But you’re so good at identifying! Really good!!
3 Likes
Can any of us ID anything well anymore with all the taxonomic upheavals? I used to think I was good at Caribbean butterflies. Riley’s 1975 guide to Butterflies of the West Indies was, by design, comprehensive at the time, which was achieved by excluding Trinidad and Tobago and the islands near the South American mainland. It isn’t comprehensive anymore, at least not for the tricky endemic genus Calisto – increasingly often, I have been corrected on those by people with access to more recent papers that split new species off from the ones that Riley knew.
I would be very surprised if any of the active identifiers here haven’t faced the same problem with the taxa they used to be good at.
3 Likes
Oh, yes. It’s frustrating! However, there are still lots of species that haven’t changed (or have changed their name but kept the same species concept), so I keep IDing those and am grateful when some of the ones have been split or otherwise confused can be ID’d to genus or to a complex of species. So much to do! Even when I rule some taxa out for my own identifying I’ll never run out of Needs ID to work on.
2 Likes
Wonderful topic. I’m trying to get good at frogs and insects in North Carolina, USA, especially wasps, bees, and butterflies. I’d love to have a mentor help me understand why some of my bee IDs are not right, despite having studied @neylon 's helpful guide.
I took part of the the Wasp ID class online in January but had a hard time relating it to field photos. I’m also interested in IDing North Carolina wild flowers and shrubs. I’ve been an avid gardener here for a loooong time, so I recognize a lot of cultivated species.
3 Likes
Perhaps start a list with people willing to be a mentor for taxon X in region Y.
I’d love to have several mentors, such as bees in Southern Africa or ID of Strychnos in Southern Africa and miuch more.
Or a topic where people can ask how to ID a taxon
5 Likes
For me, and I can’t speak for anyone else, I love to start working in a less familiar topic by learning how to ID 2-5 relatively each to ID species- things without difficult look alikes to train my eye on the group in question. So if you have any suggestions on a couple of species that are easy to ID from field marks to get me started (Ebony Jewelwing is the only one I know well) that would be super! I also love if there are two similar species, but with distinctive features that give the game away so to speak (in plants, one has clasping leaves and one doesn’t for instance) because then I can really practice on differentiating the two similar ones if I have that info.
Away from that specific: There are too many things in here to reply to all of them and it’s been a very busy day for me so I’m thrilled to see the amount of conversation and potential for collaboration already here!
To cover a couple points though basically:
I am certainly not saying that there is not/not enough mentoring happening on the site. There is! 100% I think it’s super fantastic! And I know there are more people on the site than on the forum, that’s okay- this topic isn’t meant to SOLVE completely any of the barriers we’re looking at. It’s meant mostly to start seeing who is interested in offering what, and in what ways.
Some people might want to trade info more actively and this might help them find someone to trade that info with directly. Some folks might want to write (super, fantastic, I want to read them all so please post them here if you have them and want to that would be amazing) or to read other people’s specific pieces. Anything that’s ‘how to tell x and y members of a genus apart through photos’ I personally find very helpful, but might differ for different people.
This isn’t really a topic that I started with a specific intention of ‘we should do X highly organized and coordinated thing’. Could something like this come out of that? Absolutely possible. But I think that there are so many people with differing needs and wants from this site that there isn’t really a one size fits all solution to this. If people have write ups about their particular pet projects and would like to see them all collated into an easily findable document, I’m your person for instance, I love to learn from those, but someone else might like to have a more one on one with someone else and they can take a look at this thread and scroll around to see what’s available. If enough people are interested, I’d also be happy to work on a list of who is offering what and see where that takes us. Even if it ends up being just people enjoying networking and learning new things, that sounds great to me.
I think just having an active dialogue where people start problem solving, instead of just saying ‘no that won’t work because’ is useful. Sure there are lots of things that won’t work, that’s not news. So what CAN we do, as a group or individuals? I feel like the only starting place is a dialogue like this one.
As for what about changing taxonomy- even professional taxonomists have to deal with this, so that’s just part of the whole shebang isn’t it? It’s frustrating sometimes sure, and sometimes it turns out a thing I thought was x but is now y. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m a horrible nerd and I get excited to learn new things, more than I end up frustrated by it (I recognize this is not universal and I’m weird like that). Sometimes it means there’s a whole section of things I can’t ID again right away. So I’ll move into other territory while the taxonomy settles down. There’s no lack of things to work on, which is great to me!
To circle back to brass tacks- I’d be happy to collate a journal post that can be linked to by people, to help direct to IDers who are able/interested in information sharing, and/or to journal posts that help tease out more specific organism IDs, if those are things people are interested in trying to put together, to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.
3 Likes
I specifically am really liking seeing two of the things here:
- people who are offering 'I know X and Y well and can share that information in one fashion or another
and
- people who are saying specifically what they would like to see, in order to learn.
Maybe we won’t be able to do ALL of these things, but without those two pieces of info, there’s not much to do about it either, so it’s great starting points to gage the type of interest people have in this.
3 Likes
Why don’t we make a spreadsheet? Is this allowed???
I made a quick one.
Feel free to improve it and add to it? steal it? idk
Discord is a better resource than Zoom~
8 Likes
It would be nice to have an organized list somewhere of id resources. I know some people try to make this in their bios but having one big one searchable by taxa and region that anyone can add to would be very useful.
5 Likes
I have been working on learning plants of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I created identification guides on the project. I have spent less energy on them lately, because it hard work 
. I’m not an expert, I just made the guides as a learning tool for myself and because I was interested in the problem of how to share knowledge about identifying on iNat.
This might be too small of a region for many experts to focus on. But I’m happy to make anyone an admin in the project if you you like to contribute to identification guides for the area. If someone has information to pass along, but not the interest in creating journal posts, I can take your information and make a post, giving appropriate credit.
I promote the guides by linking to them in IDs. E.G.:
Pinus contorta - 2 needles https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/73712
Most of our observers don’t live in the area, but I like to think they can still learn something like key characteristics to focus on and the value of providing different views.
I realize that experts need to contribute in a way that works for them.
- observations with notes about characters
- comments with pointers, and
- IDs
all help.
If you are interested in exploring the area more on iNaturalist, you can use the place filter: Greater Yellowstone Area. You can also use the project filters “Flora of the Yellowstone Ecosystem” for plants and “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Biodiversity” for all taxa.
7 Likes
I keep seeing this concern raised and I have to say, as someone who has been learning scientific and common names for a good bit over half a century now (I’m 71), I really don’t think taxonomic changes are all that big a deal. Back when I learned jack-in-the-pulpits, there were three possible species in my area. Then they got lumped into one. Recently (within the past five years?), they were split into three again. Fine, whatever. I’ve been trying to learn bryophytes for a year now. There have been quite a few name changes in mosses in the last 25 years, but even the most recent field guides often use older names, so I’ve really had to learn two scientific names: Old Scientific Name and New Scientific Name. At least I don’t usually have to bother with learning Common Names as well. I’m not going to let having to learn two scientific names for a few species get in the way of learning mosses at all. (I still don’t know enough to do much IDing, though, that that has nothing to do with names.)
9 Likes
@hcoste, I promise I’ll get back to you with dragonfly info soon, but I’m heading out in the field shortly, so it won’t be till tonight that I can come up with something coherent.
1 Like
I’d love to learn the difference between eastern cottontail and a swamp rabbit. I started shying away from what I had previously thought was an easy ID until I got a chance to do more research!
@lynnharper Absolutely no rush!
3 Likes
Okay coming around to this now- I added to it! And thank you for getting that started, this is great.
Currently because we have a couple of guides that are linked in this thread, I made a tab specifically for guides. I’d love it if more people either linked the guides here and we could start the process of compiling, or felt comfortable adding them on their own! I stuck with your current basics for organizing, but if there are a lot of guides we might find we want to split things more finely (A tab just for plants, a tab just for insects, etc)
I also put my name down on mentor tab. I am uncomfortable adding people’s names to that without an expressed permsission, so if people want to add themselves in, please do (and we can add more info/categories as they are needed! This is a great back bone but it has the benefit of also being pretty flexible!), or else just say ‘sure hcoste, you can add me for X’ if you would like.
Is there an inaturalist discord I’m not currently aware of? I use that program often and would happily join a chat, whether general, regional, etc.
2 Likes
I think Ludwigia are really pretty and ecologically interesting so mark me down as interested in learning to ID as well. It’s been a while since I learned botany formally, but I’m able to navigate/dust off rusty technical knowledge as needed.
3 Likes
Nice! I looked at the Ludwigia observations you’ve posted and made comments. Feel free to tag me any time you observe a Ludwigia and I’ll try to explain what I see. Hey, the mentor system works!
3 Likes
OK supertiger, we’re connected! Just tag me anytime you post a Ludwigia and I’ll tell you what I see. Looking forward to your observations!
3 Likes
Thanks so much! I’m sure I got out over my skis on a couple of them, so I’m really glad to get feedback!
1 Like
amazing, thank you!