They do not seem to observe spiders, so I am of no help here 
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It’s friday… I haven’t been on iNat for a couple months, but I’m back, and right now I’m tackling the 85 page long Dryopteris arguta from the west coast of NA.
For some reason that’s one of the few ferns in NA that always gets left out by Identifiers, so I guess it’s my turn to step up.
What is your #IdentiFriday project?
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I think I will wander through Dicots and Unknowns observed in May, June, and July in my region, since it’s winter here and I could use some greenery.
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Asian spiders, bussiness as usual ;-)
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Re: That plea for ID help. The project was deleted but most of the observations are still on iNaturalist. To find them, you can use the Identify tool and search for Norman, Oklahoma. Nearly all the recent observations there are from this class. The students mostly have 35 or fewer observations.
Nearly all the observations were ID’d by the students as Solanum eleagnifolium (likely correct), Maclura pomifera (likely correct, but most of us can’t ID the ones without fruits), Lonicera maackii (mostly, but not all, a single species of Lonicera, whatever it is), and Sorghastrum nutans (mostly incorrect). If you know these species, especially if you can ID grasses of the southern prairies, you could help a lot.
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Starflowers.
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I stepped away from IDs a bit to go on an annotation spree this week - life stages of Lepidoptera. Only 11 Mio records left to go …
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Oh god… I’m terrible at annotating… they’re so time consuming, and it feels like you achieve nothing when looking at the big picture.
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I don’t like them, either! But I can see that people using the data would often find them useful. So I do annotate from time to time.
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I am beginning to understand this. I recently adopted a policy that, whenever I add the observation field “Tree,” I also annotate the flower and leaf phenology. I don’t think it would aggravate me if not for the fact that I sometimes come across several trees in a page which show no identifying features other than that they are trees. That, and the observer pool in a certain locality seems to have an obsession with cultivated banyan trees.
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I do really like the tool for annotating male or female. As this most certainly isn’t general knowledge, and certainly helps the observer and anyone coming across the observation.
But annotating if the tree is flowering or not just feels like a waste of time.
Yes, it can be useful, so the person researching doesn’t have to filter them out themselves. But I feel like my time ismore valuable by just IDing more observations.
Thats just my oppinion though. And I’m glad that there is people out there that do annotate properly.
And what I mean by that is, you know when a tree is flowering. So just filter for that certain time frame, and u will get all the observations of flowering trees. (of that certain genus/species/family ur researching)
Did some correction of German missidentified Calystegia, and some Mediterranean plants (cause European Calystegia are boring)
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Actually with the keyboard shortcuts offered here (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/annotation-sunday/55342/5), it is quite fast for this group. And with butterflies and moths, it is easy to differentiate between adult and caterpillar (I’m mostly skipping the few difficult records with leafmines and galls) - easier than plugging through unknowns with only a very shallow taxonomic knowledge.
My thinking is also since the butterfly and caterpillar (and pupa) are quite different in their appearance (and there might be even species than can only be IDed in their larvae/adult form or vice versa), perhaps a future computer vision model will be supported by those annotation if there is enough data (“CV says this is a … caterpillar”). So it doesn’t feel like achieving nothing.
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Where that annotation might help, is if the observation hasn’t yet been identified further and someone with knowledge can use this to filter for “needs ID” in larger bins. Trees and plants with flowers have a much higher probability to reach species and RG than just some unspecific leafy greens from far away (looking at you, CNC/Bioblitz/class records 
).
But I agree, if you are able to offer IDs, your contribution is very valuable. For those of us not so talented and without that expert knowledge (except for: “this is plant”), we’ll keep on churning on those annotations to maybe help others in their IDing workflow.
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Annotations are very useful to some people and would be more useful if a higher percentage of the observations were annotated. So annotating is good.
We identifiers don’t need to annotate and don’t need to justify our choice not to. After all, we’re doing what we do here on iNaturalist because it’s fun and (we hope) useful. No need to do the things we don’t want to do.
I personally try to annotate my own stuff (though I’m far behind) but feel no need to annotate for others. I sometimes do so, mainly if I’m adding the observation to a project so I’m on the same page with the annotations anyway.
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That is my main reason for annotating plants. To find out when they are blooming (or fruiting) in certain areas. Some guides give a huge range of bloom times because it is variable by location (and year to year sometimes).
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Been working through Plants, Kingdom to Class, through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, just shuffled to random. Trying to rescue things that have been sitting, sometimes for 7+ years, out of ‘dicot’ hell. Averaging about 7 a page, a lot of things that are either perfectly identifiable just not to ME, or else not identifiable at all. But pulling the ones I can to genus or species is satisfying. Slower than a round through a single, well known genus for me, but sometimes I need that or my eyes start to glaze over and I make more mistakes.
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That’s so useful!
… rummages through forum threads…
I could have sworn there was an IdentiFriday thread here somewhere?
… remembers search function after I find the thread…
Well, hello, again! And welcome to a New Year of identifying till your fingers go numb!
My wish for 2025 is that observers (including me!) remember the overworked identifiers as they photograph their organisms. Please, observers, make it easy on the identifiers. If you’re observing a pine, make a clear photo of the number of needles in a bundle. Flip that fern frond over and zoom in on the pattern of sori. For that matter, zoom in on your organism in general, if you can (please ignore my request if you’re looking at venomous snakes or elephants). Treat yourselves to an old-fashioned thing called a paper field guide and read it in your spare moments so you know, generally, what features you need to photograph.
.… enough of mid-winter crankiness …
For myself, I wish to learn more about common plants in my region, so I can identify genera like Ranunculus and Lysimachia and Galium down to species without having to look them up every single time. I think I say this every year and it never happens, though, so don’t expect miracles from me, please. Plus, I’d like to hit 300,000 IDs for others in 2025; that’s actually pretty achievable, I think.
And to all my companion identifiers, I hope you enjoy your identifying in 2025!
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