I think they are speaking not of regular iNat users but of those who only come for those few days of the CNC then disappear never to be seen again.
Aarav is saying their motivation for participating those few days is winning, thus they disappear.
squidtk posits that they take time out of their busy schedules in response to a plea from iNaturalist for “a photo of a bug.”
That said, we are asked not to ascribe motivations to others.
(Like you, though, I participate normally during these.)
I put the data together. Read it carefully and then understand what I mean. Unbelievable imbalance between identifiers and observers and just taking insects as an example.
"Z. angusta has never been sighted on iNat. iNat is far from being complete and not all species are documented. Partly because there are less people visiting biodiverse areas and partly because of the extreme lack of identifiers in insects etc. I have been identifying many observations and I have been the first to id over 500 hoppers alone. If people work on identifying, we will know more. There is a stark contrast between the amount of observers and observations vs identifiers and most of these identifiers are identifying things like birds, lizards and large animals (and for insects only butterflies and at most dragonflies get attention).
A quick search on google will reveal that of all animals, atleast 97% are invertebrates (get in scorpions, spiders, isopods, springtails, crabs, lobsters, octopuses, cuttlefish, and other big or small groups you may have never heard of or seen) and insects make up 70-75% of all described species.
Compare this to all identifiers (ID’ers) to insects identifiers ratio with observers and see the difference:
Total ID’ers: 499,937
Total ID’ers of insects: 231,533
As a percentage, you will get 46.3%
Now observers:
Total observers - 2,905,353
Observers of insects - 2,093,457
Same thing, but now 49.72%
Do you see the difference? Less identifiers, more observers. But this is just the start. Let’s analyse more data.
An observation can only become RG when two people agree. This gives a way better perspective. Now observations:
Observations total: 317,534,000 (this keeps on changing)
RG: 199,223,826
Obs. of insects - 83,647,122
RG - 46,949,271
Percentage of RG obs. total - 62.74%
Insects - 56.13%
% of total obs which are insects: 26.34%
% of RG of which are insects: 23.57%
What is the pattern?
Insects are more often observed than identified, which is the reason there are less RG%, and less percent of id’ers work on insects than observers observe them.
You will notice absolute scarcity. If I remover dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies from insects, watch the stats flip:
Total ID’ers: 499,937
Total ID’ers of insects: 177,824 (Dropped by about 600,000!)
As a percentage, you will get 35.6% (vs. 46.3% prior to removal of butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies)
Total observers - 2,905,353
Observers of insects - 1,421,069 (Dropped by more than 1/4)
Now how much? 48.9% (Dropped by 0.8% - the drop was more on identifiers than observers. How can this unbalance not result in a large amount of observations never being identified)
Observations total: 317,534,000
RG: 199,226,028
Obs. of insects - 66,627,867
RG - 32,884,758 (Again dropped by nearly a fourth)
Percentage of RG obs. total - 62.74%
Insects - 49.36% (Dropped by 7%)
% of total obs which are insects: 21% (decreased by 5%)
% of RG of which are insects: 16.5% (reduced by 7%)
CNC, without butterflies and dragonflies included under insects -
Total ID’ers: 28,109
Total ID’ers of insects: 11,500
As a percentage: only 40.9% CNC identifiers ID insects
Total observers - 104,946
Observers of insects - 50,853
Observers of insects:all observers during CNC %: 48.46%
Observations made during CNC: 2,890,883
RG: 1,378,423
Percentage of RG obs. total - 47.7%
Insects - 503,540
RG - 207,968
Percentage of insect obs. that are RG - 41.3%
% of CNC obs which are insects: 17.42%
% of CNC’s RG of which are insects: 15.09%
If a group that contains atleast 49% of all (round it to 50, so half of all) life is consisting of all CNC only 17.5%, what is the of focus of CNC? Just birds, plants, just what is easy to see with your eyes?
i feel like a more appropriate response to that comment would’ve been to provide a citation for your ID.
I thought so too - that it’s a good project. And, I kind of wondered - why not just do that instead of the CNC?
I could have. But the point is that he did not question the id. Instead, he asked why something like that had never been observed. Also, the data I pulled out is atleast worth mentioning here.
they did not ask why something like that had never been observed, they merely commented that there were no previous records on iNat. at least from my memory, since the link has been removed.
all i’m saying is there’s more relevant data to provide.
I think this is mostly due to insects’ inherent lack of identifiability based on photos. I expect you’d find that in general, on a largely photo-based platform like inat, the smaller the organisms, the harder they are to get identifiable images of, and the fewer of them can be identified. Rotifers are only at 11% RG, and it’s not for lack of experts looking at them. They’re just not identifiable from the average photo. Same with diatoms- 11% RG despite some really active identifiers reviewing them. Segmented worms are at 17%. Spiders are at 45%. Honestly most groups besides vertebrates and charismatic plants are doing worse than insects as far as RG percentage goes.
There are so many insects without names, with unresolved taxonomy, with differences only visible once dissected, etc. that frankly I’m impressed we’re at over 50% RG. Sure, we have fewer identifiers for smaller organisms, but even when you get the world’s expert looking at some of these groups, they won’t be able to put names on even the best quality of photos.
One of my favorite stories was a moth collector who collected 100s of Coleophora in his suburban yard and sent them to the world’s expert to be dissected. They appeared to represent about 7 morphospecies, but upon dissection, it turned out there were dozens of cryptic species in the sample, and of all of them only about a fifth of them had published names. And this is in the Chicago suburbs in the most over-sampled country in the world.
The point is of course more identifiers is good, and of course better quality photos are good… but there’s an inherent “ceiling” to how many inat insect records can ever get IDs, and the smaller the organisms, the more of an issue this is going to be. If you want to see a truly ubiquitous taxon with a lack of many identifiers, look at grasses- only 46% RG despite us standing on them most of the time we’re observing anything else.
Not always true. Resolution affects but when you know enough, you can id quite tricky images at times. RG does not show that there is an agreement, it here to show how less observations even get ids. And the total amount of observations of insects without including butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies (often the eye-catchers) is just -
This much.
Me sitting here with 100s, 1000s of female Chironomidae specimens I can’t get species identification since they are species that require male genitalia.
Regardless this is getting off topic. Discussion should be related to the CNC.
Yeah genitalia matter in hoppers too though.
Wikipedia has somethibg similar to this for editing high visibility articles.
The idea is that it will be harder for new users to mass upload junk observations. It would also make sock-puppet accounts less effective.
Your suggestion of credits for IDs carries risks: do you see what they are?
I worry this would simply reward people who already know nature and punish those who know less. If the point of iNat is to connect more people with nature, then the people who have no clue what they’re looking at are our target audience. I don’t want to reward those who are fully “plugged in” to nature already by telling them they can observe more.
Personally, when I’m identifying moths, I can honestly say it takes no more brain power to identify something new to the site vs adding a leading ID vs adding an agreement. The only time it takes extra work is when a species isn’t in inat’s taxonomy yet and I need to tag a curator to get it added, but that’s like 6 seconds of extra time. The “A” key has actually fallen off my keyboard from hitting “agree” so much when IDing, so the agreements are going to cost me the price of a new keyboard. I haven’t incurred any financial losses from my leading IDs… yet.
I’ve gotten a handful of students into using inat, and they use it to share cool critters they found and see what they’re called. They have zero interest in identifying anyone else’s stuff, and frankly if I said “now you have to identify things” it would probably be a complete turn-off. But they’re now looking closer at nature and noticing things they wouldn’t have noticed before. And that’s what inat is for- those are the people who really “need” a product like this to get themselves interested in nature. Someone like me who’s been obsessed with moths since the 1990s when I was 8 years old doesn’t really “need” inat. I’d be out there identifying moths and making lists of biodiversity in different habitats even if iNat weren’t a thing.
So I reject any system that rewards me for knowing stuff and limits curious kids with a casual interest in getting help learning what’s around them. I’d rather see 10,000 bad photos of dandelions than have those dandelion-photographers stay inside playing Minecraft all day. At least they’re out touching grass, whether or not they have the means to identify what species of grass it is.
Certainly not. Here is what Diana (@dianastuder) had to say about these dandelions -
For Diana, yes, you are absolutely right. I could say the same. light trap, and a blurry observation for every dot. lol. I face this too and often just skip such observation. It is a hope that someone can go back and get better images, which sometimes works, but not always. Luckily, no one is tagging me on a dot as of now.
I really liked the statement. It is absolutely necessary to go for quality over quantity. The best thing is that she discussed dandelions and you too.
I think you should have read through (and not skimmed through) the conversation, just like he did. You can get a badge (reader) for that and there should not be much harm in that.
Yes, so they make the mess, do not take responsibility for it, or even for any one else’s observations, and then we identifiers have to deal with the headache.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”!! What an awesome quote!
As for weightage: again, both. I took so many pics of different fox squirrels & whiptails, but tried to get a variety of other species too.How does it stand up to other quotes though? 