This morning when identifying, I came across five observations of something growing out of the head of an ant, all by the same observer who’s been around several years and has done thousands of observations, all identified by CV as Ophiocordyceps camponoti-floridani. I am neither mycologist nor myrmecologist, but I know from reading and contributing to curioustaxonomy.net that O. unilateralis has been split into O. camponoti-talis, where talis is any of various species of Camponotus in the genitive. I left an explanation on one, a short note on two, and nothing on the other two, and identified them all as Ophiocordyceps, being careful not to disagree even though the wording on the buttons is still misleading. (Yes I know it’s not a yartsa gunbu, which grows on caterpillars, not ants.) Can someone put a note that pops up when CV suggests any species in O. unilateralis s.l. that it should not be identified to species without identifying the ant or taking a sample?
No, there isn’t that capability with the CV. Similar ideas have been widely discussed on the forum (eg, having the CV not suggest past the genus or other level in cases where species cannot be reliably IDed via pics alone), but haven’t been implemented.
This is yet another case where the CV needs to include the genus but can’t because of how the CV system is set up. See https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/allow-some-non-leaf-taxa-to-be-added-to-the-cv-model/63937, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/allow-for-genus-level-cv-training-sets-irrespective-of-species-level-participation/63938, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/computer-vision-should-take-into-account-fraction-identified-to-species/60097, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/are-genus-level-rg-observations-used-for-cv-training/63859, and the many other discussions about this. Unfortunately, the person who developed iNaturalist’s CV system recently left, so this problem is unlikely to be addressed any time soon.