I recently started IDing mantids under the guidance of an expert (i tag whenever in doubt)
One major problem is that many people mis-ID this species - Odontomantis planiceps, which isnt found in the region according the ZSI (zoological survey of India) doc on checklist of indian mantodea fauna and it is a species found in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. there are 2-3 other species of the genus found here.
This started quite a few years back when there werent any users on inat that specialised in indian mantodea fauna and so they ( identifiers from other countries ) IDed it according to what they knew which lead to a long history of misidentifications leading the present problem - now whenever someone posts an observation and uses the AI to suggest ID it always recommends the foreign species only.
currently there are 882 observations and ive only been able to resolve 100 or so
How do deal with this misinfo, and are there similar incidents around the world too?
also this is my first forum so forgive my lousy format :>
Unfortunately there are quite a few cases like this - I recently went through and corrected several thousand observations of another species that people were overzealously identifying (Mecopoda elongata). The short of it is that there is no easy way to deal with it other than to just correct all of the identifications. But the good news is that after you have corrected them, people seem to āget the messageā so to speak, and misidentifications tend to become a lot less common. After the next CV update it should also stop being suggested by the computer, which will help a lot as well.
ThatĀ“s great that you ID in Indiaā¦ there is a huge lack of skilled IDers in that country, leading to the situation you talk about.
Last year a fellow spider IDer made me aware of a similar problem like the one you described but with Argiope spidersā¦ many wrong ID suggestions leading to a wrongly trained CV suggesting even more wrong IDs.. it is a runaway process.
Good news is, once you are able to fix this, the CV quickly catches on and false suggestions are less likely. Maybe you are able to get one or two fellow IDers on board so you are at least able to massive tag them to resolve those wrong IDs.. it will be difficult to fix the issue as a solo IDer
Do not fear to identify them at family (Mantidae) or order (Mantodea) rank when you are sure that the species is wrong but you donāt know the correct one.
I do so with mis-identified plants quite often. And if a better id than mine is given which still contradicts the original wrong id, I withdraw mine (i.e. I try to prevent āancestor disagreementā issues).
I have great interest in indian mantodea but turns out only very few ppl have studied them so im doing best to help them out :>
Argiope is a confusing genus for sure even i dont know half the time how to differentiate some species
getting a few ppl on board is certainly possible thanks :D
yes I do that when i know the species is wrong and i usually know at least till family level for all the ones found here
definitely a good tip for all beginners :>
It can also help to have some generic text to include as a comment on disagreeing IDs like āThis is not X. yyyyyyy which isnāt found in India (link to source), so Iāve IDed to Zzzzzzz. Hopefully someone else can provide a more specific IDā or something like that. This also helps spread the message about specific IDing problems.
this is also what ive been doing when i see a repeated observer who has seen multiple times and given wrong ID multiple times
I was expecting someone to ask why im not keeping at species level but surprisingly nobody has objected so far
I also figured most of the users dont use inat as much anymore
thanks !! i hope someone else also finds this helpful , i think this is the right way to ID also.