#IdentiFriday is the happiest day of the week

For #IdentiFriday, I am going to plow through the 2900 or so Texas CNC unknowns and put them to the family/genus level, if possible.

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I will admit that during the La Paz disaster, I felt a certain glee in sending something to Casual within minutes after it was uploaded. But after “see more unreviewed” several times and still being flooded with brand new uploads clamoring for attention, I started choosing “skip to next page” instead. That way, I could work on some that were actually as old as four hours.

The thing is, even in a place as unfamiliar to me as La Paz, there were a few that I could take straight to species – and I don’t mean cultivated flowers.

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I got tired of working on the Baton Rouge CNC so I spent some time today on Pre-mavericks instead

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I am still chewing thru Unknowns. But mostly to find the wheat among the chaff. Starting with the oldest, and happily watching the numbers go down because for CNC I am not alone.

But I always start my daily IDs with the disagreements and pre-mavericks. Quick and easy. Then the melt the iceberg …

I have a bookmarked URL for those broad IDs. Otherwise they die a slow painful death in limbo.

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Yesterday, there were 16000 unknowns in canada
now there are 19000

Time to spend a week or two on unknowns…

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In one day??? Did someone upload a whole year’s worth of observations as Unknowns?

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Nope! A bunch of new users uploaded unknowns it looks like.

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Thankfully, not many unknowns (so far) are of cultivated plants

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Oh, GOOD!

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I don’t know if thats good…

Instead of cultivated plants, it is just closeups of tree bark that will probably never be identified

I think I prefer cultivated plants to tree bark since I can at least identify cultivated plants!

EDIT: Now that I’m past the 3 pages of tree bark, I finally found completely wild plants that I can identify!

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I worked through a few hundred “Needs ID” and “Unknown” from Bolivia. On the one hand, I could do something to improve the ID for close to half of them, good considering how little I know about Bolivian organisms. On the other hand, I started to see unidentified or minimally ID’d observations I’d seen before, or I thought I had. Yet another post of the same cactus or vine or odd weed? Was I loosing my mind? I gave up. Maybe I’ll try again later.

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When the exact same image comes up side by side (due to the timestamp) but attached to 2 names. Yes! I have seen that twice.

Life
duplicate of
please delete

And Good as it can be - anticipating a second ID to tip it to Casual and then out of Needs ID.

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Am I right in assuming that genus is about as high as is possible to get for mining bees/Andrena without really specific images

Depends on the species and what you mean by specific images, many are idable through photos if you photograph what is needed, some are ided by a single shot.

I think I just went and got myself overwhelmed by an ID key I looked up, to be perfectly honest.

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Anyone looking for an easy to ID plant species to plow through? Common Selfheal is the only species of Prunella in North America. I think the flowers and flower arrangement are easily recognizable. You can just skip the obs that aren’t flowering. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?verifiable=true&page=1&spam=false&taxon_id=52765&place_id=97394

Some similar looking genera to watch out for:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/55968-Galeopsis
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/51229-Stachys
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/55460-Lamium
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/53204-Clinopodium
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/53914-Scutellaria
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50644-Salvia
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/56100-Ajuga
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/52736-Monarda
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/81754-Thymus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/61208-Polygala

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That seems like quite a natural reaction to the experience of trying to identify bee photos using a key that (as is often the case) was likely written with the assumption that you have a specimen in hand which you can examine at your leisure.

It is sometimes possible to find guides that are more directed towards field identification, but I’m not familiar enough with North American bees to suggest any specific resources.

Andrena is quite variable; local experts may be able to suggest a subgenus if a species is not possible. In addition to overall coloration, features that often help to narrow the ID are the color of the legs/scopa (when not covered with pollen), color of the fringe of hair at the end of the abdomen, and a view of the head/face; for male Andrenas, the shape of the mandibles from the side and front is often diagnostic, and in some cases the presence of white or yellow patches on the surface of the face.

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I definitely found a ID key that expected the reader to have a mounted specimen in hand - and I have very little expertise when it comes to IDing insects, so like, i don’t even know where to get started on looking for a better web guide (and I’ll be honest, I’m just not really interested in buying an illustrated field guide on bees)

Like I find this guide for the state from OSU - https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/ENT-57 - but its only helpful for genus. Which I don’t really need help with, its not too hard to seperate Apis from Andrena, Bombus, Xylocopa, etc - but species level LOL I’m not getting there.

According to this - https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/2/86606/files/2020/06/Bees-of-Ohio_-A-Field-GuideV1.1.1.pdf - there’s 98 different species of andrena in ohio, and it also doesn’t at all get into individual species.

And I thought fungi were hard XD

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1 day late, but I’m gonna try to go through all of the needs ID Coreopsis tinctoria observations in Texas (37 pages at 30 per page)

I’m finding a Coreopsis basalis in there about every 6 observations, and a Gaillardia pulchella every 30 or so observations

Dare I say… #IdentiSaturday?

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Identifriday seems to be more if a Identiupdateoftheweek, which I think is totally cool :blush:

Since I am back on regular track and season in the northern hemisphere is already in full bloom, I am now keeping pisaurids in Europe at bay… they had piled up over my break again,but now I just need to do the 3-4 new pages a day… And I am branching out in several directions if I have more time

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