IDs: the one you always avoid

General
1

So this is for people who do a lot of IDs. Are there certain IDs that you avoid even though they might come up in the groups you monitor?

I love to ID just about any ant … except:

  • Pheidole This one is personal, when I first started antkeeping I know a guy who was obsessed with Pheidole and they have never really stood out to me that much (big heads, wow) so I just have not studied them enough. But, I just need to bit the bullet and learn the basics.
  • Non-US Formica This one is just so intimidating. Basically you have people who know their local Formica, but not as many people who try to identify them from all over… So you’re always stepping on someone’s toes or walking into old arguments… But I’m making some progress.
  • The Camponotus of South America … these are even harder… and it’s a lie that I avoid them, I’m always getting bogged down with some little fuzzy ant who turns out to be undescribed. But, one must be cautious.

Everyday I find out about some new species of ant I’ve never seen before. I could probably be more efficient if I just stuck to a smaller group, but I like to see every new ant that’s posted even if I can only identify maybe 1/3 if I’m lucky (and not all to species!)

I have decided to learn as much about Lasius as possible since it’s such a big common group, and seems like it needs help.

What do you avoid?

2

Any Nemotoceran fly – Brachyceran flies are already difficult enough, taxonomy…

Freeloader flies – needs taxonomic revision badly, and too intimidating

Clusterflies – too intimidating, look the same

Astereae – they look all alike to me

Typical earthworms families/suborders that aren’t Lumbridicid or Megascolecida – same reason as Astereae

Mosses outside basic classes – too complicated

Lichens outside basic subclasses – too complicated

There’s probably more because I’m mostly a generalist.

3

I love the Coreopsis tickseeds, I promise I do, but I avoid Coreopsis grandifolia or lanceolata like the plague because I swear they look identical to each other… Very curious to see what other people avoid!

4

Interesting question.

I primarily identify plants, which is a huge category, so I almost always avoid making identifications outside of my level four ecoregion. I’m not confident about memorizing possible lookalikes for thousands of widespread species throughout their entire ranges. It is quite enough to be able to distinguish between similar species when both are found here.

Even within my region, I don’t try to identify grasses (beyond “grasses” if they were in “unknown”) and there are quite a few genera and a few families I won’t take beyond those levels.

You simply can’t learn it all with plants, and I identify on iNat almost entirely from memory/knowledge, passing up any ID I would need to pull my books out to make. Every time I confidently identify a “new” plant I encounter in real life, including ruling out lookalikes in my region, it gets added to the list of those I can potentially take to species on iNat. So the “always avoid” list should shrink over time, unless older knowledge gets pushed out to make room for new.

5

New user starting to learn arthropod ID here. In general, I avoid in-genus (or sometimes in-family) examples of mullerian mimicry. Sometimes there is a definitive distinguishing feature, but its not always visible in the photo observation. Sometimes, rules regarding color and pattern have exceptions in these species unless you can see the individual tergites.

Also, Thomisidae for obvious reasons.

6

I identify nearly every genus in the Podocarpaceae family, but I always avoid the genus Nageia. I’ve never managed to “get my eye-in” to identifying and distinguishing them, and with being quite an obscure genus and only growing in Asia/South East Asia, any resources in English is quite sparse. No doubt one of these days I’ll have a proper go at it.

7

I mostly add IDs to Australian plants and have quite a bit of fun IDing plants from drier parts of Australia from time to time.

A funny example is that, even though I’ve been able to chew down most of our Zygophyllaceae, I’ve mostly steered clear of the circular-shaped four-winged Roepera species group (R. aurantiaca, R. eremaea, R. halophila, R. reticulata, and R. tetraptera) because of the difficulty I have with keying out this species group from photos, and maybe also partly because I think the CV has done a wonderful job at thinking they’re all R. aurantiaca. I suppose that’s been a reason why I’ve avoided touching the massive pile of R. aurantiaca (except for the slightly more unique-looking subsp. verticillata) observations. That being said, I am trying to work on it, so yeah, currently they’re a pile of hot stuff I don’t exactly wanna deal with just yet, but hopefully for not much longer.

There’s also the tangentially-related R. similis vs. R. ammophila problem where most observations understandably don’t have photos of the extremely inconspicuous flowers, where stamen count (8 vs. 4) and the relative proportions of petal-to-sepal seem to be the only reliable features separating the two species. It’s sort of the same thing with our Tribulus, where I’ve internalised kinda most of them except that ridiculous introduced T. terrestris species group (e.g. T. terrestris, T. micrococcus, T. minutus) where I’ve just been putting it off for ages. Some part of it probably has to do with differences in measurements (and often relative proportions are not enough) typically being an important diagnostic features, which is unfortunate when scale is not often part of photos posted…

8

There are 1000s of little brown and black ants tagged “Lasius niger” but maybe 1/3 aren’t Lasius Niger, and 1/3 might be but they need to be moved up to genus level because you can’t tell.

This is the most common ant in Europe and people feel great and confident just saying “That’s Lasius niger”… I work on it for an hour or two now and then… someday it will be be better.

9

I’ve been identifying waterfowl for years now and there is still an area where I just can’t identify certain species. This area is coastal Texas, where three closely-related species in the genus Anas occur. For multiple reasons, identifying these species is a real challenge.

Firstly, they all look similar:
The Mallard, Mottled Duck, and Mexican Duck share a similar form factor; they are all medium-sized ducks with yellow or orange bills, warm brown plumage, and a blue-ish wing patch (speculum). Telling these species apart relies on subtle differences in appearance, such as overall darkness of the body. Of course, darkness can be difficult to judge when the duck is in shadow!

Secondly, they all hybridize freely:
Being so closely-related means that these three species can hybridize with each other, forming a hybrid zone in the region. Hybridization between Mallards and their relatives is well-documented and frequent. The resulting hybrids are of intermediate appearance between their parent species and are fertile, meaning that 2nd and 3rd generation hybrids also exist. As such, the differences between species become watered down each generation and difficult to judge.

Mottled x Mexican Duck hybrids are known to occur in Texas but are poorly studied.

Thirdly, Mexican Ducks are variable:
Recent genetic work has shown that features found in Mexican Ducks previously thought to result only from hybridization can also be found in genetically pure individuals. Because of this, it can be hard to tell whether you are looking at a hybrid or genetically pure Mexican Duck.

Finally, domestic Mallards exist:
In general, Mallards are paler than both Mottled and Mexican Ducks, making the darkness of the plumage a good way to tell a Mallard apart from its relatives. However, domestic Mallards, which are found in the wild in Texas, can also have dark plumage, somewhat negating this field mark.

Overall, the similarity between Anas species, ongoing hybridization, unknowns in the literature, and the variability Mexican Ducks and domestic Mallards make for a waterfowler’s perfect identification nightmare!

10

I wont Id Dwarf Mallow (Malva neglecta) in places that also have very similar species like Bull Mallow (Malva nicaeensis). Similarly I wont Id Musk Mallow (Malva moschata) vs Greater Musk-Mallow (Malva alcea) when both are present. I just need to do more research about how to differentiate them… but… ugh.

I wish I could just exclude Empidonax Flycatchers when doing birds. They all look the same to me. Same with Vireos.

11

So many plants, so many. I’ve be actively trying to learn more about some of the ones I struggle with but it’s never ending.

Some of the worst are:

And many many others. I can identify most to Family, Subfamily or Genus but the species require a lot of specific information to reliably ID and I find it quite rewarding to learn what to photograph and then putting it into practice but I haven’t yet hit the level of confidence needed to ID some of the more cryptic ones

12

Looking at the hairs of the stems could help.

As a overall global identifier of “unknown” (some things broader, some things closer to species), it’s interesting question.

I’m more focus on arguments like:

  • political region I don’t want to support (yes I know, observers are not responsible for their presidents, but sometimes there are regions, where observers allways reply unpolitely, so I ignore the whole region)
  • user who just tick “yes, agree”, when they have no clue that they are doing
  • users who reply unpolitely when I just try to help in a broad way
  • users who can’t put a broad ID, but when you do it for them, they instantly know everything better

As you can see, for me it’s the “human” component of an ID, which decides if I like to spend my time to help or not, not the species (or family, class, whatever) itsself.

13

Most observations on iNat don’t show the seed hairs, the bracteoles, or the stem hairs. That leaves me wondering if the degree of leaf dissection is sufficient for the identification of at least some Malva moschata.

(The BSBI records have a 200:1 Malva moschata:Malva alcea observation ratio. That’s getting towards the point of in Britain shrugging your shoulders and saying Malva moschata. Arguably better than my practice of assuming that vegetative specimens are Malva sylvestris rather than Malva neglecta or other ruderal mallows - Malva neglecta is rare locally and the others are essentially absent except where I grew them.)

14

The ladybeetle genera Illeis (except I. galbula) and Eriopis.
I don’t know what it is about them. I can ID other harder-to ID ladybeetles, but species of each genus just either look completely alike to me or I always forget which is which…

15

I ID lycosoids (wolf spiders and allies), but I am still mostly intimidated by the ones being posted from south of the equator, so i try to avoid IDing a lot in South America (despited having lived and observed there for several years) and I am hesitant in Africa except some northern states. I always attempted to start IDing in Ozeania more, but get side tracked easily.. but I feel I could work myself into the lycosid fauna there

16

The two groups I focus on are true crabs throughout the Americas and barnacles globally. Both of these have IDs I struggle with and “save for later”.

Most of the American crabs are easy to figure out if you spend some time with them but I struggle with the Armases shore crabs. They’re all brown and square and just similar enough that I’d rather solve other problems before deep diving into those.

For barnacles, almost every group is tough because they are filled with cryptic species with few in depth good resources. I’ve made some progress with Chthamalus and Tetraclita but my attempts on Megabalanus are always very brief. The two Titan Acorn Barnacle species (M tintinnabulum and M coccopoma) are widespread globally and debated if they are even separate species. Also, humans have been bringing them from shore to shore via ships for a couple hundred years, so we don’t even know where exactly their original range is supposed to be. It’s easy to see a large barnacle that’s red/pink with purple sutures and say Megabalanus but after that I’m lost for now.

17

Oh yes! What a great question!

I identify a lot of White-tailed Deer, because that is about the only species that I am an actual expert in. But I almost always avoid:

1: obs that only show photos of tracks and/or scat

Why? Because how do I know for sure that the photo is not of scat dropped by domestic sheep, or some other ungulate? And how do I know with certainty that the tracks were not made by some other cloven-hoofed ungulate whose range overlaps that of the White-tailed Deer?

2: obs that indicate a sub-species, and not just the main species

Why? Because there has been SO MUCH movement of Whitetail Deer all across North America. People have raised them in captivity and transported them all over the place, and many have been subsequently released, or have escaped captivity. Plus, various state’s Fish and Game Departments have imported them from other states, decades ago, to re-establish huntable populations in areas where they had been extirpated. So the way the various sub-species were originally distributed throughout North America has been totally messed with, due to man’s intervention. So I do not trust that any particular deer is absolutely, 100% of the sub-species that was originally in a given location. So please when posting White-tailed Deer observations in North America, do not ID at the sub-species level because there is no way you can know for sure that you are correct.

3: obs from outside the U.S. and Canada

I usually avoid identifying White-tailed Deer observations posted from outside of the United States and Canada. Why? Because I simply do not know very much about the megafauna in other countries, and realize that there may be species that look very similar to White-tailed Deer in other areas of the world. So I do not dare ID something as “White-tailed Deer” if there is any chance whatsoever that it could possibly be something else. Conversely, I know all of the megafauna species of the United States and Canada like the back of my hand, and I know exactly where the ranges of similar species such as Mule Deer and Axis Deer and Sitka Deer and Blacktail Deer are, so I can make identifications with 100% absolute certainty when I stick to the areas I know intimately.

18

I identify flowering plants, mostly dicots.
I avoid Solidago (Goldenrods) Rubus (Brambles) and Rosa (Roses), to name a few. Even if I made the effort to learn to differentiate the many species in these genera, I would by stymied (and annoyed) by the many thousands of observations that have inadequate photos.

19

Yeah, some Illeis require dissection to identify, but a good number of them have distinctive-enough patterning. It does take some practice to recognize the differences. I can share some references with you if you’d like.

I’m less familiar with Eriopis, I haven’t learned much about them either! Still, species ID should be possible in many cases.

20

I mostly ID unknowns in Florida. Things I avoid: fungi, seaweed, lichen, plant diseases, phytoplasma, cyanobacteria, galls, photos taken through a microscope, and of course the many bad photos with no clear subject.