Should i still make observations that will be genus/family level? There are some species that i know for a fact will never get RG’d, like this damselfly nymph for example, there is a lot of examples out there. Is there still point in making these observations?Are Non RG’d but verifiable observations useful?
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Absolutely they are useful. Observations that won’t make RG are valuable for screening (what’s there now) and historical (what was there) data sets. The world is changing due to climate change, habitat loss, and land management practices among other reasons. Observations of wild and natural organisms are an important part of understanding how our world is changing.
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It shouldn’t matter - genus also can get RG if someone ticks the checkbox. And if inat ever implements a list of genuses where species level is impossible with just (non-microscope) pictures all those genus level observations could just go to RG automatically.
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And also, scientific value aside, other users in your area may see the observation and be excited to learn that the creature they are seeing in the water is a damselfly nymph, or be inspired to go look for damselfly nymphs.
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I think so!
Plus, sometimes people have inat notify them if a genus is observed so that they can ID it, so IDing it to the best of your knowledge rather than trying to get it to species level will likely help people find your obs better.
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Yeah, for sure! Biodiversity isn’t always measured at the “number-of-species” level anyway. For measuring diversity of taxa where species-level IDs are exceptionally difficult, some researchers will measure diversity in terms of number of genera, or even number of families, that are present in an area. So just because an observation will never get to species doesn’t mean it’s not useful.
I’ve personally been posting a lot of microbes lately, and if I can get them ID’d even to the genus level, I’m ecstatic. They’re still providing data about what sorts of organisms are present, even if I’m not going to DNA-test them to try to figure out what species they all are.
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It would be nice if iNaturalist had a category for things like this, in between casual and research grade. I feel that casual should be reserved for things that don’t fit the scope of iNaturalist (captive organisms, observations with multiple photos of different organisms, observations lacking a date/location), while observations like this could be marked “as good as can be” and go into a third category.
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There has been a LOT of discussion of this, and many are in agreement with you.
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Also, just because something isn’t IDable past family or genus based on our current knowledge doesn’t mean it might not be IDable in the future. For many lesser studied groups, there are likely more specific taxa that are IDable from pics except that they haven’t been described yet. So I would say - observe away!
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And that someone can even be the observer themselves.
This would be a mistake, since the automated system wouldn’t know if images were taken with a microscope or a sufficiently powerful macro lens. A combination of a skilled photographer with a good lens and an expert identifier can get things to species that are traditionally considered microscopic. As someone who specializes in hymenoptera (as both observer and identifier) I see situations like this somewhat regularly. Some insect identifiers have gotten very good at knowing what small features to look for to ID species in images, and some observers have very good lenses. Here is an example of an ant that I photographed with a supermacro lens which is RG at species level, the hairs on the antenna being the identifying characteristic https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/183751329
There is also the issue of species like Camponotus chromiodes that require a microscope in some cases and can be IDed with blurry photos in others (depending on color morph), or Monomorium minimum which requires near professional quality macro photography in some places, but can be IDed with iPhone pics in places where it’s lookalikes don’t live.
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genus also can get RG if someone ticks the checkbox.
Wait really? I never knew of that much, where can i see it?
Absolutely! All observations are useful, even if they can’t be identified to species.
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Im on the website and i cant see it unfortunately
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Scroll right down - it is there. In that grey box, below all the other Data Quality Assessment options.
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Absolutely- I use posts like these to plan fieldwork sites. I will literally go to the most interesting genus level observations to sample and sequence (fungi). It makes my work planning field work substantially easier if someone has already said, here’s something I can’t ID! and it’s relevant to our work.
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Ah i found it, i saw that i closed it by default :) Thanks.
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but one thing i want to mention, sometimes the observation becomes casual grade when i click on the checkbox…
If an observation is at genus level when someone clicks on “as good as it can be” it will be Research Grade, but if it is at a broader level of ID it will become Casual.
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just to clarify further, any rank finer than family can become research grade, not just genus
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