Recently I noticed that Carolina Sea Lavender Limonium carolinianum had a huge backlog of observations sitting in “Needs ID” despite being a fairly easy to ID species within its range. So I took it upon myself to go through and clear out that backlog. I started doing this with other easily IDable species in my region that sometimes get neglected like Blackroot Pterocaulon pycnostachyum, Pineland Daisy Chaptalia tomentosa, Sweetleaf Symplocos tinctoria, Carolina Redroot Lachnanthes caroliana, etc. where I will check them regularly and can go through them without having to exert a ton of brain power. Now I think about it like I’ve “adopted” these species and I was wondering if anyone else does this and what species you’ve adopted.
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Of course. I occasionally go through observations of Modiola caroliniana, and while I’m there I like to add annotations and especially observation fields to denote infection with Pucciniales (anecdotally, roughly 10% of observations I’ve ID’d, the vast majority from the United States).
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I created a project of the easy to ID species in my region that I check when I can. Recently though I’ve turned to IDing all of the New World Thomisidae, which prevents me from keeping up on those easy IDs—mayapple, Andersonglossum, Albizia, Berberis, Nandina, and dozens of other genera and species are super easy to ID in my area.
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Definitely! There are few things on iNaturalist more satisfying than finding a “neglected corner” and being able to clear out the “Needs ID” backlog! 
There are probably about a dozen fairly easily identifiable moth species I’ve kind of adopted as described. Each time, the first step was doing enough research to get over the doubt that crept in, because things looked too easy: “Why hasn’t anybody else ID’d these?!?”
And then there’s the pretend, internal dialogue you get to have with those making new submissions: “Hey, I just confirmed your ID within 20 minutes! Did you know the prior average wait time for ID confirmation was…three years?” 
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putting my plea for help at the start rather than the end of my post: cultivated trees severely need marking as such! I’m not talking about the grey areas that some people love to argue about – I’m talking obvious street trees, landscaping ornamentals, and well-maintained park specimen trees. I have a whole list of taxa if anyone feels like taking on a task of sheer frustration!
for my main adoptees… I feel like this doesn’t qualify (at least not since I started with it), but I basically adopted the genus I’ve been working with as a PhD student; I add annotations and IDs (when possible – there are a number of major taxonomic problems) to every observation of it that comes across my dashboard. but outside that, I’ve taken on numerous groups intermittently, including certain fern subfamilies, certain parasitic ascomycetes, and so on.
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Yup. Mostly Odonata in Colorado, particularly Familiar Bluets and Plains Forktails, but I’ve got a couple of others as well.
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I did sort-of the opposite recently. It started when I found a few observations of Pelargoniums from the CNC which were IDed as a species I was completely ignorant of. When I looked at the relevant taxon page, it was very confusing as all sorts of different plants showed up as recent observations. That made it a bit difficult to see what the species actually should look like. So I took it upon myself to go through and identify all that I could with their correct ID, and get them out of there! Now hopefully the ones that are still there are more likely to be that species.
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Sure. But they do change from time to time, usually when I “find” species that seem to have many needs ID despite beeing rather easy to ID.
For a long time I had that going on with Argiope spiders, mainly from Europe and the Americas. But since another very diligent IDer hit the stage and worked themself into asian Argiope as well, so I felt I can move on to other taxa that are abandoned.
I have another thing going on with european pisaurid/dolomedid spiders since several years now (american as well, but there are a bunch of busy IDers already, so I did not feel the need so much). European Pisaura and Dolomedes tend to pile up fast when I ignore the for a while (ah damn, just had a look after not tending to them for 2 weeks now, and there are already 17 new pages of Pisaura and another 6 of Dolomedes, so about 700 observations).
I quite recently (this year) started a thing with american Tigrosa spiders, but am on it together with another fellow IDer and we managed to bring the needs ID down from 30.000 to almost 20.000.. I guess now with the season being in full swing we will be lucky to keep it there until it gets calmer again.
And of course my beloved Stegodyphus spider, but they are relatively easy to keep in check as they are more of a fringe observation .. so I do check them maybe once every 1 or 2 months and thats sufficient.
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Yes. I did this with flies belonging to Polyporivora. In N. America there’s only P. polypori, and in Europe the females of the two main species are easily distinguishable by their scutellum (black on P. picta, silver on P. ornata) and the third (P. boletina) looks way different, but only has 1 observation so far.
I’ve since learned to identify a few more species of the family.
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I’m going through already ID’ed observations of Whooper Swans in Europe, as there are lots of mistakes made by people who either didn’t know there is Bewick’s Swan in the region or got confused because of juvenile plumage. I’ve found about 40 observations of Bewick’s Swan and 2 of Mute Swan (surprisingly). It was also a great way to find lots of hard cases, for example a Whooper Swan with rectangle yellow spot on its bill despite other signs indicating Whooper Swan.
I would really encourage anyone with expertise to check research grade observations of hard to distinguish species. But beware of regional specifics - there is one observation of juvenile rook in Russia flooded by europeans, who ID’ed it as carrion crow, which is extremely rare in that part of Russia and doesn’t even breed there. It’s still in “needs ID pile” despite lots of locals ID’ing it as a rook. So… don’t do that maybe
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Yes! I have a particular fondness for North American Fulcidacini (Warty Leaf Beetles), as getting to genus from adults is easy. I also noticed awhile back that Nipponoserica peregrina is poorly separated from Maladera formosae with the CV, and sifted through their shared tribe, Sericini. I check up every week or so.
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Go on and share the list! I could try to make a dent in some of them
I know I went through a lot of “Totenkopfschwebfliege Myathropa florea”.
- I may should do that again shortly…
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There are several species that I regularly go through and ID.
I also went trough an entire genus in the US and added fruit/flower annotations.
This took nearly a year to do, so I check for new obs almost every day.
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I’ve done this for a couple of plant species and one genus. My usual strategy is to add phenology annotations to research grade observations for a while to look through observations and learn the traits, variation, similar species, etc. , then work through needs ID, and then go back through all research grade observations to check them (and finish up with annotations). It feels more impactful than IDing general dicots for a region, and it’s nice to have a reasonable goal to work towards. Also fun to fill up the phenology graph.
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This is basically my workflow, too. Adding annotations is a great way to get the lay of the land, and at any rate no species adoption is complete without all the data perfectly filled in, lol.
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Every so often, I go on a spree of doing this to Bougainvillea. That taxon is almost always cultivated, but in my cleanups, I occasionally cone across one that I believe to be naturalized and preemptively mark it was wild.
As to adoptions, I do that via subscribing to a taxon – specifically, Peperomia hernandiifolia. There are a few lookalikes that people tend to confuse it with, and sometimes, plants that really don’t look like it at all are misidentified as P. hernandiifolia.
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I really appreciate any work you happen to do on any of these! I have a much longer list but these few targets at the top are low-hanging fruit (no pun intended) and very commonly observed (so, often tons and tons of observations to look over). A couple of them are native to a specific or limited part of North America so would be best to review at the edges of their geographic ranges.
If you’re ever interested I can share the full list document, but there’s a mountain of records just for these ones (and they get new observations all the time, so there won’t ever be a shortage in some cases).
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I haven’t really “adopted” any species via taxon subscriptions (I subscribe to places instead and often ID by project, so I guess you could say I’ve adopted local parks and such). However, I often find myself going through observations for specific taxa that I’m confident I can ID to help push them to RG. According to my top ID’d (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?ident_user_id=annkatrinrose&verifiable=any&view=species - replace my user name with yours if interested in your own) my top five are currently:
Erigeron philadelphicus
Galax urceolata
Rhododendron maximum
Medeola virginiana
Erigeron pulchellus
I have to say for the Erigerons I’m really only confident about their ID’s in my geographic area as I’m well aware that there may be similar species in other parts of the world, so I usually only ID them locally. For the Galax and Medeola I’m confident enough to take a sweep at them worldwide, plus both are monotypic genera so anything left at genus can be bumped to species unless misidentified.
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Thanks!! I’ve started looking through these and weeding out the more obviously cultivated plants, we’ll see how far I get. When I find records of obviously cultivated plants, I find it’s often fruitful to look through other observations submitted by that user. Where there’s one photo of a potted plant in a nursery, there are usually more by that same user.
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