iNat Milestones

Weclome! I think you’ll have lots of fun here!

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I hit my 500th observation today!

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Lots of luck! And thank you for adding the ID on the muscovy/mallard hybrid I saw the other day. I thought it was a weird looking domestic duck, but you cleared up the mystery for me!

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Woohoo! Welcome! May you become as obsessed as many of the rest of us here :laughing:

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I hope to tick over 11,500 observations this weekend. I am going on a very rare (for me) overnight hike to an alpine area quite a distance from my home. I’ll be alone with only my dog, so I can iNat to my heart’s content without my husband and kids getting annoyed with me stopping to look at every little thing :sweat_smile:
And I don’t look at how many identifications I do - they are just something I try to do if I have a spare few minutes so I’m a bit surprised to see I’ve just ticked over 160,000! Most are pretty broad, but hopefully they have been helpful.

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… it is my goal to add missing moth species worldwide, with special attention to neglected geographical areas. I will add an atlas for each species, with the reference to the original species description, with geographical distribution information from the literature, at least the “type location”, and with a copyright-free image of the species, if no observation photo is available yet. In the future, this shall lead to a giant “identification textbook” because you can use country checklists and you see even pictures of species not yet recorded / identified on iNat. This seems particularly necessary for South America (e.g., Amazons, Andes), for Central Asia (e.g., Kazhakstan, Turkmenistan, Xinjiang) or for Southeast Asia (e.g., Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea). To my knowledege, there are no comprehensive books for moths for these areas. Note: checklists are available on the (web browser based) iNaturalist through “areas” but also on each observation through the “compare” button.

I am at around 7,500 added missing species pictures. They are mostly taken from historic books with color plates like Hampson 1898-1920, Rothschild 1909-1922, Seitz 1909-20, Druce 1884-1909, Cramer 1775-1790, Felder&Rogenhofer 1874-1875, Möschler 1884-1886, Oberthür 1879-1881, Schaus 1889-1921, Herrich-Schäffer 1850-1869 and Hübner 1806-1825. You can get access to all these books via https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

No idea how many moth species or synonyms I have added in the process. (Is there a way to count them?)

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As moths seem to be left unidentified for very long here, I am very grateful for every of my moths you have pushed to a finer level. Thanks so much for all the time you invest here!

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It would also be great if some people started working on the recently-split Harebell complex.

If you figure out Heliodinidae in South America, let me know!

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Yes! More IDers for SA moths please!

Moth-memes-781x441

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Oh, dear - the Harebells have been split? What are the details, please?

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I don’t know all of the details, and I’ve been unable to find the original paper, but POWO split it into 11 species back in 2019.

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Enjoyed your blog post…well done! Now I feel inspired :grinning:

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Eleven species?! OK, they’ll all just be Campanula for me from now on.

{When does the Magic DNA Wand come out, the one you wave over an organism and it tells you what species the taxonomists currently think it is?)

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I just passed 3,500 observations, 1,500 species this past month. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=safron&verifiable=any

My goal for this year is to get to 8,000 observations by the end of the year- a hard but possible task.

Another goal I “recently” got was getting all 7 species of swallowtail native to Mississippi, as well as about a month ago, getting both Agkistrodon species native to the state in the same day!

Another final goal for me is to log every Plethodon species that has been described. Slowly, slowly working towards that goal: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=27135&user_id=safron&verifiable=any&view=species

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The problem with IDing eastern Opuntia is that on one can agree if they are O. macrorhiza or O. cespitosa. Someone really needs to decide which one iNat should be using and commit a taxon swap.

Let’s try to keep taxonomic discussions to flags on taxa in iNat.

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Wow, 160.000 IDs is a bunch! Thanks for that!

From the start I always check back with the numbers of my IDs as I actively tried to always give at least as many IDs as I upload observations to give back to the community. I am not a very active observer at the moment, so now it´s easy for me, but this habit of checking stuck with me :-)

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You’re welcome! Mule Ducks are a favourite of mine. I hope to see one some day.

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Just hit 1000 species observed, thanks to being in a new place with lots of new things (also have 2600 observations and 250 IDs) - mostly plants since moving lifeforms never stand still to let me take pictures. Celebrated by seeing 4 new to me orchids this weekend! I would like to get to about 1:1 with IDs but I still hardly know any plants, I mostly go out and take pictures of flowers every day and let inat ID them for me…

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