No, they can’t, all bacteria are just in unknown.
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Yes, fungi, lichen, and slime molds remain mysterious. At least I’m glad to move observations from unknown into even these broad categories.
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I agree. About two years into using iNaturalist, I finally felt confident enough to begin to ID. Though I have an ancient biology degree, I am not trained in taxonomy or in where to find the resources needed to ID to species for organisms. I largely taught myself plants by looking at my own observations and consulting CalFlora, and with the help of some locals who would kindly explain why my IDs were incorrect and point me at other resources, for which I remain immensely grateful! I don’t think motivation is the problem for recruiting new IDers, IMO it’s the intimidation factor of the sometimes terse (which can feel combative/aggressive to new IDers) responses of those who review the suggested IDst first, eg: “why do you think this?” or or “Did you key out this flower first, it is obviously NOT what you suggested!” or “All I see is a blurry photo!” and the problem of finding good resources for IDing. IDing is a layered skill: you first need to get a sense of what you’re looking at, and how to differentiate it on a broad scale, and then when you feel more confident at that base level, it’s then finding resources like CalHerps and CalFlora, learning to use those, and then teaching oneself the names of the anatomy, etc. I think people who are “experts” forget how much learning goes into beginning to even “see” what you are looking at, and then learning the vocabulary of that specialty. It’s an investment, and one thing about iNat that I’ve experienced is that it can feel like jumping into the deep end with the big kids and not even knowing how to swim.
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Yeah, I id unknown observations, I found some of them about people showing their house plants, and pets,
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I’m not experienced enough to really identify things, but I often look through the “unknown” filter and help by assigning the basic identification (plants, mammals, fungi, buterflies etc.) I always wonder why some observations in fact are identified, but they stay in the “unknown” part. I mean bacteria for example. Shouldn’t that be changed?
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It’s just a quirk that they are not assigned to what is called an iconic taxon. Largely due to their exact place in the tree of life being unresolved.
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Their place is the tree of life is well resolved scientifically, and iNat doesn’t really follow that taxonomy at that high of a level anyway haha. It’s just that new iconic taxa haven’t been created yet for various reasons.
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You can use the identified=false argument in the URL to remove these when you are identifying unknowns and it will remove bacteria and viruses. Here’s the link I use.
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I think it would be useful if after an observation has been up for four or five years, a field would show up in “Identify” mode that asked some version of “Does this observation lack features needed for identification?” or “I think this observation will never be identified.” If two people agree on that, the observation leaves “Needs ID” and enters some other category, perhaps “Limbo” rather than “Casual.”
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Thing is there’re tons of things not checked for 2-5+ years and still identifiable.
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True, but they were just suggesting highlighting the “can this be improved” feature after a certain number of years. Which is fair, because I didn’t realize it was there at all fo rway too long
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I’m not against it! But it’s easy to just filter old ones first. I added it to highlight that old doesn’t equal bad.
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I beg to differ - no one is too inexperienced to identify things. Find a taxon that you are familiar with, in a region that you know, and start from there. When I first started, I found all Worldwide moths was too overwhelming. I switched to Canadian (mainly Eastern) Noctuidae, and have never looked back. Really, it is one step at a time - identify Black capped chickadees (for example), then start to branch out into other species. My spouse used to identify bacteria, but won’t do it now - the process is too complex (and smelly, aparently). I had a bit of moth taxonomy in my ancient closet, but what I have learned is very recent.
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this is making me go through the common plants in my garden and search for them in “needs ID”…I’m not a huge plant person but I can ID turk’s cap and frostweed and purple prairie clover since, you know, I’m growing tons of it. So much cultivated turk’s cap in Texas…
I can do goldenrod to genus but man, species, not happening anytime soon there’s just too many
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If the community taxon is subfamily or lower, the observation will turn RG if the box is checked. I don’t hesitate to use this on my own observations, especially for Hymenoptera. (This reminds me that I need to net a sand wasp to ID my yard population.)
If the “Can this be improved?” box were next to “Captive/Cultivate” on the identify portal, I would use it even more. Worth making a feature request?
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Right, for example just things stuck at Kingdom Plantae, ~1/2 million going back to ~6 years:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&order=asc&lrank=kingdom&taxon_id=47126
In many cases they got a broad Plantae id but just fell into the background as time passed.
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I appreciate what you do for molluscs :)
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When IDing Unknowns - for someone new to iNat, I try very hard to ID for them. New people need a response (nobody saw it, nobody responded, I am never coming back to iNat ;~((
It can be hard if the photos are blurry and don’t show enough info … but at least one obs I can try and add an ID for them.
And triage.
I know those.
Rough ID for those.
@edanko ‘what is that tiny insect on the dragonfly’s wing?’ done. Those discussions help everyone in the conversation to learn a little more for the next batch.
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Yes! Many old records are entirely identifiable if the right person sees it. I included a time before which observations should not be marked “unidentifiable,” not a requirement that they be marked that way after that time.
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I have the place “Greater Antilles” set to Ascending order, meaning that it shows me the oldest unreviewed observations first. I have gotten down to 1376 pages, and yet the observations are marked as 1y ago.
That would be an excellent use case for selecting “No” on “can the community ID be improved.”
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