I have recently been working on an amateur study of Common True Katydids (Pterophylla camellifolia), specifically on what new things Inat can tell us about the distribution of its various song types within eastern North America. There are already surprises! The page linked above has maps and recordings of the song types as well as a general distribution map, and you can read this journal post for more background.
However, I’m wondering how to manage a few things that each seem like tall orders in themselves:
Categorize katydids on Inat by confirmed or possible song type. There are about five such types, and so far I’ve mostly been listing them as an addendum to my IDs or as comments. @garden_chaos had the suggestion of creating a song type field, which I thought could be helpful.
Perhaps the larger issue, especially for a blind person who can’t use the Identify Mode to speed things up, is sifting through the hordes of unknown, animal, insect, cicada, ensifera and even amphibian observations to get the katydids that end up unidentified to species. Not to mention doing all this by each state / province where they occur. Since the katydid is unusual in being “often heard but seldom known”, as @nan-cee would say, observations of it end up scattered to the four winds. This is why only looking at observations already brought to species level would severely hinder my project’s goals.
Speaking of projects, @garden_chaos also suggested creating one, and very recently @spiphany has enlightened me to some project uses here. However, I’m still trying to figure out how a project would be most useful, given that in order for people to join traditional projects they have to find them first.
So here’s a possible list of project ideas, but they all have upsides and downsides:
A simple collection project for the species. The problems listed above apply here, and obviously adding lots of other searches to it would be counterproductive. Also, it gives me no way of sorting song type data.
A traditional project, with possible use of a song type field. @garden_chaos noted that this could allow people to do some sorting for me, if I require entries in the field for observations to be added to the project, but it does introduce the possibility that people will make mistakes. Also, I think a much larger part of the observations for this katydid get IDed to species by someone other than the observer. Hence I’m thinking passive collection may yield more data…
I’d be interested in any and all thoughts others have on this situation and how I might go about managing it. Thanks in advance!
Hi Daniel, interesting idea! I can’t help you much, I’m not even in North America and have never heard or seen a katydid. But I know that anybody can add an observation field to an observation and also anybody can add an observation to a traditional project - unless the user has explicitly opted out of this. So you could make a traditional project (Common True Katydid - sound (or sound only?)) which users join or you add their observation to the project and you could also specify the observation field. I don’t know the number of observations we are talking about and if this is manageable for you alone. - Just a first thought…
A bit of context: the true katydid is one of the most commonly-heard, and arguably the most distinctive, nighttime singing insect in its range. The name comes from its call. It occurs in 36 of the 50 United States, plus Ontario and Québec in Canada. This is why, between the observations already identified to species and the unidentified ones in any number of places on Inat, the load I’m dealing with is pretty big. Fortunately, people such as @brandonwoo, @ilikebugs0413, @jhousephotos, @joedziewa, @kylealdinger, @tgrant999 and @zealouswizard have already been identifying tons of them independently of my work.
I had actually forgotten this - thanks for reminding me. Something to think about…
If you end up making a traditional project you could post the link somewhere in effort to get more members who can help reduce the workload, at least in identifying and adding observations. If there are already projects for audio then the people who manage them might be happy to promote your project in their journal?
You noted that this katydid is often identified by people other than the observer, so it may also be worth asking the top identifiers for advice. You might have already done this, but it’s worth mentioning just in case it does help.
like @susanne-kasimir I have no idea what a kaydid is, but nonetheless would be very interested to hear more about this ameteur study and how it goes!
Cool, thank you! I didn’t know that it’s the whole family of Tettigoniidae. Just trying to think if I ever heard one singing. I mainly hear cicadas by day and crickets by night…
Outside North America you might know them as bush-crickets. That said, the species I’m discussing here occurs only in North America and is always called a katydid (unless mistaken for a cicada by unsuspecting people). In fact the name “katydid” for anything in Tettigoniidae comes from the call of this species. Various katydids / bush-crickets will sing anytime in the day or night, but this katydid only sings at night.
One other benefit to a traditional project is education. It would let you post your ID guide somewhere that is pretty easily accessible. Whenever I am trying to learn to ID a new group of organisms (or in this case a new way of observing organisms) I often check for projects about it. They tend to have resources posted in the description.
Both points are good ones, thanks! I wonder if there’s a way to bulk-add observations from one search to a project? This might negate the need for both a traditional and a collection project.