72% of my verifiable observations are Research Grade. I am pretty sure that’s because I am trying to document the common organisms in my area, particularly the ones I already know the names of. Do I remember correctly that you tend to make observations mostly of species you have not observed before?
Mostly, yes.
Maybe also because you have 271 followers?
Yikes, that many? I’m embarrassed. But yes, that could also be one of the reasons my RG percentage is higher than average.
Thank you for reminding me about Blue! I visited it last night in response to your post and ended up with a new addition to my “Favorite Taxa” list.
And I’m not sure Blue! is a frivolous project. The rationale for the absence in some languages of a word for the color blue is “blue is rare in nature” (which I find a silly premise, because if you just look up you see that the largest object in nature is blue during the daytime). By documenting the diversity of taxa with this “rare” color, we can show that it isn’t so rare after all.
I love those lizards! So strange!
I’ve never been all that impressed by the absence of a special word for blue in some cultures. (I’ve even seen some people write that people in some cultures couldn’t see blue!) I figure that when they felt a need to make the distinction, people could refer to “sky green” vs. “leaf green” and feel no need for a separate word.
Since it wasn’t in this thread, I will add
Homer’s wine-dark sea in the Odyssey - is because Ancient Greek does not have a word for blue. I find words and languages fascinating, as I learn my way thru Botanese.
Haven’t tried this online test yet
https://ismy.blue/
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/sep/16/blue-green-viral-test-color-perception
Perhaps today is for concentrating on IDing blue organisms. Chicory, anyone?
(only an iNatter would be intent on a pavement ‘weed’ So blue!)
This is a bit surprising, given how many insects of this order are notoriously hard to identify. Are there just a lot of dipterologists on iNat, are the CV & observers overconfident, or aren’t they that hard to get to family after all?
(Looking at the current numbers in ‚Needs ID’ in Europe it is: 50k at Order-Suborder, 60k at Infraorder-Superfamily, and 778k at Family or below)
Yeah, the large number of dipterans at family stood out for me, too. I interpreted it as an indication that they tend to get stuck at this level relatively more frequently than other insect orders. So it’s not so much that people are really good at getting them to family, but that it is difficult to get them past family. (I think there are a couple of people in Europe who focus specifically on broad IDing of flies down to family, which may also play a role.)
By contrast, if you can get a hymenopteran to family, most of the time someone will be able to refine it futher (with the exception of the notoriously difficult ichneumonids, though a lack of skilled IDers is also probably a factor here). Lots of hymenopterans end up sitting at tribe or genus or subgenus instead – there are 800k “needs ID” in Europe at subfamily or below.
I was making a quick and dirty comparison and probably it would need some more careful examination and tweaking of categories to draw meaningful conclusions. There is some variation across arthropod orders about what taxonomic ranks form distinctly recognizable groups (sometimes this might be superfamily or subfamily instead of family, for example).
I also didn’t account for the different numbers of total observations in each order. At first glance, the Lepidoptera numbers seem rather high, given that this is one of the more readily identifiable insect orders, until one considers that there are about 5 million Lepidoptera observations in Europe compared to only 1.1 million for Diptera and 1.4 for Hymenoptera.
(It’s possible I mistyped the numbers for the diptera at order-suborder – I doubt it would have changed all that much in the last couple of weeks…)
Solution: find someone who will describe Pulvonatus lagomorphus so you can post observations of all the dust bunnies you discover under your bed while cleaning.
(There is likely some interesting regional variation in the distribution of the species in this genus. For example, in some parts of the world, I would expect to find the smaller sister species Pulvonatus musculus (from the German Staubmaus, “dust mouse”) instead.)
Just to be clear, that bit of folklore is not coming from iNaturalist.
Not a folk. It was my suggestion. And pisum crunched the numbers. If you upload your obs with your own ID - then the ratio is 1.25 to ‘give back what you require from identifiers’. It is a choice which has drawn a mostly positive response.
iNat welcomes soaring numbers of observations and observers.
Then we hit a wall of missing identifiers to balance it out.
GSB 2024 stats for example
8.6K observers, but at least half as many identifiers this year at 4.4K
52% green stuff, 24% ‘bugs’
47% RG … with only 3% Casual (pretty good for broken or Captive/Cultivated)
262K obs
Agreed. iNaturalist itself does not do much to encourage IDing. It was only after I joined forum and encountered the exhortations of yourself and others that I realized I was not pulling my weight. Always happy to have my observations IDed by others, never giving a thought to paying it forward. I guess I thought there were people being paid to do it, or maybe the elves were working on it during the night…
Now I’ve seen the error of my ways, and am currently working to at least get number of IDs equal to number of OBs (not quite there yet). Then I will work toward 2X or more. It will soon be easier to achieve, with Winter about to close in on New England, and I will be doing far less observing in the cold dark months.
Thank you - much appreciated.
Identification to family is often easy dor flies, but within a family very often it is only for specialists of taxon and region.
There are not tons of unique looking flies who the amateur can easily ID.
A new French-speaking IDer may need help learning to enter taxa for Reunion Island plants. Is there someone who might help? If so, would you please message me at iNat (peakaytea) for an observation link? Thanks! So excited when these new IDers arrive. Fingers crossed
jeanphilippeb has been in (French) conversation with them for 2 days.
Perhaps an academic ‘protecting their professional reputation’?
I also got this comment on an obs we shared
La flore de la Réunion est jeune, variable et mal connue…
Great! Thanks, Diana
Regards,
Patti Tessler