Is there a preferred way of identifying when when the observer chose “plant” as the ID but the plant has a yellow rust fungus on it and the observer has either left iNaturalist or is unresponsive. Is this an exception to the general rule that we honor the observer’s choice of the subject of the observation? I’m never sure what to do with these.
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if the observer added a plant ID, then ID the plant that the rust is growing on or leave the observation alone.
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I think it depends on the context of the observation. Sometimes people chose the wrong kingdom because they don’t know what they are looking at, and just assume that because it was growing on a plant, it must be part of the plant. If you’re uncertain, check to see if the observer already has a duplicate observation for the fungus.
Unfortunately if you add an ID of Rust Fungus, the Community ID will change to Life, and it’s unlikely that anyone will ever ID it after that. You could tag a few other IDers that are active in IDing Rust Fungus, if you think that the original observer was intending to get an ID of the fungus and just had no idea what it was.
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The usual way I see this play out, I don’t change my ID of the plant and in a very short time enough people ID the fungi to make it research grade, so getting stuck at “Life” doesn’t seem to be a problem.
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Not a problem ? Random example from that link I was IDing the spider not the plant Needs 2 more to achieve RG
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I see the topic was “unsolved”, so I’ll chime in - it’s pretty solidified identification etiquette to honor the observer’s intention:
I have hundreds of plant observations that also have rust depicted. If I left iNat for a while and came back to observations having been reidentified as a different kingdom I’d personally be pretty annoyed.
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It’s fairly likely that the observer didn’t even notice the rust. In the case of active observers they might like to know about it since they’re curious and want to duplicate the observation for the rust, so it’s worth commenting that the rust is there while still IDing the plant.
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If the observer left no other clue than an ID of “Plants”, ID the plant (and maybe leave a comment asking if they’d mind duplicating it for the rust)
I’ll only re-ID them when something in the description contradicts their ID (example: Plant with rust, Description reading “Weird orange stuff!” and ID is a CV-suggested plant). Often people select the first ID suggestion without understanding how the system works. (I only do this with inactive accounts - If the user is active, I’ll just leave a comment asking for clarification.)
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This question reminds me of the classic “Ignore the elephant seal”.
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Just to clarify, there are a lot of observations that look something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puccinia_monoica#:\~:text=The%20P.,entire%20life%20cycle%20on%20Arabis . The plant is usually in the mustard family, but the rust distorts the plant. The observer may think that this is a yellow plant, so the observer identifies it as “plant,” not even realizing there is another species in the photo.
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Tangentially related, is there any way to get CV to ID a plant when it is covered in a rust or mildew? I’ve tried getting IDs for plants before and had nothing come up but a bunch of those, with zero indication of what plant it might be.
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Yes, sometimes you can force it to suggest plant IDs if you give it a high level plant ID first (like “Tracheophyta”)
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