How do you know when someone is a specialist? There is no rating system that I can find. Is there a badge somewhere I am not seeing?
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No.
That is part of the learning curve. Who knows whereof they speak? Mostly on the basis of kind comments that explain ā¦ this is Species A because, not B because, could be C but cannot see field marks so staying at genus etc.
Top of the leaderboard is quantity, you have to evaluate the quality yourself.
Profile description can help. Or be blank.
What daunts me is this statistic.
25% of IDs are made by 130 users
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I do watch my notifications, and I also do research when someone makes a suggestion to see if they are accurate before I AGREE with it. For example, on my Rosy Basketmouth Cichlid, there were several wrong IDs suggested before someone came along who got it right. It is evidently a very rare fish because there is very little online about it anywhere, and all pages that exist are nothing but a copy of all the information of the other, word for word. I actually know additional information about this fish than what I can find online.
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Currently I tend to concentrate on IDing caterpillars (Lepidopteran larvae). There are some interesting ones to be found by reversing the order using āSort Byā in filters and changing Desc to Asc which then shows the oldest postings first. Also use filters to limit searches to a specific area rather than an overly large area ā I change Place to Northeastern United States and Canada. You can also limit searches to a month or a series of months by using the tabs under Date Observed. I guess the main thing for those who want to identify postings on iNaturalist is to learn how to use the filters which are the most useful items I have found for identification purposes.
I initially learned a lot by just doing a large number of annotations for Life Stage of Moths and Butterflies using Identify which helps to familiarize one with the larvae.
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I just had a look through your observations, too. I was able to help with some of your tropical plants because I have long had a particular interest in the tropics.
In a way, your being new is helpful. Since you only have 5 pages of observations, I was able to go through all of them. As your number of observations increases, people will not be able to do this, and it will then be a matter of who is sorting for which taxa.
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You can ask someone about their qualifications, if their profile doesnāt help.
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Where I am, we have a Northern Water Dragon and Gilbertās Dragon. The CV will throw up NWD for every dragon you post in my area. It rarely mentions Gilbertās. The two can look very alike and Iāve recently gone through my observations after I hit the books and worked out a few key points of difference and corrected my IDs. And if in doubt, I will ID them as Agamidae so that hopefully a herp lover will one day have a look. Iāve noticed that this has been a useful exercise as Gilbertās is starting to show up more in the CV.
Same thing for geckos. After coming across my first dtella while on holiday, I got interested in local dtellas and geckos and hit the books. Yes, 95% of local geckos are Asian house geckos but we get a few natives too. If there is a good pic of a foot then I can pick out the dtellas and the natives. Once again, the herp lovers can argue about the species.
So sometimes a lack of IDs is better than an inaccurate ID.
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Yeah. The computer vision periodically corrects me when Iām making obvious mistakes - I assumed something was a Sonchus (Sowthistle) species, and iNat threw up āFalse Cowthistleā and I kind of just stopped and went āhuhā, but it regularly makes some incredibly frustrating suggestions. There are around fourteen Conostylis species just in Perth, WA, not all of them are the bristly or spiny speciesā¦
Actually the most annoying thing is that every time I type Lobelia it proposes Section Lobelia. pls no. That section isnāt IN Australia.
I think Iām going off-topic. Then again, I think the answer to the topic is āyes, but thereās only so much that can be done about thatā.
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SW WA is a bit like the Top End in that regard. Lots of variations on the theme that really test the CV. And people not realising just how many species there are, and assuming they are all the same couple of species. But you are in an amazing part of the world. (Yes, we were that couple parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere wandering around looking for orchids and carnivorous plants respectively. Got a couple of āfirst on iNatā photos out of that trip!)
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Congratulations! The orchids are wonderful, though I take pains not to ID most of those even when I think I can because I am deeply aware of how little I know (a plant I would have sworn was Caladenia latifolia was identified as a hybrid of it and Iām just steering clearā¦)
It is indeed wonderful. I throw photos at a friend in America and heās always delighted by the delicacy of our tiny plants. Of course, right now itās literally 40 C, so my delight is limited.
I canāt say that Iām never prone to the same assumptions, either. I am taking notes, though. Hopefully Iāll make those mistakes less. I donāt tend to make that mistake with animal observations, because I know I know very little, but the false confidence of a little bit of knowledge with plantsā¦
Now, I will say. It feels really awkward to look at a years-old ID and poke my head in and go āno, that isnāt itā. Itās even more awkward when Iām wrong.
Itās mildly hysterical on the occasions I poke my nose into an ID on a different country to inform them that they misclicked which Bloodroot genus their plant isā¦
most of them donāt have the minimum required number of observations yet to enter the AI training model, so itās impossible for the AI to suggest them
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I know :( kind of? I forget how it works occasionally, I am new and easy to distract down some rabbithole or other. Itās justā¦ mildly frustrating, especially with a genus like that.
Iāll work on it.
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I still hope someone will tell me how to prompt iNat to offer the Genus.
My shortest route is to take the wrong sp, delete the sp - and voila, I have an ID to Genus. Clickety clickety.
PS Computer Vision needs 100 pictures, approx 60 obs. Is the taxon still Pending, or is it Included already?
Theyāre usually options right next door to each other? I just typed it on my laptop and genus came up first, section second. I thought it was the other way aroundā¦ might be a laptop thing.
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Tried 3 at random looking for a good example - and they all came up Genus first. Perhaps that glitch is sorted.
Hopefully! Now just to ensure I donāt click Section anyway, hah.
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One of the reasons I like sorting by Random when identifying, eg I have bookmark to identify observations stuck at Arthropoda sorted by random. It does bring up a lot of observations that are difficult or impossible for me to identify, but it also allows me to help out older observations that donāt show up so readily in Identify.
It would be cool to may have some preset buttons that someone can just click on to get a set of generic filters like āSearch for old observationsā or āSearch for obserations by new usersā rather than just have people figure out their filters on their own.
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Another Iāve been thinking about recently is a āSearch for observations where the CV and the user-provided ID disagree.ā I was identifying today older Holcosus lizards and kept coming on observations mis-IDd but where the CV offered the ācorrectā suggestion in my opinion. I think computationally this would be hard to implement, but itās nice to dream.
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Might that be - todayās CV suggestion is better than it was then?
Geomodel anomaly? Or new sp added?
Meanwhile could your dream be here?
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I would love to see you add your personal knowledge to publicly accessible spaces. The observations of self-taught naturalists are valuable. iNat has a journal function you might like to try.
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