How do *you* expand your knowledge of different taxa?

this is a really great tip! i’ve seen tips like that before, but i never thought to actively seek them out. i’ll definitely have to try that :)

i’m starting to feel that too… there’s something weirdly satisfying about learning enough to identify something the vast majority of people could not look at and id. some species are pretty easy: for turkey vs black vulture (cathartes aura vs coragyps atratus), there’s certainly confusion for new people but in general if you can be bothered to learn that tuvus have red heads and blvus have black heads you can very often tell them apart. whereas some species require much more specific knowledge—to choose between two similar looking burying beetles (nicrophorus sp.) for example, i might have to know that one of them has curved tibia and the other does not. that’s relatively easy to know (significantly easier than what you were talking about i think lol), and i am by no means an expert on them, but it feels nice just knowing i took the time to learn something about a creature that most of humanity will never think about!

that’s what i like about inat too. it gives me a way to show some of the things i see in a way that contributes to something, and better yet i have the opportunity to interact with tons of nature-loving people all over the world with all sorts of interests and even contribute some of my (albeit very surface level lol) knowledge to their observations. nature is fun all by itself too but it’s neat to be able to save that picture of it and have all sorts of people see it and be able to see little snippets of everyone else’s adventures too

that’s a good phrase, passive learning. that works really well for me because i like to just sit there and absorb information from people that are passionate about it or have light conversations that include bits and pieces of good information. and then over time i remember those things and have little questions that i research on my own that turn into rabbitholes of learning about a specific thing

this is an interesting idea! i would not have thought of that. it’s one of those things where you get annoyed looking something up every time so you just learn it and then eventually you know a lot more than when you started just because of all of those little things you taught yourself. i like that!

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Don’t most spider ID’s need a close look (i.e. microscopic) at the genitalia? Probably I’m working with older information.

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As a botanist, I like to look up the original description of a plant to learn more about it. The annotations of early botanists are some of the richest sources of supplemental context for the recognition and identification of plants, especially obscure ones or ones that are now very rare. Tropicos.org and the Biodiversity Heritage Library are indispensable for this avenue of discovery.

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Sure, but there’re many taxa that can be ided without it, plus males are easier to photograph for id, and females can be ided from photos too, smaller ones usually are the hardest, but they also are the minority of observations (bigger ones get more attention). Family id doesn’t require genitalia.

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But species level does?

It depends on group and location, for some it’s impossible without genitals, for others only one sex can be ided without them, for the last group one pic can be enough for species id. It’s not much different from insects other than we don’t have as many experts who could give advice.

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Thank you!

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As Marina said, there a lots of spiders that can be IDed to family or species… however, there are also lots where this is difficult or even impossible as well :-)

I am right now working on Argiope spiders… many of those are very characteristic or at least characteristic enough, some are extremley difficult to ID to species and might need a certain view e.g. from ventralnside, dorsal side, a combination of both or a clear shot of the epigyne, which is not always possible to get… and some are impossible to differenciate not matter what

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a few times i’ve taken pics of spiders for identification (i don’t post most of them on inat, i think i have only two posted) and then i realize afterwards that i need pictures from different angles for an id lol. that’s the worst! like damn i could’ve gotten that angle if i thought about it while i was actually looking at the spider…

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How many times did I read my Field Guide to the Birds from cover to cover? Enough times that I have more than once known what species a lifer was as soon as I saw it. Of course, I have to keep doing that to keep the memory fresh.

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We have someone in South Africa who uses iNat to sort spiders by what we can see on photos. Leaving the dissections to the arachnologists.

This one is an iNat fan. Even in blurry photos of A Spider in A Distant Web - the brushes on the legs …
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/904618-Trichonephila-fenestrata-fenestrata

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For me, once I started with a particular taxa, it was the things being misidentified as that taxa that caused me to expand my interests. So, I knew it wasn’t X, but what was this other Y? https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-things-are-misidentified-as-large-milkweed-bug/12571 gave me a tool to get a handle on looking for new threads to pull. I haven’t learned all of those yet, but I’ve learned a bunch of them, and it’s iterative, so with each new taxa learned, there’s learning what’s being misidentified as that one as well, so it’s very organic growth and helps to reinforce what I already know.

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that’s always a cool thing to explore! i think it helps you learn better when you’re learning not only the general traits of something but also the small things that distinguish it from similar taxa

In 2020 and 2021, my interest in birds began, ignited by seeing my first Double-crested Cormorant. It was perched on the rocks, wings outstretched, it was a very unusual sight for someone who was only familiar with the common Mallard or Canada Goose. I decided to look into it, and found the species name. This cormorant was the final push, I was a birder.

My interest kept growing and eventually I found iNaturalist, but it would be months before I actually created an account. Until then, the Lorimer Field Guide to 225 Ontario Birds was a great introduction to bird species in my area, with a beginner-friendly design and information and illustrations for each species listed. It also documented great birding areas in Ontario.

Months go by, and I finally create an iNat account. From there, I got to learn even more in-depth information on species not just in Ontario, but around the world. To help with ID, I searched the internet for comprehensive bird-related websites. So far, I’d say The Cornell Lab, Audubon, and Sibley Guides have been among the most useful. And for hybrid birds, the Bird Hybrids Blog is very insightful.

iNaturalist itself has also been a huge portal to new species and discussing identification with other users has been a massive learning experience. I’ve learn so much in the time I’ve been using this site.

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@snake_smeuse, I thought maybe you were getting lots of replies from plant people because iNat skewed towards botanical observations… so I took a quick look at total observations by kingdom, right before posting:

  1. 53,631,723 - Animalia
  2. 42,537,170 - Plantae
  3. 6,134,712 - Fungi
  4. 147,377 - Protozoa
  5. 135,861 - Chromista
  6. 22,088 - Bacteria
  7. 66 - Archaea

It looks like plants and animals are evenly represented. Maybe there are more specific divisions that require specialization for animals, so the information is more fragmented? Not sure…

I’m mostly a plant guy because plants don’t move away from me when I’m trying to take photos and my climate is a bit dry to have lots of fungi. When I answered earlier, I was speaking from a plant focused perspective, since that’s what I do. I wasn’t trying to convince you to become more of a plant person. I think it’s important to stick to whatever lifers you prefer and are passionate about. I don’t think there’s any one specific kind more worthy of observation.

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speaking in John Wick’s voice

Books . . . . Lots of books!

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I’m new to the site and personally I’ve been considering just looking up pages on my native species and manually trying to look up and make corrections to my observations when I come back from a walk. Its a great summer hobby in Georgia while everything is out and visible before the cold months come and we get pretty dull as everything dies down and goes dormant.

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Same for me. I live in a pine forest, but while the ground is fertile it’s just too dry here to host mushrooms in the summer. Our mushroom season is in the fall right before it gets cold but it’s raining constantly.
Also plants are plentiful here and most of my animal life is prey that wants to get away from me. Haven’t found those cursed flying spiders I’ve heard about yet thankfully.
With the exception of coyotes and foxes we’re kinda devoid of high profile predators here unless you head up into the mountains so while it’s mostly safe to head out for spotting anywhere (with the exception of snakes) things will see you long before you see them unless you’re specially skilled in finding them.

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i know that exact feeling! you see something interesting, you research it, and then you realize how fascinating the topic actually is.

totally agree. it’s fun and also really informative to have so many observations at your fingertips and so many people that are also interested in identifying them.

that would make sense, honestly. a worm is a very different creature than a cat, a cat a very different creature from a jellyfish, and so on. you could be the world expert on snakes and know nothing at all about nematodes. whereas plants all seem closer together. there is certainly wide variety in the plant world but the organization seems more vague (for lack of a better term), and in my personal experience people that are very knowledgeable on plants tend to have at least a solid base level knowledge of many many different types of plants.

no worries, i didn’t interpret it as you trying to be pushy! i love learning about new things and it makes me happy to see people talk about something they’re passionate about, you inspired me to pay a little more attention to plants in the future is all!

sometimes nothing beats some good old information-dense literature :)

that’s an excellent approach! that’s how i first started out identifying things i found outside—i would look for snakes and lizards and turtles and take pictures and then go home and look at websites that explained how to identify the common species of the area. over time i got more familiar with the terminology and also expanded to taking in lots of different kinds of media about reptiles because i had grown to really love and appreciate them now that i knew much more about them.

those can be a bit annoying lol. i suppose i can’t fault them for just responding to my giant threatening self how their instincts tell them to, but i wish they knew i just want to see them and am not going to eat them!

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After seeing a lot of iNat observations IDed to research grade as a given taxon, I become confident enough to start IDing that taxon myself.

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