One thing I do a lot is update taxon photos. From time to time, I come across two different species - usually in the same genus - which both have the same display photo. The reason is generally straightforward: some observation got RG for a certain species, its photo was added to the taxon in question, then later the observation was reidentified as a different species, got RG for that, and then its same photo was added to the other taxon. Once you trace the photos back to the problematic observation, it’s very easy to fix. The head-scratcher for me is that most of the examples I’ve seen (about a dozen in total) have sat around for years without anyone fixing them! Beyond indicating that taxon photo editing is not as widespread as it should be, this seems quite problematic. It likely leads to people repeating the original identification error (which has long since been corrected) for years because they are identifying based on an incorrect taxon photo.
Anyone else seen this? My examples are nearly all plants, a few insects. Any ideas for how to prevent it? I wonder if taxon photos could be somehow linked to the community ID of the observations they are sourced from, so that if the observation’s ID changes, the photo is automatically removed from the associated taxon photos. Any thoughts welcome.
I can confirm I have also definitely seen this. I also met photos taken from elsewhere, like Wikipedia or similar, that were poorly identified or used a different taxonomy.
I have also ran into this, but not that regularly actually. As it was a taxon I was not that familiar with and I was not sure whether and which of those taxon photos was correct at all, I flagged it and someone more familiar with that taxon solved it in the end
I’ve definitely fixed plenty over time. I’d love to see photos auto-removed from taxon photos if the CID changed so the observation was no longer in the relevant taxon, but I believe the idea has been floated before and shot down because of different problems it would cause.
I correct as I go, if I can. Initial photos came from Flickr (which I have since learnt does not HAVE to mean they are wrong) Previously the photos offered came from Observations, the default was recently change to RG – which is what I had taken for granted.
Maybe we need a popup reminder from the obs, when a CID is changed. This photo has already been used as a taxon picture HERE (with link) – please check it is still correct
I have seen similar cases but they are very rare. I don’t think this justifies a new function.
My issue with taxon fotos is that often the “most pretty” or “most spectacular” fotos are selected, not the ones showing diagnostic characters. This renders the compare feature totally worthless.
Yes, this has more or less happened to me. I traveled to a far away country mainly to record poorly documented butterflies, and was working with a target list. I thought I had found one of my super rare targets, only to later find out it was another very common species whose photo was wrongly used as the taxon photo for the super rare species.
I’ve seen it a few times with moths, sometimes with taxon photos that have not reached research grade. I don’t make any changes as I have not know which, if either was correct. But it did raise the issue of non-research grade taxon photos being used. I get that it helps when you are scrolling looking for a match but it doesn’t give any security to me that the identification is correct. (Off topic, I know.)
There have been a number of posts and discussions about exactly the opposite, with a lot of proposals to limit the ability of people to edit taxon photos due to photo wars taking place on them.
That said, yes, for certain taxon photos are inaccurate or not updated when splits, mergers, or refinements are made. A solution might be that when a taxon change is made an alert is given to the person making the change to check the taxon photo to ensure that it is displaying the correct species.
Also, this is not limited to iNat. As few years ago I was contacted by an author making a book on Asian primates asking if they could use one of my photos of a Maroon Leaf Monkey. I agreed, then found after the book was published they used that photo to represent a different species of leaf monkey, in addition to not using or contacting me about the species I do work with, and including a lot of incorrect information about the species I do work with.
Thanks to everyone who has chimed in to mention that this is an issue they encounter. I like the idea of some kind of pop-up reminder, either on taxon changes or individual observations, but I don’t know if that would be feasible or not.
I haven’t encountered photo wars like you describe, but I imagine that this occurs more in well-documented taxa with a wide selection of good photos. I mentioned the need for more photo editing because among poorly-observed tropical plants (less than CV), there are hundreds of species with one or a few poor-quality photos displayed despite many better RG alternatives being available.
This reminds me that a similar thing happened to me, when a pharmacologist asked me to use a plant photo from inaturalist and then published it in an article misidentified as a different species! I wonder how common that is.