I was about to flag this taxon, but decided that maybe the forum was a better place to start. Mecidea prolixa is native to Africa, apparently not even widespread in Africa but endemic to the few southernmost countries, yet more than half of iNat’s observations are from North America. I can find no …

Many thanks for that article Brad! Definitely useful. I think I’m convinced enough to start spamming corrections, though might not really have time until tomorrow…

When you come up with a good explanation to “spam,” I’ll borrow it to help with New Mexico

Just tackled the handful from Texas. Used this Copy-paste message highlighting the bugguide advanced search with that genus from the state of Texas: Probably should rest at genus: https://www.bugguide.net/adv_search/bgsearch.php?user=&taxon=34981&description=&location[]=TX&county=&city_location=&a…

Finished with the United States mis-ID’s… I think one of the challenges in this case is that it’s pretty difficult to get to a species ID with this genus in general, so Mecidea prolixa is the only ‘option’ for a species suggestion, so folks are a bit hasty. I’m sure this exists in a lot of cases w…

As for this species particularly, the answer is simple. There is no reliable evidence that of Mecidea prolixa is present in the New World. There is no reason to consider any such identification reliable. But what about the broader situation? iNaturalist has a huge number of obviously erroneous iden…

We have this project from @traianbertau https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/not-in-sa-insect-cv-clean-up I use that to ‘clean up’ with a simple copypasta Your sp is ‘not in South Africa’ https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/not-in-sa-insect-cv-clean-up That puts the info out there for future…

I think it should be possible to program the CV so it is FORBIDDEN to suggest species for certain genera, tribes, complexes. We could still write in a species ID if we want to, but the CV wouldn’t even offer the option. (Process for forbidding should involve a flag and discussion.)

Another option is addressing this problem as eBird does. If you try to report a bird on eBird at a highly unlikely place or time or in a remarkably large number, eBird flags the report as unusual and asks the reporter to confirm that they are familiar with the species in question and are certain tha…

Anyway, it looks like this specific problem (see what I did there :grin: ) is fixed for now! I guess, while I was sleeping, Sam and Brad bumped the (100+?) US records of M. prolixa up to genus. All that was left for me to do this morning was the same for the 30-ish records from Mexico and the Caribb…

A similar thread I started about Sinea identification: North American Sinea ID and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice problem .

Potential massive error-cloud of Mecidea prolixa

General

aaravmishra October 4, 2026, 10:59am 34

I have also seen such cases with other species btw

Suspected wrong IDs on a large scale -- fair to push back?

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Potential massive error-cloud of *Mecidea prolixa*

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Potential massive error-cloud of Mecidea prolixa