I have done this on occasion, noting in my comment something like, “ID after @name in shown comment above”
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I spent a lot of time trying to refine observations stuck at Class Arachnida over the last few days. Most of the ones I identified have now been moved to Order or finer, but there are currently about 80 that need another ID or two, if anyone wants to take a look. I could have made some mistakes here as well, of course, so please don’t just agree. Thanks!
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Finished reviewing the last 15 pages for a rectangle around my neighborhood. Easy when you know all the plants from walking the trails. Almost 30k total IDs for my home county now, out of nearly 250k total observations (so many!).
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Did some pre-maverick animals in Louisiana today. I was getting sick of plants.
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I got deeper into asian Argiope this week and there is so much correcting to do.
There is one species that seems to often get IDed as something else. So some other Argiope-IDer is going through all the RG observations of Argiooe anasuja and is fishing the dozends of Argiope aemula and others out, while I am going through 400+ pages of asian needs ID Argiopes catching those wrong IDs before they go to RG and ID everything else I am able to along the way… Will keep me busy some more days, am at page 120 now
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Guilty as charged. Picked all the animals out of African Unknowns. (It is all difficult dicots, 
)
But then there are gems to be found. Made two African botanists happy!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/197513340
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I don’t think I’ll ever run out of easy IDs. There’s such a huge backlog. There’s over 1,000 baldcypresses needing ID in southeast Texas alone! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=125100&quality_grade=needs_id&taxon_id=49667&verifiable=any Maybe I’ll work on those a bit this morning.
PS also asking for people to duplicate if they have some nice views of galls in their photos. Baldcypress has 3 described gall species and 2 undescribed gall species all in the genus Taxodiomyia.
PPS I just IDed 120 baldcypresses and found 3 not baldcypresses. Now I’m sick of looking at baldcypresses.
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Plus their even just labeling a gall pic at Life if undescribed, opens the new Gall annotation option. :)
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Whoohoo… we managed to influence the CV for the better. Now Argiope aemula gets suggested in most of the cases where A. anasuja has been wrongly suggested before. So maybe all those wrong IDs will now be more rare
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That Daily Identification Count is awesome! My average is lower than I would’ve expected, but I guess I didn’t identify much the first month or so I was on here…
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I’m sitting here lazily over breakfast and IDing Swamp Loosestrife, a common wetland shrub in my part of the world, which conveniently has very distinctive flowers and fruit, and a question occurred to me: have any of you figured out how many IDs you make in an hour, on average?
(By the way, there were 8-year-old observations of Swamp Loosestrife that just needed one agreeing click to bring them to Research Grade. I know there aren’t enough plant identifiers, even in the United States, but that surprised me.)
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i’ve never actually timed my efforts, but i think my identification rate is heavily influenced by what i’m identifying and how specific i want to get with my identifications. if i’m really keying out difficult taxa that i’ve never tried to ID before, it could take hours for a single ID. if i’m working on common things in a local spot, then i could probably do several hundred per hour if i really tried.
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I agree. IDing these Swamp Loosestrifes is very fast. I rarely try to key things out, but if I have to look at a field guide, that takes a lot longer. I identify a lot of Unknowns (usually to something very generic, like Fungi or Dicots) and that can be a bit slower, too.
I might run some timed experiments and get some random bits of data to play with. It might be interesting to figure out how many hours a year identifiers contribute to iNaturalist.
ETA: An hour of identifying an “easy” genus resulted in about 230 IDs.
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(I have contributed years. It gets obsessive to clear - this batch, then that batch …)
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I IDed about 175 yaupon hollies earlier today in I think about an hour and a half. They were all ones that had one ID already, so except for <10 that weren’t yaupon they are all RG now (or w/ 2 IDs & marked cultivated). That is probably my top speed. More often I look at plants with higher level IDs and narrow them down which is a much slower process.
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Are you the top identifier for any species? These are mine (that I have noticed):
Primrose-leaved Violet Viola primulifolia (304 IDs)
Blue Waterleaf Hydrolea ovata (275 IDs)
Multi-bloom Tephrosia Tephrosia onobrychoides (80 IDs)
Maryland Milkwort Polygala mariana (75 IDs)
Looseflower Water-Willow Justicia ovata (56 IDs)
Oneflower False Fiddleleaf Hydrolea uniflora (45 IDs)
Reverchon’s Lobelia Lobelia reverchonii (42 IDs)
Swamp Milkwort Polygala appendiculata (24 IDs)
White Firewheel Gaillardia aestivalis var. winkleri (24 IDs)
Yaupon Psyllid Gyropsylla ilecis (21 IDs)
Smooth False Indigo Amorpha laevigata (2 IDs)
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I was rather shocked when I noticed earlier today I was the top identifier for Swamp Loosestrife, Decodon verticillatus - 1,493 IDs.
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I noticed a week ago that I am the top identifier of Coreopsis tinctoria (1,882 IDs)
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For putting basic ID’s on unknowns, I can probably crank through a few hundred an hour, since I don’t have to think much about it. For Bryophyllum plants, which I identify the most, I can usually go pretty quickly, but sometimes I have to make comments, click the cultivated button, or click “as good as can be” if there are only pictures of flowers, and that slows me down a bit. But since I’m pretty good at ID’ing them, I can probably do a couple hundred an hour. For pines and other conifers though, sometimes I have to consult keys or a guide I made to pine identification, and that can slow it down considerably. All in all, it really depends on the taxon for me too.
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If we’re only counting verifiable observations, which is what I normally go by, then I’m top identifier (that I know of) of:
Kalanchoe suarezensis - 18 IDs
Kalanchoe pinnata - 694 IDs
Kalanchoe laetivirens - 462 IDs
Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi - 115 IDs
Kalanchoe gastonis-bonnieri - 69 IDs
Kalanchoe marnieriana - 3 IDs
Kalanchoe marmorata - 53 IDs
Kalanchoe pubescens - 6 IDs
Kalanchoe prolifera - 22 IDs
For subg. Bryophyllum as a whole I’m top identifier at 4,104 IDs
As you might be able to tell, I like IDing Kalanchoes :D
Is it just me or do y’all get competitive with your IDs too?
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