I’ve no idea what data is analyzed by iNat when it comes up with its suggested ID, but geography seems low on the list. This is arguably single greatest cause of misidentifications on this site. It’s common to see endemic species from Region A suggested for an observation in Region B. Sometimes, this is quite egregious, like when a European beetle is suggest for an observation in Kansas or Botswana. These seem like easily avoided mistakes if the algorithm would simply take into account the existing data on iNat.
I’ll provide a particularly common example of this phenomenon. Amphiprion frenatus, the Tomato Clownfish, is found north of Wallace’s Line (i.e. the Philippines, the Gulf of Thailand, and north into the Ryukyu Islands). It is replaced anywhere south of this by A. melanopus, a species that looks more or less the same, save for a darker pelvic fin. And this gets replaced by A. barberi in Fiji. Now, if you were to observe either A. barberi in Fiji or A. frenatus in, say, the Philippines, iNat is going to suggest that your fish is A. melanopus, despite there being no data points of this species in either Fiji or the Philippines. I’v corrected this error dozens of times.
Now, I’m not sure how one would code this into the algorithm. I imagine it would be impossible to entirely eliminate this problem, particularly in areas near the limits of the biogeographic ranges, but surely it could be greatly reduced by incorporating some amount of geographic data into the suggested IDs.
