Some naturalists suggest using BugGuide as a secondary platform for submitting observations for identification. I’m new to this and was wondering if anyone here has used BugGuide before or has any tips for getting accurate identifications. Appreciate any advice! Thanks!
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I’ve been an editor on Bugguide since 2005. It is an excellent resource especially for hard-to-identify groups. There are a lot of experts who only use Bugguide because for various and sundry reasons they’ve had issues with iNat. Small stuff, especially beetles will get more attention over there. You will not get mob-rule ID: a person will ID it, or move it to the best level it can be identified at the time.
Generally the AI here isn’t very useful for small insects, so Bugguide can be a good place to cross-post anything like small beetles, wasps, etc. The interface is harder to use in Bugguide, but it still works well-enough. Bugguide is ONLY North American species though, so unless your photo is from the US or Canada (excluding Hawaii), then it isn’t the place. I will say that it can take a long, long time to get an ID on some things, but that’s usually because not many people can ID them. I get random notifications about stuff I posted 15 years ago that just now gets identified!! Almost all my insect observations are on there rather than iNat.
FYI, the pro vs. con of Bugguide and iNat is a very old and contentious issue and people get a little worked up about it. Don’t be surprised if your questions gets replies that on that track.
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I have personally used BugGuide both as an invaluable source of information for making IDs and asking for them, as the databank for smaller arthropods seems to be more carefully curated, plus many scientific sources and keys that are out there are linked. You can submit images for ID, and often there will be several stages before a final ID, such as “Moved from ID Request to Beetles” then “Moved from Beetles to Carabidae”. Like many will tell you, it takes a hot minute to get IDs sometimes, and of course the curators over there aren’t 100% perfect, but I cross reference the site for every single insect I get that I don’t know, and I post anything that would contribute as a new or uncommon record, or for insects that only an expert could truly ID. The clunkiness of the site is far outweighed by its value once you get used to it.
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I frequently post to Bugguide as well but only if it is something they have few images of or no Arkansas records for.
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BugGuide (2003) is also older than iNat (2008). So it had a head start with regard to people thinking of online biodiversity platforms.
I think, if a platform doesn’t die, then it tends to become global over time. Facebook was just for one school when it started.
Usage of iNat is still growing rapidly, and it is becoming an essential tool for taxonomy and conservation . . . other people answered your question (above), but this hopefully gives you some context.
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Something to keep in mind. Patience!
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Thanks for the info! Do you think Bugguide’s slower pace is mainly due to the difficulty of IDs, or is it more about the number of experts available?
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Thanks for the insight!
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Yeah, it seems to be quite a bit of work to put observations on there. At least a little harder than iNat.
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Thanks for the context! It’s interesting to see how both platforms have evolved over time.
For certain taxa there is an expert on BugGuide and there isn’t one on iNat, so if you want an ID you might have to post on BugGuide. I know that used to be the case for springtails but the last time I tried to get one ID’d was years ago so I have no idea if that’s still the case.
BugGuide is often helpful for learning how to identify things but it’s not very well structured for doing that (neither is iNat, but at least on iNat you can see from the thumbnail how many comments an observation has). If I’m trying to figure out a certain species and there isn’t helpful information on the Info page, then I’ll just click through random observations until I find a handful with ID comments on them.
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Yeah, a lot of people are commenting 'ID by Frans Janssens" on there springtail observations who I presume to be one of the springtail identifier on BugGuide - or at least around where I live.
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Another question I have is is there a point of putting an observation on BugGuide if you already know what the species is.
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It’s partly a different culture. From what I’ve seen, IDs on BugGuide tend to be more cautious and more reliant on recognized experts. There are advantages to each approach, of course.
By the way, there is a way to consolidate replies on the Forum. I’m new to this too, but I’ve used the speech bubble icon at the top left of the reply window to bring in another of your remarks.
As for Franz Janssens, he runs the springtail site Checklist of the Collembola.
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This is hard to phrase, but the are more experts on niche groups on Bugguide in my opinion, that said they aren’t necessarily as active as the ones here on iNaturalist. You are more likely to get a correct ID, but it’ll take longer. You can’t tag people, so a lot of times a particularly odd individual will have a link emailed out to a friend/colleague who works on them which makes it even slower. When it is just moved to species in an odd group it usually means an expert did it, but like iNat, they rarely take the time to explain why.
It is a lot more effort to go through and identify lots of individuals and move them due to the way Bugguide works. I can’t remember if anyone but an editor can move a photo in the guide except the original poster. Basically Bugguide is usually more accurate and easy to post, but it’s clunkier for experts to deal with when identifying things.
That is my experience from curating the cicadas on the site and the editorial experience over the years.
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It’s been pretty much decided that Bugguide will only be for NA. It was a big enough argument to even include some stuff from Hawaii, and that’s limited. That’s not a criticism, just an FYI on a long-standing policy. Foreign stuff is usually referred to iNaturalist.
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If it is a definitive enough picture to be useful for a guide, definitely.
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