It feels like the guides feature was meant to be used for helping identify different, but similar species from one another, but every guide I have looked at seems to have misunderstood the assignment and just been a list of birds or flowers from a region. Which makes me think maybe I have misunderstood the guides? Or maybe I don’t know how to use the software correctly?
Am I wrong about the guides? Or are taxonomically useful guides just drowned out by noise? If so, is there a list of useful guides?
Is there a particular taxon that you’re looking for a guide on? If so, consider reaching out to the major identifiers for the taxa/region of interest, they may be able to point you in the right direction.
I did not have one in mind specifically. If they were more widely available in general I’d probably use them to help me key in specific species. To give some examples in my area there are a variety of Ivies and Brambles, a couple of types of Dandelion, and probably many more Ants than I expect even.
I’m new to iNaturalist and to this sort of data collection (naturalism) in general, but not new to research or citizen science projects. I spend a lot of time outdoors so I think it would be fun to contribute in this way as well.
When it comes to taxonomic knowledge present in the digital world, it feels like the process is still in it’s infancy. iNaturalist guides being no exception.
Coming from a medicine background, it is surprisingly hard for me to find concise “differential diagnostic” data. It feels like using material resources(guide books, specimen collections) is still the norm rather than electronic resources, especially in species level identifications. Maybe it’s because im relatively new to the subject…
That being said, there seems some ways to access the knowledge scattered around the web:
-Most convenient are dedicated sites, https://araneae.nmbe.ch/key for example. They are very rare in my experience, though.
-Search for “(family/genus name) identification key” on Google Scholar, those papers are godsend and present the information on a straight forward way most of the time.
-Search for “(family/genus name) (location)” on Google Scholar, some of those papers contain useful information.
-Look at the profiles of top identifiers of a taxon of interest, some of them are goldmines regarding taxonomy, might find lots of useful links aggregated there. Honestly you guys are amazing.
-Pester top identifiers in your locality with mentions under related observations, it’s worth a try(or two) imo.
People ocassionaly drop nuggets of key info on observations where they disagree. If there is a way to sort observations by “controversial”, i.e. with most disagreements, that might prove a helpful resource.