Try looking at projects. Join a few and see how you go ? If you find an interesting project, they all need help with IDs. Unless it is a (fiercely defended) niche project, then you can just enjoy from the sidelines.
How would you evaluate the contributions of pan‑taxa natural history documentation to the community?
Yes, helpful experts can be very influential. That is how I got steered into water beetles in the 1980s and have stayed with the Balfour-Browne Club and their recording scheme. See www.latissimus.org, though it maybe needs updating as it is advertising the 2018 field meetings.
It is absolutely normal on iNaturalist to be interested in a little of (almost) everything. You are very welcome here. (And welcome also to the forum! I think you’ll fit in just fine.)
Pan-taxa natural history! Yes! That’s a good name for my interests, too. One of my earliest childhood memories involved hunting through backyards for toads. My bird life list started when I was 14 and I became a serious birder (taken seriously by others, even). Some 40 years ago I began becoming a serious botanist. I sometimes say that if I had another lifetime to do it, I would study noctuid moths. So much diversity, so little time!
One of the many things I enjoy about iNaturalist is that I can indulge my diverse interests. There’s no need to specialize, though I find myself photographing, studying certain species for a while, then another taxon or a different place.
You’re identifying. Oh, thank you! We need identifiers. I identify a lot, too. I like to identify what I can from anywhere in the world. Sometimes I find the limits of my identification skills! Someone else will correct my ID’s and sometimes be quite sharp telling me why I’m wrong. (Most people are patient, but there are others . . . .) As a result I have just stopped identifying certain things; Coopers vs. Sharp-shinned Hawk. Cockleburs. There are more than enough taxa that I can ID.
You post good photos. (I sampled a lot of them to check.) Photo quality is high. Diversity is interesting. These will be useful to a lot of different researchers. Keep it up!
Sure it is! This is my first topic in Inat forum. As for me, “like-minded enthusiasts”（or “同好” in Mandarin, “同” = same, “好”＝enthusiasts） are really precious, especially pan-taxa community.
My main interest lies in medium to large mammals from all over the world. Sometimes, if visitors come to my city, I also help them identify common local species.
My path of exploration is actually very similar to yours! I started birding in 2016 when I was 10. That same year, I also got into night herping and nocturnal wildlife surveys, which opened the door to invertebrate groups like insects and arachnids, as well as amphibians and reptiles. Later, during the pandemic lockdowns in 2022, I was stuck at home and began photographing weeds. The more I shot, the deeper I fell into botany and mycology. Then, in the post-pandemic era, I got into microscopy. In 2024, I went on my first mammal safari in Sichuan. If conditions allow, I’m really looking forward to expanding into entirely new fields, like marine life and intertidal zones… and so much more.
To be honest, I didn’t understand what all this was about at first. Is there really a problem with observers who don’t specialize in certain taxa? Can anyone really accuse me of photographing everything I can get my hands on? That’s very strange. Because I’ve always considered INat a platform designed specifically for this. Of course, I mostly photograph plants and insects, but that’s because I’m limited by my technical resources. If I had a professional camera or a microscope, I’d also photograph birds and microorganisms. And the more, the better. For me, this strategy for INat is preferable to, for example, collecting isolated observations. .
My interests are…kind of odd to describe. I guess you could say im both a specialist and a generalist. Specialist in that my taxon of focus is arthropods, but a generalist within arthropods. Out of simplicity sake I tell people my field is entomology. But some of my favorite arthropods are arachnids and crustaceans. I especially like many of the deep sea and parasitic crustaceans, and entomologists dont touch that stuff with a ten foot pole. I dont really identify with the lable of entomology, since to me Gnathophausia is way cooler than most insects. But I am also far too attached to insects to straight up join the marine bio camp either.
What does this make? Is there even such a thing as “arthropodology”?
that is quite the dilemma indeed, im interested in the answer
Too bad “anthropology” is already taken.
Given how many of my students say “anthropods” when they mean “arthropods”, I think you could get away with claiming that anthropology is about chitinous ecdysozoans. I hear they really diversified in the Crustaceous Period.
I met a man recently who told me about seeing his grandmother’s handwriting on museum labels in Brisbane. “She was an anthropologist,” he told me. “She studied insects.”
It’s basically a clash between generalists and specialists. The broader your scope, the more blind spots you’ll have, and the more mistakes you’re bound to make—which naturally draws more criticism. Plus, in some communities with a really toxic vibe, if you frequently post misidentifications, you’re likely to get roasted by a few narrow-minded experts.