Need for more moth identifiers?

General
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As I’m sure is the case for many taxa on here, I’ve noticed that a comparatively small proportion of moth observations achieve research grade, even in well-studied regions like eastern North America. Good, well-lit photos of (at least relatively) straightforward species go unidentified/uncommented on for years if at all. I could understand this for micromoths and groups that are not well-resolved or IDable from photos but even larger, well-understood species languish in the needs ID abyss.
When it comes to insects this is a highly visible taxon that a huge amount of people observe and post, especially laypeople just getting into citizen science. Large numbers of moth observations come in from blacklighting events. I think it can be discouraging or disappointing when folks excitedly post moths they see at a bioblitz, often with an ID they did some work to come up with, and then just never hear from it again. Or, similarly, trying to compile species lists from bioblitzes that may be used for outreach or even management purposes, but most of the moths never get an ID (or have their ID corrected). Given that this is, in relative terms, an insect group that is well-studied and catalogued on a state-by-state basis and has many lepidopterists working on it, I think it’s important that more moths get looked at on iNat to try and slog through what I can only imagine is thousands and thousands of pages in each region.

This is not at all to dismiss the hard work of all the folks who I’m sure are tirelessly trying to wade through those pages! I just feel like there aren’t enough of you! Where’s the constriction in this pipeline - not enough lepidopterists are on iNaturalist? Good photos get buried beneath mountains of unIDable ones? Even charismatic species are more difficult to ID than we realize? If not enough experts are on here as identifiers, how can we improve that?
I work on bees, not Lepidoptera, so I don’t know the whole situation here - but just interested in starting a discussion on how we can start getting RG IDs on decent pictures of photo-identifiable moths in a more timely manner.

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iNat encourages and promotes obervers and observations.
Identifications are on the do next time list.

We have an IDentiFriday thread - for people who do want to help.

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More people want to observe than identify. It’s true of all taxa.

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Took the words right out of my brain there. I’ve been thinking this for a while. After the excellent profile on caterpillar identifier k8thegr8 I was inspired to start adding life stage IDs to Lepidoptera observations, not feeling especially skilled enough to make a lot of species identifications, but hoping that me marking things adult or larva (and very rarely, pupa or egg) could help more skilled identifiers as well as build important phenology data.

I quickly noticed a few things. If the Lepidopteran was identified in Europe or Australia, it was usually Research Grade (and almost always if some time had passed). In North America, dicier, and in Africa, Asia, and Central/South America/Caribbean, the situation is dire and even easy to identify and iconic butterflies often go without any ID indefinitely. I think there are highly dedicated communities of butterfly enthusiasts (sorry if there is a better term, I mean this in a positive way) in the UK and Germany, as well as in Australia that keep those places humming along with good IDs. (Australia/NZ may also benefit from the fact that it’s midwinter there so they’ve had time to catch up on a backlog of summer posts). In the US, I think we have a lot of people curious about moths and butterflies but not as many who feel equipped to identify.

I actually pulled the rough numbers by comparing “Research Grade” vs “Needs ID” of Lepidoptera (I know your post was about moths, which are absolutely less identified in the USA, but there’s no monophyletic moth group so we’re lumping in butterflies here) by continent. Here’s the breakdown:

Europe: 25,145 Research Grade vs 67,621 Needs ID
This is a ratio of 1 research grade post for every 2.69 currently needing ID.

North America: 59,041 Research Grade vs 321,803 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:5.45

South America: 6998 Research Grade vs 142,836 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:20.41

Oceania: 25,350 Research Grade vs 70600 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:2.79

Asia: 9113 Research Grade vs 125,067 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:13.72

Africa: 2967 Research Grade vs 48,559 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:16.94

World: 128,719 Research Grade vs 782,379 Needs ID
Ratio of 1:6.08

So North America is better than the global average, but not by much. And wow, Africa, Asia, and South America are dire. I think this has to do with the relatively low adoption of iNaturalist in these regions (many good conversations exist about increasing access already so I won’t dive into that), so many observations come from visiting tourists from e.g. the USA who don’t feel equipped to identify an interesting-looking caterpillar or bizarre moth they saw in Costa Rica.

There also seem to be some field stations in the tropics that regularly report sightings but without suggesting much in the way of ID or partnering with other stations to make IDs there. This could be a similar issue to “moth nights”/bioblitzes in the US, where it seems possible for those involved in these projects to make more of a plan regarding reaching identification. (I think a lot of these observations are potentially incredibly valuable, so I’m not saying anyone should stop posting things they have no idea what they are, because then I would have to stop posting too :) I am only saying that incorporating IDing out of guide books or finding a regional expert to come by could be a great idea to take these moth nights to the next level, both for personal enjoyment/education as well as increasing the usefulness of the observations.

I don’t personally know where to start; I definitely feel like I can add more US/Canadian moth IDs, because these fauna are well-characterized so I feel like I can find guides as well as fairly reasonable CV suggestions. But for other continents (especially Africa, Oceania, and Central/South America), I have no clue where to start. If I see CV suggest some species that mostly looks like the image, I still don’t feel like I could select it without doing a ton of research. While I’m aware of, e.g. the fact that there’s a lot of variation in how extremely common species like the Painted Lady look like in the US, I have no idea if that’s the case for some tropical species or if what I’m looking at is just not in the vision model at all. I think building guides or directing people to existing ones would be very helpful. And trying to increase those guides in non-English languages like Mandarin and Spanish would probably boost IDs too.

Butterflies and moths have a lot of intraspecific variation as well as mimicry, so they can be really difficult to identify. I really wish some photo like this with key field marks existed for a lot more species (I don’t know how normal this is for iNaturalist, but I absolutely love it).

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Would it be against some iNat etiquette to contact users who usually correctly identify their own observations to join the identifiers who ID for other people?

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Thanks for pulling those numbers! Those don’t surprise me - NA species are still fairly well-described and catalogued, and more often observed by those using these sorts of platforms, than some other areas of the world.

Like, just to compare, working with bees, here in the northeastern US, we have I would say most of the regional experts on here as identifiers. Bees posted in this region usually get looked at within minutes if not a few days, and the ones left unidentified are generally those that will never be identifiable. There’s an element of starting discussions with these identifiers when we find something potentially interesting and want to figure out how to ID it. I feel like if I post an odd bee, I can expect a comment or two from the rest of the bee community. While leps are much more diverse, there’s also proportionally many more experts and enthusiasts working on them (perhaps elsewhere - Facebook groups?), who should be qualified to at least get some common or distinctive species to RG. When I post a moth to BAMONA it usually gets verified within hours, but the same moths have gone 2+ years here with no ID. It can be discouraging for users to never get IDs on what may for some be hundreds of observations of a certain group like moths, and as you mentioned the potential scientific importance of getting them to RG if possible is substantial. As a scientist we use iNat data all the time to look for new records or populations - this one I found a few weeks ago turned out to be a first state record in over 80 years: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/227461157

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Not sure tbh. I think it’s really up to each user to determine if they are confident enough to help identify observations. I would think that most scientists working on a particular taxon are already identifiers if they are iNat users at all, with many doing almost solely identifications and posting very little else. I think more so I’m wondering if there are experts or qualified enthusiasts hanging out on other platforms, that for some reason are not yet on iNat and could be joining the ranks of moth identifiers?

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Absolutely not.
I would like iNat to encourage observers to ID at least two and a half times as many obs as they post. Going on a rough rule of - more than twice to cover the ones that need discussion before they achieve RG ID. (If the observer starts with their own ID, then one and a half, but, we do need all the IDs we can get! 1.5 million waiting if you include plants and animals only to kingdom with the honest Unknowns)

I appreciate your help with the - nice picture, probably an insect - that I push your way.

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Ontario might be the best place in North America for moth IDs. Five out of eight moth observations achieve research grade. I guess I got it good here. https://inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=6883&subview=map&taxon_id=47157&without_taxon_id=47224

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Pouring one out for @mamestraconfigurata :pouring_liquid: :pouring_liquid: :pouring_liquid: :butterfly:

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It isn’t always about what people ‘want’ to do. I post lots of observations because I love observing. I would love to do more identifications, but I lack the knowledge and expertise to match the number of ID’s to the number of my observations.

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And Victor Fazio (the main reason Australia’s numbers look so good) https://www.inaturalist.org/people/vicfazio3

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So ask them to join iNat? I (bragging) recruited a new identifier this week: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/mirideos. So far, he only identified my photos, but I encouraged him to return when he has more time. In a couple of hours, he added 3 species that were previously unrepresented on iNat.

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I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask for observers to all be identifiers - probably the vast majority of users are not scientists or even hardcore enthusiasts of any particular group, enough to be able to or want to try IDing things, and that’s totally fine. Identifiers agreeing with IDs should have particular knowledge in that subject area, and there will always be a comparatively tiny ratio to identifiers to solely-observers, which ensures data quality. But as I saw discussed in this other forum topic (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/defending-inaturalist-on-social-media/53386/26) much of it comes down to experts for a particular taxon being on iNat in the first place. Some groups, like bees, a lot of us are, whereas perhaps for leps, more are elsewhere and may take convincing to use this platform.

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I can ask. I don’t insist.

If they do not want to ID, then it is even more disappointing when they leave a recent comment
ID ASAP!
Identifiers are reasonable people. Everyone could add some value between broad IDs or annotations. Give back. Pay it forward.
My moth IDs are mostly Lepidoptera and wait. Or annotate as larva.

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If you want to do more IDs, there are lots of ways you can improve that knowledge and expertise, and lots of ways you can help even if your knowledge is still limited.

There are a lot of us who learned a substantial portion of what we know as a result of our activities on iNat – I’m one. I’ve found that a lot of the experienced IDers are willing to share tips and resources for users who express interest, and I’ve also found that you don’t have to know everything in order to be able to make a difference with your IDs.

Maybe there is one species or genus that you know well and can ID. Maybe you can distinguish a bug from a beetle and you can provide general IDs that will help the observations get seen by specialists. Or maybe you’re not yet confident ID’ing but you can recognize an adult from a larva and you can add annotations to the thousands of observations that are lacking one.

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Yes - spiders and insects ;~)

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Would it be considered okay on iNaturalist to include as a comment on an observation “verified by ___ on BAMONA [any comments on BAMONA that helped to make the ID].”

I know we’re all supposed to be independently adding IDs, but I would be lying if I weighed these IDs equally:

[tiny brown moth species #496] ID added by newuser47, new user has made 3 IDs
[tinybrown moth species #496] ID added by Moth_Genius_100, Moth_Genius_100 has made 1 billion IDs and is the top identifier of tinybrown moth species #496.

Like in the latter case I’m pretty much doing a cursory glance and going, “yeah, what they said.” An ID provided from BAMONA would prompt a similar reaction. Basically, if it’s okay to include that kind of info it might garner more IDs from users like me who are still learning a lot!

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This is great advice. If you can afford it, purchasing the best-regarded hard copy field guide for some area of interest (e.g. wildflowers in California, mushrooms of Russia) can be really helpful for getting your feet under you in a larger group.

One other way that you can start small but make a huge impact is noticing species that people struggle to narrow down, but ARE identifiable from a half-decent photo. For example, I didn’t know how to tell the difference between any of the big black butterflies in my region (Spicebush Swallowtail, Pipevine Swallowtail, the black form of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and Red-Spotted Admiral). So I’d upload without a species-level ID, and I learned to tell the difference between these butterflies both just by practice/feedback from experienced IDers, and by perusing simple, non-technical comparison guides like this one. Now whenever I see a big black butterfly pop up unidentified in my region, I feel confident slapping an ID on that bad boy.

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To give some perspective on that situation, I have become one of the go-to people for Caribbean butterflies, even though my only knowledge of them is Riley’s field guide published in 1975. Since then, there have been considerable changes, especially in the diverse endemic genus Calisto.

This is why it is so important for those who have access to the latest taxonomy to be sensitive and avoid condescension to those who are doing the best we can with what we have. Thankfully, the Lepidoptera situation isn’t bad in this area (in my experience), but since I have seen this in certain other taxa, it needs to be said.

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