During the Great Southern Bioblitz, I photographed a moth. The genus Chersadaula in New Zealand can’t really be easily identified to the species according to one of the local iNaturalist moth experts. I’ve marked the observation as “as good as can be”, and this makes it a Research Grade generic observation.
This sort of observation won’t be included in species totals for the BioBlitz, because it’s not at the species or lower. However, this isn’t due to the observation details - it’s due to the taxon needing more research. There seems to me to be a difference between generic or higher observations that are marked as-good-as because they’re unable to be confirmed further based on the evidence, and those which are marked that way because we just need more taxonomic work.
I wish there was a way to mark this in the database.
This offers additional evidence regarding why I’ve never liked the wording of that particular DQA. It is ambiguous as to what might motivate someone to vote yes or no.
If there is reasonable hope of taxonomic work making something identifiable further in future, you can always leave the box unticked so it will stay in Needs ID? Though it may be worth including a comment saying that to discourage eager but ill-informed identifiers from going further until further work has been done.
I think it’s a continuum. If the presented evidence included a link to Bold there’s a good chance that one day it’ll get a name. If the poster didn’t go to the trouble of getting it sequenced that’s just the end point of the continuum “post a photo that’s actually in focus”/”show the under side”/”photo the genitalia”/”DNA”. Everybody has their own cut-off of what they think it’s reasonable to expect.
I think ultimately there’s no way to have iNat recognize the difference between “As good as it can be” “due to the observation details” vs. “due to the taxon needing more research”. In either case, there’s not a recognized taxonomic bin lower than genus that the observation can be confidently placed in. At all the BioBlitzes I’ve been to, the master list will include things like “Chionodes sp. 1”, “Chionodes sp. 2”, etc. to represent that a certain number of different species were observed, even if a species-level identification is not warranted for any of them. I worry that adding a feature like this to iNat would simply create a backdoor for people with strong unpublished taxonomic opinions (read: hardcore splitters) to beef up lists with unrecognized taxa.
I say this as someone who has a series of “undescribed moth” projects, like this one:
Am I pretty much certain that the moths in this project are in fact an undescribed species of Battaristis? Yes. Has that assertion been published and undergone peer review? No. So while I would personally add it to a BioBlitz list as “Battaristis sp. 1” if I were holding a Blitz in a local park, I do not think iNat ought to create the ability to do so on its platform. Because as soon as I can “count” my undescribed Battaristis as a species without any published reference, Splitter McSplitface can come along and use this same feature to “count” the 50 unrecognized species in his pet genus as different species too, and we’ve in essence created competing taxonomies on iNat.
As annoying as it is to not have species “count” if they need more taxonomic work to be recognized (heck, I’d probably add 100 species to my life list if I could make undescribed stuff count), I think the current conservative approach to taxonomy on iNat is “as good as it can be”.
As far as I am aware, higher-level taxa are included in the BioBlitz totals. This would not be true for higher levels for which a finer level has also been recorded (for example, if an undescribed species of Tachystola were recorded in addition to Tachystola acroxantha only the species would be counted), but that’s not the case here.
You can check the BioBlitz results (here filtered to family). It does look like this taxon is included and counted (as the genus).
Edit: it looks like you were correct that on the project page itself, indeed only true species are counted. But elsewhere in iNat, such as the Explore page I linked, and on your profile, such observations are counted as “species” (leaf taxa).
I wasn’t worried about the bioblitz data. I’m more interested in the loss of potential metadata that may be useful for showing biodiversity, which could be seen as the difference between bad photos and nondescript species.
The argument that it is a continuum is convincing. I consider this resolved.
Unnamed species are an interesting problem I’ve given some thought to. Here in Texas we’re currently dealing with a number of wolf spiders in the Hogna genus which are likely to be new species and are at various research stages including immediately prepublication. The best solution within the current options at iNat is summarized below. This allows the iNat community to become involved early on and no one knows more about life than the people who are regularly out in it. My recent work on one species was greatly enhanced by other peoples observations. The first confirmed adult male was thanks to someone in another state, and I was able to compile an extensive county level range map thanks to many peoples observations. What started out as a Central Texas species, then Texas and Oklahoma ultimately turned up across the entire Southeast (except Florida).
As soon as reasonably sure, devise a unique common name such as “xxx wolf spider”.
Start a traditional project based on the common name and identify observations as far as the probable genus. Include the unique common name in the notes or comments.
Continue researching which should include development stages, sexes, breeding populations, habitats, seasonality, dissections, and DNA barcoding. I think the days of formally describing new species based on a few differing traits and limited specimens is (or should be) past.
Starting a project for nondescripts is a good idea. I will start one for New Zealand; I’ve asked a few of the prolific identifiers if they think it’s a good idea, first.
One solution to the “unnamed species” issue is, after placing the observation within a genus ID, to use the Observation Field “Species Identification” and give such taxa what is known as an OTU, an Operational Taxonomic Unit name. Here is an example with an apparently unnamed species of South American lichen moth in the genus Abrochocis. I’ve chosen to fill the Species Identification field with “Abrochocis sp. 2”. And here is an example of a well-known but unnamed species of the Tineid genus Kearfottia which actually has a page we can reference on MPG. In the latter case, the observations are all named “Kearfottia n. sp. - 300007.85n - 0319.99 (MPG)” from the MPG page. For North America, any number of BugGuide insects will be found to have the same type of designation and can be referenced by a BG species page.
The advantage of this type of annotation with temporary names is that this field is searchable. By clicking on the Species Identification field title and choosing “Observations with this field and value” in the pop-up menu, one can quickly see all of the observations which have been so annotated. Very convenient!
Well, it is if everyone uses the same field. There are several: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?utf8=✓&q=undescribed Unfortunately there isn’t an easy way to search for all observation fields with a particular value set, so everyone using this function to track a particular undescribed species ideally need to agree to use the same observation field.
(Yes, we need better searchability and standardization for both projects and observation fields…)
I totally agree that this complexity is a problem. I’ve used “Species Identification” because it seemed to be the most frequently used and the most intuitive field.