Expand the Similar Species tab into an editable identification guide

Feature Requests
1

I recently attended the annual conference of the American Arachnological Society and there was a lot of discussion about iNaturalist. A lot of folks expressed interest in using iNat, but a short-coming that was highlighted (and a reason many folks still preferred using BugGuide) was the lack of information about identification. As one participant explained “All the identification tips are scattered across comments in individual observations.”

It would be awesome if we could expand the existing Similar Species tab into a more comprehensive resource for taxon identification (and maybe rename it “Identification”). Even if it was only editable by curators initially, it could become a really useful resource and help to cut down on misidentifications and redundant comments explaining how to ID various species. I know we already have the Wikipedia articles under the About tab, but those are typically limited to general descriptions rather than specific tips for identification.

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I’ve sometimes wondered if BugGuide couldn’t be imported wholesale into iNat somehow: it’s so useful! And in many ways better for me than iNat when it comes to IDing North American bugs. But what would a general iNat “Identification” area look like?

I’m really not sure and it seems like a complicated question, but FWIW here’s why I use both iNat and BugGuide for local insects and spiders. Say I observe a new beetle … the iNat AI totally wins at the start, with suggestions that are often correct or pretty close. Next, the “compare” button sometimes helps–sometimes it lists something that’s clearly the right taxon. But not always.

Maybe it’s in what “compare” displays that any new, curated information could be added or made accessible? With “compare” as is, I still often feel like I’m just guessing in the dark. Sometimes I observe things that haven’t yet been seen in my area and don’t show up at all; or the examples all kind of look the same to my untutored eye and I don’t know which to pick.

BugGuide helps with 1) an authoritative sense of the range of possible choices. If I know that “there are XX species in our area,” a typical BugGuide bit of info for a given genus or family, I can decide to browse through all of them, species by species–or maybe if there are hundreds, just give up and leave it at a higher level. iNat doesn’t really describe the full range of potential species and doesn’t really give a taxonomically organized gallery view of potential options 2) range information to help narrow the possibilities 3) pro tips about distinctions between species, or warnings about when it’s unwise to attempt to distinguish without a microscope or something; 4) links to keys (or keys reproduced) and literature.

I wouldn’t want to overwhelm iNat’s current ID tools with a lot of advanced baggage like this. But definitely agree with @zygy there might be a way to augment the current automated ID tools with custom/curated info somewhere…

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4

This has been discussed extensively before (and I was among its supporters in the past). Some of the challenges with the idea you describe are that 1) the iNat community is so much larger than BugGuide that it could be difficult to determine what to include or not to include
2) different groups of organisms require different standards for identification, and a single template for ID guides might not work well for both fish, bees, and fungi, for example. 3) A wiki style format, like on BugGuide, works well for text but gets complicated if you want to make it look nice, and complex formatting or tables might not be possible. I’m not saying that a standardized solution couldn’t happen, but it won’t be perfect.

Instead, the ‘Journal’ tool has been used by the community for quite some time to develop ID materials, and enables a variety of formats. Some examples for flies include:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/upupa-epops/29497-identifying-allograpta-in-north-america
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/edanko/27945-micropezidae-us-canada
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/edanko/36353-guide-to-nematoceran-families
The challenge here is still that unless you hear about these journal posts in a comment on an observation or something, you won’t know they exist… maybe the solution is to make journal posts indexing other journal posts? :)

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5

There’s some related discussion here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/adding-useful-id-info-to-taxon-pages/657

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to work around the format issue, maybe it could be something modular similar to the way the observation fields are, where a field can be added as a block to the identification page? this could apply to tables and graphics as well, if someone were willing to code that into the site ;P since iNat uses wikipedia articles for the main organism pages, I’ve slowly been creating wiki pages for taxa I feel are important and lack useful information, especially with papers and databases not being readily accessible to most yet. that seems to at least somewhat work around it—journal entries as you highlighted are another great alternative, where experts can share their expertise. I think it would be cool if journal entries could be highlighted and attached to taxon pages where they are displayed clearly enough that they can’t be missed.

all in all, I agree that there is a lack of a wiki-like part of iNat which is a major drawback, but implementing that alone could have its own complications. maybe developing a pre-existing feature such as the journals or wikipedia links (add support for linking BugGuide info pages through links so wikipedia isn’t the only source?) would be a good way to address this.

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7

PlntTrtsLYTHCURT3
PlntTrtsLYTHCURT31699×1321 1.82 MB
Folks need to take the dichotomous keys and reflect them in Photoshop and deliver as a single jpeg. Here is one for a plant species, but these need to be made for each species (i.e., marriage of dichotomous keys to simple jpegs and photography). One person doing this save so much time for everyone else. These need to be referenced with permission but will make us all much better field workers and more efficient at conservation.

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That support already exists. If you look on the iNat taxon page of any taxon that should be covered by BugGuide, click the About tab, and on the right-hand side under More Info, you should see a link to BugGuide for that taxon (sometimes more than one link). Curators can create these links to external information sources, either for a single taxon, or for all descendants of a higher taxon using a generic link template. Links can also be limited to taxa on specific place checklists, for sources that only cover a limited geographic area. (Be sure to check what links already appear in that section for particular taxa before creating a new ones, to avoid redundancies.)

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oh yes, I’m aware of this. it’s a great feature to be able to link info pages from different sites to taxon pages. I worded it a bit clunky — I was thinking more along the lines of the way a wikipedia page is embedded into the site, where the info is available on the “about” page. If the text or data from BugGuide could be embedded into iNat in the same way, it could be useful.

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sounds like the same as this one https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-comments-or-wiki-like-functionality-on-taxa-pages-to-discuss-identification-and-other-relevant-issues/91/17?

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if I could vote on that I would! I think that would be super helpful. I’m planning on creating identification guides in my journal at some point when I have the time, but having a community-led wiki would be the ideal answer to this imo.

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12

From a similar discussion in 2019:

I’m going to close this topic because during the retreat we discussed wanting to move forward with a way for user-contributed information to be added to a taxon’s page, although it might be a bit different that what’s proposed here. I should have more details in the next week.

@tiwane - What ever happened with that idea from the retreat?

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@tiwane - Ping for question above ^

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14

Sorry. It’s still there, but functionality that reduces scaling issues is the top priority at the moment, primarily life lists and subscriptions.

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@Ecohatchee Sorry, maybe I’m just Old School, but I find your hybrid idenfitication key/jpeg to be visually complicated and not intuitive. I prefer simple dichotomous keys or straightforward lists of distinguishing characteristics. Linking such keys to useful illustrations or examples is very important as well, but putting one on top of the other is too visually demanding for my tiny brain! Compare, for example, with:
https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/11686-artificial-key-to-cisthene-moths-of-texas-the-key

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16

I joined the forum to make similar request. I started using iNat a few months ago and it is amazing - all the taxonomy is there and up to date and the “computer vision” often gets me close to the right ID, that I never would have got close to without. But I agree it needs some kind of ID tips for each species. Your average person doesn’t know what to look for to clinch an ID. It sounds like there is some concern over how to do it. I would suggest starting simple with a tab on the species/taxon page (along with map, taxonomy, similar species, etc.) called ID tips or something similar, with some simple text or photos on how to clinch the ID. At first it could be edited simply by curators, perhaps with a section for helplful comments by users.

I feel this is the missing element needed for iNat to truly meet its potential. Then it could truly become an easy to use resource for every person on the planet. This would clinch it for iNat as the future in citizen science.

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17

You make an important point here, namely, that the various tabs on a species page are often of limited use for IDing something. Most times the “About” tab just points to a Wikipedia page which I find essentially worthless in most cases. As well, the “More Info” list under that tab is generally a list of various other websites where the species is also listed–again not of interest to me in most circumstances. What’s often missing are those identification details that one sometimes finds on BugGuide or elsewhere (e.g. some iNat journal posts, etc.). I’ve added many links to such ID sites in the More Info list for selected taxa that I am interested in (e.g., moth genera Cisthene, Petrophila; plants like Cretanweed, etc.) but I really wish there was an ID Tips tab right on the species page like you suggest to make such information more evident.

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18

I think that the title of the topic is the best way to address this.

I am a normal citizen scientist that has always been interested in medicinal plants and thanks to iNat is learning about insects and such, and many of my interactions with experts are about what difference a specific species have with similar species.

I have started looking on the Similar species tab when trying to refine IDs.

For example, how can I tell between Lonicera implexa or etrusca (two common honeysuckles on my area)? The difference is easy to spot once you know it: the flowers come out directly from the last leaves for one, and after a 'stick ’ (sorry I forgot the name) on the other. I have shared this information on comments with other fellow amateurs.

I have learned a lot about insects and birds from comments or answers to my questions from experts that helpfully answer my questions, but then it is hard to come back to this information, and they seem to have to repeat it so many times to newbies like me (feathers are too dark for …, see the number of spots that has on the wings, etc).

So, I think that it would be great if the Similar Species tab could add a small curator-controlled comment about the difference the nominal plant has to the other.

For example, in the Plantago media Similar species tab, you have Plantago lanceolata, Plantago major, other plantagos, Echium vulgare… https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/59779-Plantago-media

It would be great if under Plantago major I can see: ‘obtuse leaves with less ribs’. Under lanceolata: ‘thinner and longer leaves’, Echium vulgare: ‘has little wart things’ (of course better written, but you get the idea).

Or maybe the coment could be:

  • major: obtuse leave tip
  • media: pointy leave tip

And then the same comment can be used in both directions, in the Similar species tab of media and lanceolata.

Other useful information will be ‘endemic to Australia’, ‘only found on marshy grasslands’. For example there is a kind of poppy around my area that looks like a USA poppy, and the USA poppy gets always suggested by the AI, while the local one, having less observations, never gets suggested. But a botanist that knows of our plants told me ‘no, you cannot find the USA poppy around here, it must be this other one. It grows alone in grasslands, not in a multitude like the Papaver rhoeas’.

This kind of information seems very easy to add and will help amateurs like me to learn more about taxonomy, and about taking better pictures of the organisms.

For example: I made an observation of a Mantis the other day (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/97252569), and looking at some websites I learned that the black spot under the arm was a sign it was Mantis europea. Luckily one of the pics showed that spot!

The wikipedia entries are good many times, but they don’t always have specific information regarding how to tell it from other similar species.

So, my two cents for adding more information to the Similar species tab.
Sorry for long post, thanks for reading!

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I think we need a tab with ID guide. I think it will be perfect if it could be done something like this: http://soldierflies.brc.ac.uk/sites/www.brc.ac.uk.soldierflies-and-allies/files/Villa%20ID%20guide%20v1.pdf

But it is hard to do, so maybe just a tab with links to guides? So nothing need to be complicated, just tab with links to sites, blogs etc…

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After reading this discussion last year, I started some journal posts. Here’s an example of a completed one - https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/egordon88/55949-penstemon-similar-species-part-7-large-round-flowers - but how will someone know it exists unless I share it on one of their observations or they get lucky with Google? That’s why something additional in the website would be really useful and this all lines up with the goal of iNaturalist (engagement with nature).

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22

I could easily quadruple my ID’s with these suggestions, I use so much time trying to find useful information. The box that Wikipedia has for mushrooms is ideal I think, clear and consistent. If something similar is implemented, additional information could be added to the box in order to differentiate- bulleted list, links, both- it’s usually a simple comment that saves me lots of time. @edanko shared this Diptera guide with me on one of my observations and it’s been very helpful, clear for laypeople like me- a perfect example of

The other issue I have with the Similar Species tab is not being able to tell if a species is misIDed because of adult or larva, I have the feeling this would have to be addressed in a different way but is something that I think should be kept in mind if changes are implemented.

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