Some ID Statistics

[gmzelle]

@aaravmishra

Those are decent pictures??? I am surprised if they are. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/333450106 is decent; generally ants are too small to get details and they run a lot so it is a tricky one.

Precisely my point. If you look at ant observations that are waiting for ID, very few of them have the level of detail you call decent. If that’s the level required for species ID, then most observations will never reach RG. And that’s nobody’s fault, it’s simply a limitation of how iNaturalist works.

[cthawley]

@aaravmishra

I literally checked everything with google, where did this screw up???

Can you clairfy what this means?

[aaravmishra]

i got all %ages by copying the numbers on too google from iNat so that i do not waste time doing calculations and can focus on the main explanations.

[aaravmishra]

Wow.

@paul_dennehy

Chordates Phylum Chordata 90.9%
Echinoderms Phylum Echinodermata 77.1%
Brachiopods Phylum Brachiopoda 66.7%
Mollusks Phylum Mollusca 61.8%
Arthropods Phylum Arthropoda 54.7%
Priapulid Worms Phylum Priapulida 54.3%
Cnidarians Phylum Cnidaria 54%
Horseshoe Worms Phylum Phoronida 50.6%
Cycliophorans Phylum Cycliophora 50%
Comb Jellies Phylum Ctenophora 48.1%
Ribbon Worms Phylum Nemertea 45.5%
Velvet Worms Phylum Onychophora 45.2%
Sponges Phylum Porifera 43.8%
Nematodes Phylum Nematoda 37.6%
Flatworms Phylum Platyhelminthes 37.1%
Bryozoans Phylum Bryozoa 36.7%
Xenoturbellids and Allies Phylum Xenacoelomorpha 27.3%
Thorny-headed Worms Phylum Acanthocephala 19.5%
Segmented Worms Phylum Annelida 17.6%
Entoprocts Phylum Entoprocta 10.7%
Rotifers Phylum Rotifera 9.9%
Hemichordates Phylum Hemichordata 9.2%
Arrow Worms Phylum Chaetognatha 6.2%
Gastrotrichs Phylum Gastrotricha 4.7%
Mud Dragons Phylum Kinorhyncha 3.4%
Tardigrades Phylum Tardigrada 2.9%
Horsehair Worms Phylum Nematomorpha 0.8%
Dicyemids Phylum Dicyemida 0%
Jaw Worms Phylum Gnathostomulida 0%
Placozoans Phylum Placozoa 0%

WOW. Never heard of many of these.

@paul_dennehy

Why is this post about insects rather than Nematodes or Copepods?

Because observers are not interested in buying microscopes for citizen science lol. I also don’t have a microscope…

iNat does not want more identifiers. just more observers.

Somewhere the difference is in what is practically “observable”.

@paul_dennehy

If you say “stop posting these birds and post more bugs!” you’ll soon hear “stop posting these huge bugs and focus in on the springtails!” “Why is everyone posting springtails and ignoring the Gastrotrichs?” “Why all the love for Gastrotrichs and still ZERO Lorciferan observations?!?” “Why all these big 20+ micron metazoans when we should be focusing on the much more numerous Prokaryotes??” The answer is the same all the way down- because the smaller you get, the harder it is to see identifying features and actually identify things. Not everyone can afford an SEM, a regular light microscope, or even a phone with a decent camera. But we still want everyone out there connecting with nature in whatever way they can.

I have not even heard of metazoans lol. It is not about size. Pls. also add how much % of all animal observations they for and how much of all animals do they actually form as per estimates.

[dendroleon]

@aaravmishra

I have not even heard of metazoans

you study metazoans.

[paul_dennehy]

@aaravmishra

It is not about size. Pls.

If it’s not about size, why are 80% of all individual animals nematodes yet only 0.01% of animal observations on iNat are Nematodes? I am genuinely curious what other than their tiny size could possibly explain this.

@aaravmishra

Somewhere the difference is in what is practically “observable”.

And why are many of these taxa not practically observable? Size.

The point is that many insects are not practically observable in an identifiable way. Plenty are. But loads of insects require microscopy to identify, so you run into the same issue that makes 100% of rotifers/gastrotrichs unidentifiable to the average iNatter:

@aaravmishra

observers are not interested in buying microscopes for citizen science

And while plenty of insects are identifiable from a good macro photo, many are not. And the percent of them that are not is higher than the corresponding percent for vertebrates, bivalves, etc. Which is why all the responses here keep saying the same thing: “Insects” as a group are inherently less identifiable than other popular taxa, and will always have a lower percent identified to species than vertebrates, no matter how many identifiers look at them. In terms of species richness, insects may be

@aaravmishra

a group that contains atleast 49% of all (round it to 50, so half of all) life

But that species richness does not correspond to anywhere near 50% of biomass. If you just go out “into nature”, about 85% of the life you encounter by mass is plant life, with another 13% being microbes, about 1% fungi, and about 1% everything else (including insects). As I mentioned before, if you go by individual organisms, Nematodes win out by a lot. I don’t think it’s fair to compare the percent of species of insects with the percent of observations of individual insects and expect them to be similar. “Plant” as a material is much more abundant than “Insect” as a material, and “Worms” as individuals are much more common than “Insects” as individuals. Beetles and Plants may have roughly the same number of species, but plants are generally bigger, easier to observe, easier to identify, and simpler to photograph. Plus they are more conspicuous and occupy a lot more space in Nature than beetles do.

So again I ask, what is the “action item” that is the intended take-home from all these numbers?

[paul_dennehy]

You are a metazoan :O

[cthawley]

If your underlying statistics aren’t correct because you asked Google to calculate them from iNat for you (which is a good way to get incorrect outputs), your main explanations won’t be worth their salt. Conclusions are only as good as the process that leads to them.

[tiwane]

@aaravmishra

iNat does not want more identifiers. just more observers.

This is false. Please don’t make blanket assertions you can’t support.

• iNat’s made a bunch of resources available in the last half year or so and run an ID-a-thon in that time
• I’ve done three webinars for beginner identifiers, with more planned
• if you read our product goals for the first half of 2026, a major one is literally “Build the community of active identifiers” with an explanation of planned functionality
• whatever your thoughts are about the ID Summaries functionality and provenance, the goal was to help people learn to identify better and grow the community of identifiers

[tiwane]

(I’ve changed the title of this topic, as sthe original could be read as saying iNaturalist is “hiding” stats, which I don’t think is accurate)

[papernautilus]

@aaravmishra

i got all %ages by copying the numbers on too google from iNat so that i do not waste time doing calculations and can focus on the main explanations.

Calculating is not a waste of time. If you’re seriously planning to be a biologist, you’ll need to know how to at least do some basic arithmetic. Fortunately, you have a handy little calculator right there on your computer and don’t have to rely on math tables and slide rules as we did in the olden days.

[DianaStuder]

@tiwane

if you read our product goals for the first half of 2026, a major one is literally “Build the community of active identifiers” with an explanation of planned functionality

Thank you - that is the link I looked for.

It is so rewarding to track down the right identifier for difficult obs. And we are almost at the 60 obs we need for the ‘next’ CV update.

[AdamWargon]

I’ve enjoyed Paul’s explanation about

@paul_dennehy

here are the % RG observations for all the animal phyla represented on iNat by more than a single observation

Paul said

@paul_dennehy

roughly 4 out of every 5 animals on earth is a Nematode. If you want to see an under-observed group of animals, that’s where the focus should be

It reminded me of

@AdamWargon

this quote by Nathan Cobb:

“If all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable. We would find its mountains, rivers, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their nematode parasites.”

[AdamWargon]

@paul_dennehy

Not everyone can afford an SEM

And not everyone has access to free DNA barcoding!

[afdexter]

Straw man arguments in any case.

[aaravmishra]

lol. Never searched that down.

[grampianshiker]

@aaravmishra

Guides. We need a project to make as many guides on various taxa as possible.

But again, we need people to use them. If you think there’s a problem, what are you practically doing to try to increase identifiers? Coming to the forum to complain about the lack is unlikely to achieve much because we’re all well aware already of the need for more identifiers - and I suspect most forum users identify to a greater or lesser extent already anyway.

[aaravmishra]

No. I copy pasted the numbers and pasted them onto google. Not AI. calculations. Data was copy pasted by me.

[aaravmishra]

@tiwane

I’ve changed the title of this topic, as sthe original could be read as saying iNaturalist is “hiding” stats, which I don’t think is accurate

Thanks.

@tiwane

This is false. Please don’t make blanket assertions you can’t support.

So much to ask here. ID-a-thon reduced unknowns by 34%. Then why don’t you all add a new project to finish unknowns? It is really needed. When we finish unknowns, we will jump onto other groups. Atleast make it manageable.

Secondly, if you want people to add ids, they need to learn. The best way is to encourage people who are “taxon specialists” to make guides, themselves or with the help others. For example there is a guide here (https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/23235) which I and @ninokarai have been working on. Right now we are adding Australian ones but soon we will get the New Guinean ones etc.

We need guides. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, has enough time to start learning a taxon and look through so many papers and data. It is upto iNat’s naturalist monomaniacs to handle this, those who are literally obsessed identifiers working on groups (I think I am one too lol). Large scale identifiers. there are so many beetle identifiers, ant identifiers etc. and if they simplify data into guides, people can just search though them and make accurate ids by using experts’ knowledge. If guides “as is” status was removed.

For the photo tips, try to popularise “DLF” - Dorsal, Lateral & Face angles for imaging insects. For any arthropod this is the most basic thing that can help.

@tiwane

whatever your thoughts are about the ID Summaries functionality and provenance

Again, AI. Sometime back (I am not able to find that post), iNat said that it wanted to let CVM know diagnostic features. Identifiers opposed. Yet they complain the CVM is wasting their time. lol.

I did not ever comment on that topic or tae side but still I oppose the notes since 1) we cannot cover a large amount of species like this and 2) it is not made by identifiers, it is made by AI.

Somewhere guides can be a win over both problems is sufficiently optimised, if bugs are removed, and guides are used responsibly.

[aaravmishra]

You do not get it. Some numbers were over 100,000 etc. which is really really tricky and I will take more time making stats than I would be able to identify which is also priority of its own.