Hello everyone,
I have been using Inat for five years now, but I am still continuing to make the same mistakes that I made when I started. These mistakes usually include identifying everything to species level(even if there is not enough evidence or I am not confident), making inappropriate generalizations(i.e. All Taraxacum are T. officinale unless there is evidence showing otherwise), focusing on quantity over quality for my observations, and making justifications based off of “my experience” rather than the scientific consensus.
I am going to change how I observe and identify moving forward, but I need some help.
What advice do you have? This should apply to anyone making these mistakes, not just me.
Thanks,
Robby
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Sounds like you’re basically doing the right things. Note that focusing on quantity rather than quality is a choice, not a mistake. iNat needs lots of observations. As long as the photos are identifiable and have accurate dates and locations, they’re fine. You may want to post better photos and that’s great, but it’s not necessary.
I don’t know about others, but my learning to ID better comes bits at a time. You know about the Taraxacum problem now. (You probably also know that its taxonomic confusion is so great it hardly matters how we label them.) You’ll learn more, if you pay attention to the comments. Keep going and try not to repeat mistakes too often.
I say that as a person who makes lots of mistakes of every kind and who posts lots of poor photos (but some good ones, too, I hope).
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It’s good to try to learn the details people generally look at when determining species for a broader taxon like genus, if you find yourself observing it often. For example, I didn’t think to take pictures of the outer hinge of bivalves until I read that it’s important in someone’s guide. Personally, I’ve mostly narrowed my interests in terms of observing things only if I care enough to read a bit about it later. Of course that can lead to making many observations of the same things that aren’t so interesting to the general user base, and I think that’s a good outcome more than a problem.
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Barbara shared a great life lesson here, and I want to highlight it, in case somebody missed it:
No self-judgement. Continued execution, making mistakes, dusting yourself off, and continuously learning and trying and moving forward.
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Always a bit more to tweak on an obs - location accuracy, location notes, annotations, projects. I add the description of field marks - since that is an easy way for me to find - why is it THIS sp - again.
Somewhere you have to decide, good enough is good enough.
And get back to IDing for CNC …
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Successful people fail more times than unsuccessful people even try . . .
There are threads on the forum about new users who are scared to upload or ID because they’re afraid of being wrong . . .
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Ha ha! Guilty as well
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Aah, you’ve strengthened my resolve: I’ll go through and correct IDs I gave locally based on a book that turned out to be a poor source.
Improving my IDs has improved my observations by informing the details I now try to capture in photos. That has meant reading the full species descriptions and going back to them when the online keys aren’t clear enough.
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Another habit that has led to me posting fewer low quality observations and IDs is frequently asking other iNat users questions. Put a comment on an observation, “Thank you for that ID, can you please tell me how you made it?” Or, “I thought the spots possitively identify this as P. infiriori rather than any other member of the genus. Can you explain where I went wrong?” Or, “what parts should I have in focus for this to be IDable beyond family?” People won’t always respond, but if it is clear you are asking for help in good faith, IDers are very often happy to educate.
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“What actually is the distinguishing feature/s for this?” is my thought as a question to ask yourself. It sometimes slips out of my mind for common species that are recognisable just by the impression of it, or that I’ve seen a hundred times or more; it’s sometimes hard to explain even if I know (“why is that plant this genus and not that?” “Well, uh. Uhm. It. Looks like that one and not this one?”). But if I don’t actually know what makes it different, I should probably stick to genus. “It looks like xyz but I don’t know if it has any doppelgängers” is something I’ve said a few times at this point.
Looking at the taxonomic tree for an organism is often interesting. Looking at what pops up as the intermediate ID on its typical misidentifications is even more interesting - whenever genera have intermediate steps between there and species is even more interesting. If you can understand the intervening steps, that’s handy.
Not always reasonably doable. Not every grouping trait is something easily photographable - one sub tribe i was reading through distinguished genera on something fussy about the seed, and another by the tips of the anthers (surprisingly visible but still, jeez). (And of course, when that’s confusing don’t forget that birds are reptiles and you just can’t tell by looking at them…)
I have noticed a number of taxa go into sub tribes that amount to “like xyz”, though, and visibly so; i find that decently useful for daisies at times. Am I certain your daisy is a Brachyscome? No. I am reasonably certain it’s like a Brachyscome though. What even is the difference between this and that Euphorbia? I’m not sure, but when someone disagreed it turned out they’re both ‘sandmats’ and I think I can say your plant looks like a mat with Euphorbia flowers -
I am electing to treat the existence of such taxa levels as polite hints that things are probably more complicated than i think they are. Depending on your taxa and level of crazy this may or may not be relevant… on the other hand, if you’d looked at Taraxacum the first time and gone “what the actual heck is up with all these sections???” it might have clicked sooner that dandelions are in fact just messed up :P
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My personal approach is more quality rather than quantity, although I might have violated that during the recent CNC. I’m not a big fan of the app other than it gets my cellphone pics uploaded to iNat (I also use a SLR camera for most animals and things that aren’t sitting right in front of me, like plants). I don’t upload cellphone pics at the same time I take my photos, rather I review the pics I have taken later, crop and otherwise edit the best ones I took, and then submit those to iNat. That takes more time, and I ultimately submit fewer records, but I avoid submitting lots of blurry, distant shots that no one will ID.
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I joined to learn about the local flora. In the beginning, I added dozens of taxa new to me every weekend. It slowed to a trickle now unless I travel a bit further. CNC was a giant competition and I dutifully loaded scores of photos.
About a year ago I realised that I can identify most plants and even butterflies I see during walks, at least to genus or family. This is what I wanted, mission accomplished. What’s next?
Competition is out. I stopped making large number of observations when my storage started to get full and did not resume after I got more hardware.
I am still keen on finding new taxa in my area of interest and improving the quality of my photos and observations is an ongoing challenge. My current goal is to create reference grade observations for myself and whoever wants to use them.
If your name was Luke, I would say use the force. It is not, so just use the keys. You would know that by now. Sometimes what the key asks for is not available: the full treatment of taxa in the genus might hold some clues.
My only advice is to figure out what you expect as a return from your effort you spend on iNat. When you want to change your approach probably your goals are changing. Do you want to be on top of leaderboards? Win nature photography competitions? Write a book or research paper? Do you want to be an expert in a field of your choice or of an area? Meet likeminded people? Trace your travels by observations? These are just examples. There are no right or wrong answers.
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This is extremely valuable! I would add one more thing – I add some reason(s) in the comments after I make an ID, either why I refined the initial (why I make it more specific), or why I disagreed and added a new one (what are the clues). After 60 yrs concentrating on one family, I still make mistakes, especially when The World is the stage or undescribed species are auditioned and need placement. After I have refined or ID’d one and later think better of it, I have a map of the characters and reasons I used previously. This is also most helpful when I disagree – IF the original namer gave some reasons.
This also gives the observer some info they may never have known otherwise – take it or leave it. I think one of the most unfortunate occurences is that so few ID’ers give any characters (reasons) at all.
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I think having the awareness to start that we are all fallible is a good place to begin! There is so much variation even in familiar species, and then we stumble across some detail we weren’t even looking for and boom, whole new area of learning opens up.
I have a habit (good or bad) of diving down every rabbit hole someone tends to send me on, intentionally or otherwise. Oh, there’s this feature I didn’t know about? Time to look it up and try to find it in the field if its local, or in as many photographs as possible if not. Every time I make a mistake I work on framing it as a position I get the absolute joy of learning something new on. It’s genuinely the coolest part of any day when I get to stop and realize ‘hey I know less about this than I thought, time to look into it!’ So for me at least, the framework of ‘mistake’ turning into ‘learning potential’ is where I get the most bang for my buck. Sometimes I end up doing a deep dive research and realize ‘actually I DO know this really well, and now I can come back to something with better ability to articulate it’. I think its okay to slow down when making IDs especially. I know I personally make my most mistakes when I am cruising through a genera and start to get a little blind to what I’m actually looking at. But other people’s milage may vary on that one.
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When I am learning a new name - I like to know what the name means - I prefer some words that I can understand to a technical description filled with words where I have to look up each one in turn. So … you have a plant with
Barbie pink flowers surrounded by white ermine - field mark 1
followed by pink fruit which give the common name of dog face - field mark 2
and then you name the species for the TINY black stipules below the leaves - THE Field Mark.
PS leaves with rolled under margins for phylica Tribe - field mark.
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I love that!
One way I work to remember particular species is cross referencing ethnobotanical history. It’s less technical, but the more I can connect memories around information the better my recall is on it. So after I go and research technical information, I’ll go look up human history around a plant. Sometimes there isn’t anything, but other times there’s quite a bit and just reinforcing the plant in different ways in my memory helps me a lot.
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And sometimes IDers make mistakes. Typos are possible (oof! Some of the ridiculous errors due to autofill!) and people get interrupted and write the wrong ID down or just have mental blips. I have a high accuracy level, but nobody is 100 percent. I’m always grateful if people check my work. I think it’s important to check your feed to check for errors for this reason, and I do.
If I had one complaint about iNat it would be that it can be hard to find things sometimes. If you click to check a comment in your field most of the listings disappear, and having to go through page by page takes loading time. So tagging an incorrect, clearly off, or just questionable ID is always welcome here.
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In the case of plants, I think that users should know themselves and realize if they can identify with certainty certain genera/species. If not, just skip those OBs. In my opinion, it is better to avoid the “likeliest” ID or the CV-suggested ID.
You cited Taraxacum which is a good example. Not only the dandelions found in cities are surely NOT T. officinale, but it is not unlikely they are of a different section. As regards, section Erythrosperma can be quite well-represented in urban areas.
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