There’s a lot of UK moth trappers on iNat, which is great and I really enjoy getting as many as I can into Research Grade. But what I’ve noticed is a large amount of observations get initially recorded to species level on groups that are simply not do-able from photos. I suspect this is often from overconfident AI suggestions.
I’ve put together this guide - Cryptic species of UK macromoth · iNaturalist. I wondered if people have any comments on whether this would be useful to post on observations an explainer when people post Marbled Minors, Common Rustics, etc?
In the guide format, would you be able, for each species, to list what the current best iNat taxon would be for each from photo (without e.g. DNA, genital dissection)? I’m sure most would be to genus, but some have complexes listed or so on. This would enable people to proactively fix their own observations (or at least start fixing them).
It looks useful. But don’t you need to have them all in the display? You show The Uncertain and if you click on it, it tells you it can’t be easily separated from The Rustic. But isn’t The Rustic equally difficult to tell from The Uncertain? At present, if you think you have caught The Rustic, this doesn’t warn you to be cautious.
Good point, I think the point of showing the species was as an illustration to indicate it’s unlikely you’d be able to take it further, with one to illustrate, but I get your point. I’ll have a play to see how I can display things a bit differently.