So the ID-a-thon has ended! Over the past five weeks, so much work has been put into this challenge, and hopefully we have all come out a bit more knowledgable or a bit more experienced. I know I sure did!!
What week do you think you felt the most comfortable IDing, and which week did you learn the most from?
What were your goals for the ID-a-thon, and were they achieved?
I think the last week, with the winged and once winged insects, was the one I was able to do the most work in. Entomology was my number one favorite before birds. Youāve probably heard me saying this a lot, but Iāve loved bugs since I was tiny. So I know at least families and orders and stuff like that pretty well. And while some of the other topics had more challenged photos or constructions, scat, and tracks, insects was harder for many people because unless you have years of experience, itās pretty hard to be able to group them properly! So even though I couldnāt really get things down to species (I only really know those that are around me), I was able to make lots of improving IDs that experts were then able to grab and pin down farther. That made me really happy.
I think I learned the most from the plants week, because I am very new to plants, and I learned some of the taxonomic system better.
My goals were really just to try to ID around ten observations for each week, to at least dip my feet into the water in some areas, even if I could only make more broad IDs. I definitely passed this in the insects week, and I think I will be searching insects on the identify page much more often now!
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I have one last page of arthropods - and for angiosperms I am down from 73 pages to the last ā¦ 50.
I hope iNat will talk us thru āUnknown after 30 daysā which looks improved - but I wonder if that is the annual trend as any year ends ?
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I thought I picked a nice visually simple dragonfly to try to isolate in my area to find there have been taxon changes and someone needs to do the DNA work to confirm the subspecies. If Rhyothemis variegata in Australia ever gets itself sorted I am there with the subspecies.
IDing a few of the local birds which are unique to the area or Australia down to subspecies level or just confirming species.
Tried to tackle local critters and then went wider.
Got acquainted with some of the spiny orbweavers especially Gasteracantha in Australia. And some of the spiders in my backyard.
I have a tracking book for Africa so a couple of species got some love to provide second IDs. Also tried to improve anything in the Low Growth Countries group.
Ended up annotating a lot of scat and tracks in the hope that the experts at these can find them. There are so many people who will make a comment saying what something is but not use the annotations.
I just attacked whatever took my fancy and whatever could be done in front of the TV or during my lunchbreak. I have an ADHD brain so there is no way I can maintain attacking a taxon with 1000s of observations but I will attack a taxon with smaller numbers.
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The Id-a-thon was targeted at engaging people who may never have tried identifying observations before, so measuring its impact needs feedback from them. Is there anyone on the forum who falls into that group?
I have been very busy identifying, and trying to expand my identification repertoire, but I didnāt spend any significant time participating in the weekly challenges of the ID-a-thon. I do like the PDF summary sheets they published, and Iāve made a mental note to use them, whenever Iām looking at unknowns and might be able to refine my ID a bit more than I would have previously.
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While I do believe that the target audience of the ID-a-thon; I was inspired to learn more about some of the plants in my area, I tackled IDing a all-too-common plant and its close relatives, and I went through 700 pages and confidently IDād almost half of them to species level.
I got stumped, again, on lichens but I think that will keep on happening. I also learned about some weasles in the area, that I didnāt realize we had.
I liked having the ID-a-thon because it reminded me that for every ādicotā there is another broad classification that I donāt tipically look at.
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I found the ID-a-thon educational and it was nice to see identifications moved along, including some old ones. The comparison/how to ID sheets were helpful and left me wanting to learn more. Iāve got a better understanding of flowering plants (dicots/monocots) so Iām able to use those instead of just plants. Also tried Mollusks, and many are pieces that probably only an expert would know. At the end I got sidetracked off IDs to annotations - koala scat, and Northern Cardinals.
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I started identifying a few months ago following the webinar on identifying unknowns. I could identify at a high level, like winged and once-winged insects, but the id-a-thon gave me insight on how to identify to a greater detail. It takes a little more time, but Iām learning much more which is rewarding. Iāve gotten it wrong a few times, but appreciate when the person correcting the identification leaves a comment as to what I missed. I enjoy adding a more detailed id to an observation from a few months ago, then checking after a few minutes or hour later and finding that someone with more knowledge has added a more detailed identification.
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Jim, you reminded me of this comment:
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@AdamWargon Thanks for sharing that. Iāve been pleasantly surprised so see a couple of my identifications from a few months ago have identifications added during the id-a-thon.
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Do we have any stats for what percentage of observations were at Kingdom before the event vs after the event? Some quantitative stats rather than anecdotal or individual impacts?
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We are promised an iNat blog post āthis weekā about the ID-a-thon. Those are the stats that will be interesting !
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I had only tried a few IDs before the ID-a-thon. I wasnāt comfortable doing Unknowns, which mainly seemed to be indistinct photos. I concentrated on a few local plant species that are very common and hard to get wrong if a few key traits are in the photo. My goal was to clear some bulk from the queue and leave the harder species to the experts. A lot of very common plants seem to hang at Needs ID so maybe I helped a bit.
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Thatās amazing! Iām glad to hear you were able to find something to help with, and great job getting out of your comfort zoom! Welcome to the forum!
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My understanding is that for 99% of lichens, you need a microscope to ID to species.
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Luckily that still leaves 100ās of lichens that can be sight idād! Though you do have to avoid species with lookalikes and those that need chem tests to be 100% in certain region.
But some are so distinctive that a closeup view will be enough.
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There are a lot of lichens you can (given the right keys) get down to to more than the subphyllum.
Getting back to the thread theme. This ID-athon helped me learn about groups I donāt typically ID, It encouraged me to learn about Poales. There is so much there Iāll not be great at IDs but I was able to move a decent chunk past Order.
I also learned that there is (so far) only one Larrea species in my state, all the others (with exception of a single observation) are on another continent.
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Iām very pleased to read about the results of the ID-a-thon today, here: ID-a-thon Results Ā· iNaturalist
Five thousand new identifiers are a lot! Reducing the numbers of Unknown observations by a third is fantastic! Congratulations to the iNat staff for a very successful effort!
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I would like to see the increase in the same time period compared to previous years to show if these values are truly affected by the id-a-thon.
I wonder how much of it is the id-a-thon and how much is the northern hemisphere dominance of inat users. I for one know that I added 7,200+ identifications so far in 2026 mostly overlapping with the id-a-thon while not participating in it, this is an increase in my usual idāing habits but that is coincidence, more so because the weather is more suited to staying indoors, and the chaos of December has passed and I had free time in front of my computer.
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I donāt think this comparison would necessarily help much. iNat grows every year with more observations and more IDs. So a comparison to a previous year would almost certainly show an increase in IDs.
You might be able to combine the two approaches and compare % change from one month prior to ID-a-thon to ID-a-thon due to same % changes for the same time periods across all previous years of iNat (which would give a range of expected values for % change).
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What would really be interesting to see is how many of these people remain active identifiers a month from now? Six months? A year?
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