Hello, forum folks. I head a small environmental organization developing two projects with many observations of marine algae and inverts that cannot be ID’d beyond fairly broad, polysyllabic taxonomic categories. These are in much-invaded San Francisco Bay. The critters can be highly variable, with lifestyles that don’t fit our standard categories, and not recently genetically sorted,
The broad, multi-syllabic names are meaningless to many interested people and some policy makers we would like to engage. I also think I see significant numbers of observations, including research grade, that claim more certainty than they really have. I know there are feature requests about this, but I’m asking thoughts on what to do now.
One possibility is to add a comment to to such posts in the project, explaining, for example, why there is uncertainty about the a yellow sponge. This doesn’t solve the ID problem, but might be ecologically informative – something we are interested in.
Another is to create and use what amounts to a placeholder category – say, “yellow sponge” or “nori” – and also (a) have a project curator or similar suggest what seems like the ID that a researcher would use and (b) consistently add a comment explaining the reasons the ID can’t be more specific. (Did categories such as “blue mussel complex” start this way?)
Are these horrifying? perhaps helpful? Other suggestions?
I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want IDs to make more sense to lay naturalists on iNaturalist? Or do you want to present iNat data to people outside the platform?
I’m not sure what you mean by placeholder category, but the blue mussel complex is a taxonomic rank treated in the scientific literature. We started using it on iNat because there is a native and an introduced species in California that hybridize and can only be distinguished genetically (although Lake Merritt seems to be only the introduced one for whatever reason). I more or less put that explanation in my IDs. Species complexes work as IDs for groups of related species, but not for unrelated ones. So if you want to record names that don’t fit with clades, you have to use observation fields and/or projects.
I do agree that I think that iNat pushes one to too much certainty in identifications. I’ve asked to make it easier to put a higher level taxon, such as offering that when there are multiple species in the same taxon (e.g. a family) which may not be readily obvious from what’s shown.
I’ll note that it’s not obvious that things are in the same family if they’re in different genera. If you try to type in the genus, you then use the suggestions and are SOL if you can’t remember how to spell it. Especially challenging on mobile.
I would simply say: limit your identification to the lowermost rank that is sure on the basis of the photos.
Knowing that a genus has been photographed in a given place can have its own importance for both researchers and non.researchers. Especially newbies, could be encouraged to ameliorate their observations by providing more details. On the contrary, a full identification to the species could falsely make them think that the organism they photographed is that species when, maybe, it is not.
are good. Having someone with expert knowledge bump the ID back to the appropriate level by disagreeing with an ID that is too specific for the evidence keeps iNat’s data more correct and also helps educate about the scientific process and the limits of knowledge which are very important. It’s good for people to know that sometimes organisms can’t be IDed to species without specific information, etc.
Hybridization doesn’t necessarily suggest two lineages are just “strains”. Many recognized species interbreed (oaks, wolves, irises, etc.) yet stay distinct because they maintain separate evolutionary histories and diagnosable differences. The diagnosable differences in this case are molecular rather than morphological. That said, all species concepts break down if you look at them close enough…
To solve the ID problem can’t you just leave a disagreeing ID with comments about why you think this ID is too fine? It’s pretty common that I see an observation initially IDed at species level only for someone clearly knowledgeable about that taxon to bump it up to, say, genus-level with a note like “species X and Y are both possible at this location and can only be distinguished by dissection”.
I’m a little confused about this. Are the placeholders you are describing taxonomic categories? If they are they should be on iNaturalist and you can try adding a flag to a taxon if one is missing (though iNat omits some taxonomic ranks from what I understand). If not, what exactly would these categories be based on and what would the motivation be? I think projects might be better suited for most non-taxonomic groupings I can think of. I’m not sure I see how clumping all observations of yellow sponges or nori would help.
I think journal posts are a great idea. One advantage is that the people identifying observations in the project can then link to the post to explain why only a broad ID is possible. This can help more generally to educate users, which may help long-term with the ID problem.
Are there external sources that talk about these taxa using terms that would be more accessible to non-scientists? In other words, are there existing common names that could be added to iNat? (Common names should not be invented for iNat, but if you know there are common names being used in other contexts you can add them or create a curation flag asking them to be added.)
For non-taxonomic groups (i.e., organisms that look similar but are not all related) there are a couple of ways you could represent this: traditional projects and observation fields.
Both of them have certain limitations, but depending on what you are trying to accomplish, might be useful. Both of them would require manually assigning observations to the project/observation field; it would not affect the ID on the observation.
For the first option, you would create a traditional project titled “yellow sponges”, a second traditional project titled “nori”, etc. and have your project curators add observations that fit these morphological groups to the corresponding projects. These individual projects could be linked by creating an umbrella project.
For the second option, you would create an observation field with a name like “general organism category” and a list of values for that observation field (yellow sponges, nori, etc.), and have project curators add this observation field with an appropriate value to observations in your project. Observation fields are somewhat more difficult to search and are not displayed as neatly as projects, but they could be implemented within your existing projects.
I am still fairly unclear on what you are trying to accomplish. You want to be able to describe observations in your projects to non-scientists, both policy makers and the general public. Am I correct that what you are asking is what language/labels to use with this audience given the limitations of the dataset and the inherent unfamiliarity of taxonomic jargon?
If so, I think you need to start by asking, “What labels/categories are useful in communicating the message I need to convey to the audience I need to convince?” This is not at all a trivial question, and also not one that we can really help you with without knowing the message(s) and audience(s).
One thing you likely know is that very few people, close to none, are going to scroll through the many observations on your project, even if they are deeply interested in the conservation or policy outcomes. So unless you have a relevant audience that really is going to do that, I wouldn’t advise spending time adding explanations, annotations, etc. aimed at that near-zero audience. But again, without knowing more, even this is probably not useful.
Sorry for delay in replying. I apologize that my question is unclear. Friends of Five Creeks has created a number of projects over the years. This question dealt with the two most recent: What Lives in the Aquatic Park Lagoons and Albany Bulb Bight. These natural areas have habitat values and are likely to be impacted by climate change, are heavily used by people in multiple ways, and face management questions that sometimes are controversial. Besides contributing to general taxonomic knowledge, we hope that information in these projects may influence individual behavior and policy, and get more people interested in the real complexity of nature. To do that, we need documentation they can understand. A overly simple example: Suppose people are harvesting all the nori. I can get across that they should stop if I have a reasonably familiar, or at least pronounceable name. I can explain that there are lots of species and genuses that we can’t distinguish so we use a broad name that also includes a lot that aren’t nori. Also generally, with sponges or bryozoans or other categories where evolution or various kinds of mixing has led to very similar looking critters that aren’t close in clade trees, these critters do fairly similar things in their environments. I don’t much care for deliberately suggesting a more specific ID than is possible and then having others contradict it. (This seems to be what some are suggesting.) That seems to me like playing games. I am going to keep looking for a workaround – basically, this is keeping a recognizable “placeholder” name in a highly visible spot until and unless there is a reasonably specific ID – that probably means at least to genus.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Your solution may be the closest from the point of view of iNaturalist, and it may be what we do . But I’m reluctant to call it “correct.” There are just too many critters that don’t work with getting to genus and species, leaving us with names that could be hundreds of very different critters (not terribly useful to researchers, I suspect) and that are too alien and unpronounceable for ordinary folk.
I am still struggling to understand what problem you are trying to solve. How and whether something can be ID’d to a specific level is not really connected with what sorts of names are available to talk about them.
Common names are not limited to genus and species; people also often need ways to talk about broader groups using more familiar ordinary terms. If there are common names in use for broader taxonomic units, but these names are not on iNat, you can request that they be added.
This was my first thought in response to this thread as well. There are many threads on the forums discussing the pros and cons of common names but when it comes down to it in situations like this it’s very helpful to have something. You just need to do an internet/literature search and find any evidence that anyone is using a common name for that taxon, make sure the name is distinct for that taxon, and then you can add it and include a link to the source.
But I’m not sure if I understand the context or marine taxonomy well enough to tell if that’s actually the solution here. I looked through the Aquatic Park project and found this observation where it sounds like you have a couple species of yellow sponges but because “yellow sponges” is not a taxonomic category you can’t identify them lower than phylum Porifera.
You also mentioned “nori” which based on an internet search usually refers to edible seaweed in the red algae genus Pyropia. But based on my limited knowledge of seaweeds it’s possible that people are also harvesting species of green or brown algae which they still call “nori”, but on iNat you might have to go all the way up to “plants” or “life”?
In these cases I think what you are asking for is functionality like what these feature requests are asking for: Create taxon field functionality analogous to observation fields Attach non-taxonomic qualities to species for searchability
Since that doesn’t exist now (and is unlikely to), @spiphany’s earlier post has the best available options.
Might I suggest that you use your project journals to present and summarize findings from your project (and possibly also mention outside findings relevant to your project). You can have journal articles like “Family Eupodiscaceae–What’s That?” “Three Look-Alike Sponges With Different Names” “Tips for Taking Identifiable Photos Underwater” or “What Changed [Here] in the Past Year.”
I don’t think iNat is structured to facilitate your Placeholder Name idea. On iNat, an observer can select a Placeholder instead of an ID when posting an observation. But as soon as someone posts an ID, even a very broad one, the placeholder disappears. I don’t know whether the newer version of the cell phone software treats placeholder names any differently. Good luck.
Yes it does. No placeholders. You can use Notes or Comments or Observation Fields. All under the observer’s control to edit (or delete, instead of Oops where has my placeholder gone
@fivecreeks your placeholder workaround, will not work for users of the new app - which will surely be a substantial chunk.
