You could explain your rational for opting out in your profile.
And don’t forget to opt back in right before you pass away so the community can continue to make corrections as needed. 
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There are two ways to opt out of community ID: universal and on a per-observation basis. Note that universally opting out means that observations are opted out from the moment they are created; if you opt out of individual observations on an as-needed basis, this option will not become available until there is at least one ID besides your own (you cannot preemptively opt out of individual observations).
Particularly if you might potentially upload observations of taxa outside your area of expertise in addition to fungi, I would encourage you to use the latter option rather than the former – i.e., opt out only if other users have added IDs that are wrong or unjustified (e.g. because you are waiting for the sequencing) and they are unresponsive to your explanations about why their ID is an issue.
In my experience, when opting out creates tension and frustration, it is almost invariably in connection with users who have universally opted out and don’t keep up with their notifications. This becomes a problem if they have observed taxa they aren’t knowledgeable about and IDers are unable to correct indisputably wrong IDs or refine perfectly identifable observations that have only been given a very broad ID.
I also think it is worthwhile giving the community a chance – sometimes you may end up with wrong IDs, but (at least in my experience) the majority of IDers are knowledgeable and conscientious and willing to reconsider or discuss IDs if they made a mistake. Most people are here to learn and engage with nature and universally opting out feels like it tends to shut down that space for exchanging knowledge.
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I apologize if this has been suggested already, but you might call attention to the pending DNA analysis by typing your note in the box when you first make the genus ID. For IDers going at a full clip through observations, they might not scroll down and read all the notes below the initial ID. I’d also bet that if you said, “I’m holding back on a species ID until the DNA barcode analysis comes back,” more people would understand your intent. Not all, of course, because not everyone knows what a DNA barcode is. But it might help.
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Thanks for the thoughtful advice. I didn’t know you could opt out on a per observation basis, as that would be ideal when waiting for a DNA barcode for example. How does one opt out on individual observations? As for community IDs, I’m certainly not saying that my IDs are always correct. I’ve had very helpful assistance from members of the community, pointing out errors or taxa that I was unaware of - that’s one of the strengths of the community approach and I wouldn’t want to preclude that aspect.
As I said I’m just learning to navigate the process and etiquette of community science. I must say the responses to my query have been thoughtful and helpful. Thanks everyone who responded.
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Excellent advice. Thanks.
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on the desktop/web version of iNaturalist, it’s an option found adjacent to the Community ID infobox, on the upper right:
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I just checked this and please note that “reject” is only an option if there are at least two IDs for the observation and the community taxon is different than your own ID.
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What are your reasons for wanting the “Research Grade” designation?
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Unless one knows for sure that it isn’t Russula emetica, one cannot say for sure that it is misidentified.
Well, again that probably reflects more my own ignorance with the iNat platform. I thought that “Research Grade” gave the observation more legitimacy and broader distribution to sites like GBIF. But to be honest I’m not really sure. Yet something else that I need to investigate as I explore iNat further.
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Russula emetica is a european species associated with conifers; there’s skepticism that R. emetica sensu stricto even occurs in the US. I’m away from my computer so i cant look up sequences, but i can tell you that none of the Russula we’ve sequenced so far have come up as a match for European R. Emetica
EDIT: Updating because I checked, there are some sequenced R. emetica on iNat from the West Coast that are probably correct - but none are from the eastern US. I could probably do more digging on this but I need to stop procrastinating on some work I need to get done.
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That’s correct. But only if it has the relevant license: https://www.gbif.org/dataset/50c9509d-22c7-4a22-a47d-8c48425ef4a7#description
Under the “Data Quality Assessment” of an observation page, selecting “No, it’s as good as it can be” under “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” will place it as Research Grade also even if it hasn’t yet been identified to species (e.g. genus-level only but research grade).
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You’re right, and research grade does get exported to GBIF - but really, any researcher who is using GBIF to pull observation reports should really be independently verifying the data they’re pulling. Especially for something like fungi where identifications are all over the place.
If I want to see more accurate location reports myself for a particular species, I’ve gotten in the habit of pulling up every observation that has ITS information and then searching within that for whatever species I’m looking for. It’s still not all encompassing but for some taxa I feel it gives it a more accurate picture.
And this is only going to become clearer as more areas are surveyed in the future.
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Brings me to another question. On Mushroom Observer I just put the GenBank accession number for my sequences, so when they were ported over to iNat they only had the accession number. How important is it to put the actual sequence in the observation field (and which one, as there is “DNA”, “DNA barcode”, “DNA barcode ITS”, etc. - I’m presuming “DNA barcode ITS” is the best to use as it complements other gene regions like “DNA barcode COI” etc).
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You don’t have to do it, people should know what the genbank accession is to be able to look it up - personally though, I do like it when all the info is in the observation fields, if I need to quickly copy something to do a BLAST comparison it makes it really easy without having to look it up.
Other people probably have their own preferences regarding what to do, I’m sure.
If you’re processing through mycomap (or move that direction) there is a button that will export the data automatically to the appropriate mycomap observation fields (assuming you have the sequence connected to the correct iNat observation)- you can also just do this for the entire project at once if you have multiple sequences you’re going through and validating
There’s a few extra observation fields here added, of course, but that ‘import to inat’ will automatically fill out DNA barcode ITS (or maybe other gene regions too if relevant? I just realized I don’t know if it will LOL), MycoMap BLAST results, Reads in Consensus (RiC) (if you’re doing Nanopore sequencing), Sequencing Technology, and Trace Files (Raw DNA Data).
There might be a few differences, depending on gene region/sequencing tech, but overall - its handy.
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Research Grade is a label for - CID achieved - a community of 2 - agree on this ID. It doesn’t necessarily mean that either of them is a taxon specialist. iNat is absolutely egalitarian, our IDs are all equal (none are ‘more equal’ than others)
I like to include the DNA in the “DNA barcode ITS” observation field as it makes it easier to find via the API as you can use the ofv_datatype = “dna” from the parameter query, rather than having to parse the data after to find those with GenBank accession numbers.
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That may be true but how often have you identified something when the original finder doesn’t know what it is, only for them to then do a quick Google (maybe!) and confirm and so achieve Research Grade?
Post hoc finder-confirms shouldn’t count towards CID.
mm
Another suggestion is to require 3 IDs for CID, but we don’t always have 3 competent identifiers for a taxon.
Your example, if they are new, is more likely to be using Agree - as a way to say Thank you. Since iNat doesn’t have a Like button.
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/88501-experiments-to-estimate-the-accuracy-of-inaturalist-observations
(Fungi having the most incorrect IDs seems accurate. - comment from @lothlin there)
Running to 30 Jan, and these results, and the next round, will be interesting.
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Yeah, I’m curious about the results of these.
TBH it would be interesting, potentially, to compare initial IDs on fungi to what they come back as once sequenced - except that, in my experience, a lot of the ones collected for sequencing don’t get much of an initial ID beyond family or genus because we’re just waiting for the sequence to get back. Excepting really obvious ones, of course.
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