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 o…

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

[image] mollymjacobson: When I post a moth to BAMONA it usually gets verified within hours 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…

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…

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 …

[image] cecileroux: 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. 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…

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 spec…

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 h…

[image] shauna1: 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. To give some perspective on that situation, I have become one of the go-to people for Caribbean butterflies, even…

[image] shauna1: Africa: 2967 Research Grade vs 48,559 Needs ID Ratio of 1:16.94 I’m curious where these numbers came from. When I look up the Afrotropic Ecozone (which excludes North Africa because it’s faunistically quite different), there are currently 223,822 RG observations of Lepidopt…

Need for more moth identifiers?

General

DianaStuder July 14, 2024, 8:00pm 17

Yes - spiders and insects ;~)

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Need for more moth identifiers?

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