I am running an acoustic monitoring project for Brood XIII cicadas in NE IL. An iNat project is part of this monitoring project, Magicicada Soundmap Project Brood XIII. Monitors have been trained to walk a route, record audio at set listening points, and if periodical cicadas are singing to identify to species.( If not, identify whatever general taxon is heard, e.g. Birds, or Animals if mammal also, etc.) If both local periodical cicadas species are on the recording – which they almost always are wherever cicadas are present – then monitors have been instructed to identify only to genus, Magicicada, since multiple Magicicada are on the recording. Many iNat users who aren’t in this project are going to the IDs and suggesting the species that is more recognizable to them on the recording, because they don’t recognize the other species on the recording. Does iNat have (or should iNat publish) standards for identifying audio? I have stated the standards on the project descriptions itself (Magicicada Soundmap Project Brood XIII), which is curated, but I obviously can’t communicate with all the iNat users who want to be helpful and then use a different standards than what I am using. Is there a feature of curated projects that I could be using to help guide people who are identifying the audio to follow some sort of standard?
Even if multiple organisms of the same genus are present, the observer can pick one that is present to take to species and then can duplicate the observation to id the other cicadas present to species.
Also, Observer intentions matter most to us when identifying. So a note or comment on the observation by the observer asking identifiers to stick to cicadas would influence us. Not everyone will see it or heed it, and many will.
can duplicate the observation to id the other cicadas present to species.
It is also often useful to add links to one observation in the comments of the other observation. This can significantly lower confusion on the identifiers side.
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