What @wildskyflower said in https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/new-to-inaturalist-and-trying-to-help-with-identifications/42687/22 essentially coincides with what I see when rescuing things from the “unknown” abyss. Birds, butterflies and spiders are refined almost immediately, fungi less so (but I don’t really care about them except my orange coffeground-eater https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/142619959).
Pterygota probably isn’t even needed, I just use “insecta” - few people know that wingless insects like Zygentoma etc. even exist, so I guess insect IDers won’t restrict themselves to Pterygota either. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
There are a few tricks to make finer IDs even as a layman (which I am) and other stuff:
- In caterpillar-like things, look which segments have legs (lepidoptera: 1-3, 6-9, maybe one pair at the very end), wikipedia has explanations for these and similar configurations (e.g. sawflies). If only the back is visible, I can say “Insecta” and add a commend (asking for a ventral or lateral view) unless I can tell what it is for other reasons. There seems to be someone who cleans up after my coarse insect IDs and puts them into finer groups.
- In many cases, one can see if it is a bug or a beetle. If not, often the picture was taken with a small dark animal on a bright background and the observer didn’t know (or forgot) to manually overexpose in order to show the insect (see e.g. my https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/172003575); I tend to explain that in a comment. This can lead to coarser IDs, e.g. ladybeetle larvae and jumping spiders look the same if the picture is bad enough (blurry (i.e. no legs visible) and underexposed), those go into Arthropoda.
2a. Be careful with adult insects that look like Lepidoptera, the (in)famous Spotted Lanternfly is a counterxample (it’s a bug). There are more. - Molluscs can be refined into gastropods and bivalves, I don’t remember having encountered others in “unknown” (people probably know what a kraken looks like ;-) ). Unfortunately slugs are polyphyletic, so the absence of a shell doesn’t allow a finer ID.
- Before saying “Diptera”, I try to look for halteres unless I’m sure from other criteria.
- Fungi: I was told in another forum thread that misidentifying a slime mold as “Fungi” isn’t that harmful, because knowledgeable IDers fix that (but one should follow one’s notifications and withdraw if necessary). For “ordinary” fungi (the well-defined mushroom shaped ones) I think there is no danger. Unfortunately there is no useful common taxon of these two (that would be Amorphea which INat doesn’t have). There are “mushrooms” that are Ascomycetes, so I put in Basidiomceta only those where the underside looks like Boletales (I’ve heard no Ascomycetes look like that).
- Also in another thread, we were told that lifting weeds from “unknown” into “plantae” doesn’t really help due to the workflow of some plant IDers. So either leave them alone or make at least Brassicaceae, Lamiaceae etc.
- Always look at the CV suggestions (but don’t accept them unless you are sure yourself), maybe there are hints that what you think the picture displays is wrong (I once misidentified a member of Onograceae as Brassicaceae, in addition I had forgotten to count the stamens (it had 8, Brassicaceae have 6), CV might have avoided that).
- Again something from other forum threads: If the observation has a placeholder, leave the ID alone (maybe add a comment asking why the thing wasn’t IDd as a butterfly if the placeholder says so).
- INat is a bit behind concerning recently introduced clades. If we hat Endopterygota, we could dump caterpillar-like things there; if we had the APG-IV system we could group plants a bit better; and if we had Toxicofera we could put snake-ish things there if they might also be slowworms. This is not going to change soon due to the high amount of work for the DB programmers that entails.
- If you encounter a group of pictures that are clearly different things, explain in a comment that they should be separated and add the link https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-fix-your-observation-with-photos-of-multiple-species/15096 . This usually happens when a school explodes and releases gazillions of students who weren’t told how to use INat.
- You can follow an observation (button in the top right) when interested but don’t know what it is.
And most importantly:
12. ALWAYS watch your notifications. If something has been refined, I unfollow (using the same Follow button) the thing unless interested in it for other reasons (I do this for the fungi to reduce the amount of notifications I get later).