squidtk lives in the U.S. state of Indiana. It would be natural for a citizen of that state to examine and annotate observations from that area and to refer to the state by the name it has (which no one now gets to choose). You have ideas that are worth arguing for. The use of this state’s name is not one of them.
