So I identify a bunch of Pacific Island land snails, and there is one case which is especially interesting, the species Auriculella diaphana.
This species is now restricted to only one site in Oahu and I ended up identifying any Auriculella species observed in this site as A. diaphana. Other people agreed with my IDs and we ended up with a huge stack of A. diaphana RG observations.
Then, it was brought to my attention that there are other Auriculella spp. present in this site, and we started switching our IDs to Auriculella perpusilla for snails which fit that description. (Members of the A. perpusilla āspecies groupā are more squat and are smaller. Their whorls are smaller and they have fewer whorls. Note that this āspecies groupā is not monophyletic and no longer accepted.) As such, about 90% of the Auriculella perpusilla observations on iNaturalist will have old withdrawn A. diaphana IDs that were removed. You can go to this link https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=true&taxon_id=94937 and click a random observation and chances are you will see one or two A. diaphana IDs that were switched to A. perpusilla.
There are now only 24 remaining A. diaphana observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=true&taxon_id=214649
Some of these I am 100% certain are the real A. diaphana but Iām not completely sure for some of the others. In fact I am not sure if the current taxon image for A. diaphana is correct. (I might change it after posting this.)
I do think this is the cleanest the divide will get, there might be some mis-IDs still but most of the Auriculella should now be identified correctly.
I have some concern that there may be misidentified specimens of Auriculella perversa that have now been lumped into Auriculella perpusilla, however, and I am not sure how to fix that.
Iām interested in looking for other cases where a pile of incorrect IDs was fixed, because I know that it can become almost impossible to fix when the pile gets large enough and other people start using the pile to āconfirmā their IDs, adding new obs. to the pile, and this forms a feedback loop adding more and more obs. to the pile.
Luckily for me, this case was with rare snails in Hawaii, so the amount of observations is small enough we could fix the problem before it got too large.
Edit: Iāve changed the first 2 Auriculella diaphana taxon images so now the taxon images are confirmed real A. diaphana.
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but staying with snails? Or other taxa as well?
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Including other taxa as well, just any instance of this situation.
Basically, the situation I am interested in unfolds as follows:
- Someone makes an incorrect ID, and others think that ID is correct and use it to make their own IDs.
- A large number of observations get incorrect IDs.
- Someone (not necessarily the same person as the incorrect IDer) realizes the ID is wrong, and starts correcting their own IDs
- Other people also start correcting their IDs until the observations with incorrect IDs are all (or mostly) moved to the correct ID.
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Best I can suggest is to insert your username into the two blank spots then filter by the species youāre looking for, this shows your identifications in a more user friendly way
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations?ident_user_id=__¬_user_id=__&verifiable=any
Okay. Anaxeton. I live in āthe Fish Hoek gapā which only seems to affect this pair (that I have seen). Prompted by @botaneek ās comments, I helped to tease them apart.
For this pair a brief and useful comment works.
North https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/579808-Anaxeton-arborescens
and South https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/532775-Anaxeton-laeve (with an āescapeeā in the Himalayas ;~)
now it is easy to move any future mistakes to the right side.
PS and a note to self to pick over recent obs at Genus - done.
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Sometimes the efforts fail. Early in my time on iNaturalist, I examined over 6,000 observations labeled as Phleum pratense (the grass Timothy), many of them misidentified as diverse species ( https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/sedgequeen/55127-timothy-more-of-a-mystery-than-you-might-think ). The CV couldnāt possibly give reliably correct IDās because there were so many observations of similar species misidentified as Phleum pratense. I felt the CV improved a bit after my efforts. Now, there are over 34,000 observations labeled as Phleum pratense. A quick look through suggests that identifications are as bad as ever. Sigh. I donāt think this one can be put right. Oh, I think that theoretically the CV could learn to distinguish the grass genera Phleum, Alopecurus, and Phalaris (and the dicot Plantago lanceolata) if it had a set of reliably identified observations to work from, but it doesnāt. And I donāt care to tackle this hopeless task again.
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They can definitely fail sadly, if the taxon has too many obs. and mistaken āidentifiersā. You need to nip it in the bud just as itās starting or it will become a permanent mark on iNatās database.
I donāt want to discourage people ā some species have been fixed. Sounds like the snails are almost fixed.
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My pet project is Apantesis vittata, a tiger moth in the United States. Itās nearly impossible to distinguish from others in its genus without specific views, but DNA work and specimen dissection have suggested that its range extends no farther north than the Carolinas. About 10 years ago, BugGuide, Moth Photographers Group, and BAMONA all had loads of incorrect records of the species all the way north to Canada, and iNat followed suit. (BAMONA still has a lot of clearly wrong records) I go through once per year and kick all the ones that are clearly out-of-range back to genus or to a different species if enough is showing to make an ID. Already weāre back up to 177 observation north of their known range for this year, and even the ones that are within the known range are probably not identifiable to species based on whatās showing in the images. Iāve probably ādisagreedā with over a thousand A. vittata IDs over the years, and they just keep coming back. The problem is that the piles of misidentifications made their way to other resources, so now when I say āyouāre 500 miles out of range for this speciesā, you can check other online resources and find contradictory information: Wikipedia took its range data from BugGuide when it was wrong and hasnāt been updated, BAMONA still has incorrect records really far north, iNat has āresearch gradeā observations that are clearly wrong- so itās hard to convince people that all these sources are wrong and just repeating the same misinformation in a loop.
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Wow that sounds sad, good thing there is someone to fix all of it :)
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They are almost fixed, I donāt think I have any issues with the current status so I wonāt be changing my IDs anymore hopefully. My only concern is if some of the observations that were moved to Auriculella perpusilla are actually Auriculella perversa, and I will need to do a little more research to figure that situation out (I canāt distinguish between the two morphologically or at least itās very hard so I will have to base my IDs on distribution ranges)
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The common earthworm has 30k+ observations. The majority incorrect or not enough detail. One user has corrected probably over 10k already over the course of months. But its a never ending stream of new observations unless something with the CV changes. Even as simple as teaching it a few more species so the common earthworm isnt almost the only worm suggestion can help.
There are many other examples, but this is one i think about. Also common dandelion is a mess.
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Not yet all fixed:
Journal post : Confusing Sennas
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Update: Both Auriculella perpusilla and Auriculella perversa are now only known from one site which is the site all of the āperpusillaā observations are. Iām not sure how to fix thisā¦
They are very hard to distinguish by morphology and their current distributions are identicalā¦
https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/50669/
Itās not a complex, as the A. perpusilla group is polyphyletic. However all members of this group are very similar morphologically and so it causes problems with identification, specifically between perpusilla and perversa which occur in the same location.
This group contains four members: A. gagneorum, A. perpusilla, A. perversa and A. minuta which are all very similar. minuta is dextral coiling (the others are all sinistral) and is also extinct, perpusilla and perversa are very similar and both found only in one site now where they co-occur, and gagneorum is found in the opposite mountain range and is therefore impossible to confuse with the others. So really the only problem taxa are perpusilla and perversa.
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Itās also important to note that this group in general has extensive polyphyly, for example see this phylogenetic tree:
Notice how Achatinella fulgens is at the top while all the other Achatinella are at the bottom, and also how āPartulinaā is just an aggregate of species from a lot of different clades whose only common property is shell shape.
Likewise, Iāll contribute another common example in the northeast USA: the red spruce and Norway spruce.
Red spruce is a native species; however, it is essentially absent from coastal areas south of the town of Wells, Maine. From Ogunquit down to about New Jersey, there were dozens (to hundreds) of observations of āred sprucesā that are Norway spruces. I totally understand that if youāre in Rhode Island it would seem more reasonable to believe that youāre seeing a spruce in Maine as compared to one with a European name. Worse, itās nearly impossible to tell them apart in most photos, with tiny hairs on the twigs of red spruce, and somewhat subjective āvibesā based on growth form and needle angle from the twigs.
Hereās some examples:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26386162
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/207174327
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I wouldnāt say a lot of different clades. From perdix to semicarinata, they all trace back to be a sister clade to Achatinella dicipiens and A. lila. Unless youāre a mycologist thatās one clade. Then from redfieldi to physa are a second clade that also includes Newcombia.
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