I have a new way to get a dopamine hit with the help of iNaturalist!!
Being retired, and having some extra time, I decided to start Identifying some of the older “Unknown” observations. I picked 2024, and the U.S. There were over 100,000 Unknown observations when I started. Now, my Not Reviewed list is a little over 20,000.
I have seen a lot of interesting organisms!! I use the computer vision models to see suggestions, since I’m not an “expert” nor a specialist in any field or species. There are many observations that I simply pass over (anything under a microscope is outside my knowledge), but I do try to ID as much as I can. (My career in Quality Assurance taught me about data integrity.) Sometimes, I find a familiar, or otherwise interesting observation. (I have one favorite observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/245768990 but only because of the irony.)
Occasionally, I get a notification that someone else has added an identification to one of the observations that I had identified. I check if they agree, or if I was way off base. (I don’t take it personally. I’m still learning!)
The dopamine hit comes when I see that they’ve agreed! The observation had been sitting in the dark basement of iNaturalist’s database, untouched for 1-to-2 years, and my identification had lifted it out of the basement and into the light for someone - an expert with little time to rummage through the basement - to find it and confirm the identification!
I can beat that! I found an unfamiliar plant yesterday. Came home and id’d it and checked AVH to find a friend and I had vouchered it two years ago! And I would have done the id then!!
Welcome to the identification club and thank you for your help with unknowns! I’m glad you are finding it enjoyable and rewarding!
Maybe this is what you are doing anyway, but I would recommend using the computer vision suggestions for broad guidance (e.g. all the suggestions are for beetles, it is probably safe to call it a beetle) rather than picking one that seems to look similar. There are a number of taxa where the computer vision performs quite poorly and regularly makes wrong suggestions, so it is often wiser to not use the top suggestion but go back to family or order/suborder. Unfortunately in a lot of cases the taxa where the CV is unreliable are also taxa which novices find unintuitive and even a visual comparison may be misleading unless you know what features to focus on (for example, humans tend to notice things like color patterns, which works for some taxa, but can go quite badly for others – say, wasps or flies – where the same general color scheme may be adopted by many different species).
After a while I find you do develop a sense for what is likely to be distinctive and where you need to be cautious, and there definitely is a learning effect just through the repetition of looking at lots of observations and seeing what they turn out to be.
Ditto, so when I come across similar I don’t ID but I do try to add them to a relevant project (eg. this one for microscope observations, though I am sure there are others) , so members of those projects can possibly ID it instead.
Yes, the CV is not always reliable. I often look at the other evidence that is included in the observation - location, date (season), associated project(s), and even the number of observations of the observer and when they were last active. Sometimes, the photo is just too blurry to ID anything.
The CV doesn’t always see what I can see in the photo, and I have to guide it to search for a certain taxa. This is where I really learn something new, because I don’t always know what I want it to search for!
I have also noticed some patterns in the observations. Many observations have previous comments from Identifiers, questioning what the photo is supposed to show. Many of these questions are still unanswered 2 years later. I will look closely at the photo, and if I don’t see anything obvious, I just mark it as Reviewed and go on to the next one.
Some of the Unknown observations were simply not Identified by the Observer when they submitted the observation. They did not use the CV to make the “obvious” ID, either by mistake or because they didn’t learn how to use it. These are like wonderful little hidden treasures! (A Common Dolphin is not something I would see here in Ohio!)
My biggest dopamine hit is when we get an ID no where else in the country or even the world.
Like when someone adds a new taxon for one of our plants or bugs. That part was cool
It happened with a passiflora and a bug for us.
But since I use inat mainly to report my own land. My dopamine hit usually comes from my own map. I zoom in on my location and can see the map. Ia nice to see it so full.
