I’m fairly new to iNat and don’t have much formal experience in ID’ing. I’ve posted a lot of things and this may just be some minor newbie anxiety talking, but I am sort of worried about posting “too many” different observations without really being able to contribute much to actual identification.
Do people in the community tend to get frustrated when there are too many unidentified observations dumped into the app? I mostly post mushrooms and lichens, which from my understanding can be pretty notoriously difficult to correctly identify at a species-specific level.
I’m finding a lot of joy feeling like I can participate in something like this without so much academic gatekeeping, and I know that more often than not a lot more goes into ID’ing something than just examining it at face value (especially fungi), so I’m not going to be upset if a lot of them just end up with a general category, but at the very least I have enjoyed partaking in noting my visual observations.
I can’t speak for everyone but I think you should put up as many observations as you can.
Just make sure you place it in some taxonomic bucket. Fungi, flowering plant, whatever you’re comfortable with.
It is a good idea, as you get more into iNat, if you learn what features of an organism helps with ID, like photographing the underside of mushrooms to see if has gills or pores, generally more angles and closer up is better, but I don’t think anyone gets upset. We’re all on a journey.
It depends a bit by what you mean by “unidentified observations” - if you mean with no ID at all (ie left as “Unknown”) that can be a bit annoying, although understandable if the observer is new to iNat. But if you add a basic ID, such as “Fungi”, “Birds”, “Insects”, “Flowering plants” or the like, then that is not annoying at all and other people will hopefully refine the ID as far as it is possible from your photos.
Probably most of us start with uploading observations that we don’t know the ID of. Over time we learn more and more as other people identify our stuff for us, and then we can ID stuff for other people as well.
Welcome to the forums, and thank you for asking questions.
There are a lot less identifiers than there are observers although accounts allow people to do both. There is a large supply of observations to identify, and people who identify others’ observations are usually doing it without compensation and have other things in their life that they have to do. Some burn out and stop identifying at consistent rates, and some get busy with other things that prevent them from identifying. There are enough identifiers to cover all vertebrate animals and some of every other organism, but there’s not enough of them for everything. Some observations left as unknown (no preliminary identification provided by the observer) annoy the heck out of identifiers especially if they can easily be identified, such as a clear photo of an adult male Turdus migratorius that looks nothing like any other birds.
If you’d like to help identifying to keep up with the ever-increasing backlog, grabbing an identification guide off of the Internet or a library and learning to identify organisms in your area is a good place to start. There is no obligation to identify your or others’ observations, but it is a good thing to do.
Another thing you can do to help identifiers is trying to make good observations. For instance you mentioned focusing on fungi, here’s a guide on making good fungus observations:
Other things you can do is familiarize yourself with how the website works, be responsive to comments, make sure date and location are marked correctly, familiarize yourself with what counts as captive/cultivated and make sure to label your observations appropriately, and I would second the above mentions that even if you have no clue what species of fungus a mushroom is, setting the initial ID to “fungus” is way better than leaving it blank. But ultimately iNaturalist is for everyone
Welcome! I started out just uploading things myself, and then got into identifying other folks observations. You may start to learn things as you go along. And, we all have to start somewhere.
As someone who identifies other folks’ observations, it’s really helpful if you can at least put a “coarse” identification on the object, even if it’s as broad as “Fungi”. I am often going through “unknown” observations and marking them with coarse IDs because the uploader didn’t put anything at all.
I have literally remembered things I memorized in science class (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species! keep them all in order and [something] is very easy!) and now when I’m identifying - either my own, or other folks’ observations - I can do a bit better than Kingdom! Although it gets tricky with some things that might be fungi but aren’t, but that’s what community is for. You may begin to learn that certain things are boletes, or another type of mushroom, and be able to improve your coarse IDs. But yeah, mushrooms can absolutely be hard to ID at species-level.
Welcome to Fungi! I just took a quick look at your obs and they look good. Just add the suggestions on multiple views and you are well on your way. My approach is if I look at a feature I photograph it.
Okay, thank you! I had a lot of them unlabeled even by kingdom because for whatever reason I had thought if I selected a broader category then it might not eventually be put in a more specific one, so I definitely did the kind of annoying thing for a bit, but I’m going through all my finds and at least adding them to “fungi including lichens” !
For some you will have to dig them up. Amanita and Phaeocollybia come to mind. It is ok to dig them up, take your photos and place them back. That way others can still enjoy them and the mushroom will continue to produce spores.
Yeah, I am planning on picking up another book at some point–the one I got initially seemed really good because it divided everything pretty specifically by order but I’m finding that since it’s not a specific geographic region it actually doesn’t have a lot of the things that I’m trying to ID. I’d love to eventually get better at IDing myself.
Thanks–I struggle with feeling like it’s okay to pull them from the ground, but I keep reminding myself that fungi don’t operate on the same logic as plants where it will somehow damage the system if you pull one. I just like to leave things in tact when possible!
Yeah, I heard the same thing! I tried using selfie mode on my phone’s camera (not the best I know) but I’m def looking into getting a little mirror that I can carry around.
Pulling them is fine! Gently dig at the base, check out what it’s growing in or on. Touching and smelling are great too. Putting things like texture, scent, taste in comments helps! Noting the environment, what trees are around. Fungi can be difficult to ID so all the info you can gather helps.
Absolutely nothing wrong with the “ Fungi including lichen” grab bag! Rather familiar with that one myself.
Just a reminder that there are also annotations. So juvenile, larvae, dead, construction, egg, green leaves, flowers are all possible annotations that can make it easier to search for something or exclude things.
You don’t have to be an expert for filling in some of those. I am an absolute beginner at spiders but have been trying to play with ID keys recently. I’m avoiding all the head bits with big anatomical names at the moment until I am more familiar with what are the useful points about legs and abdomens. But at least if I see spiderlings on a wolf spider I can call that one a female.
