I’ve been thinking more about the photos on the taxon pages recently. Mostly this started because I kept running into taxa that were so rare as to lack good representative photos, but as I climbed atop the leaderboards for lizards and then reptiles, this scaled up to consider those iconic taxa as well. It seems to me there are several relevant questions to ask when editing these.
are these meant to be static or dynamic?
are these meant to be the first pictures of that taxon on iNat, or more recent ones?
are these meant to represent all of the available diversity or the predominant types?
are these meant to be one’s favorite pictures or images that look good in thumbnail form?
I’ll go first (by necessity and experience, my answers are very animal biased)
I think having these as dynamic pages is okay to an extent. That is, when species are first observed, there may only be a handful of pictures to choose from. So as I identify additional representatives, I periodically circle back and add newer photos. Hence, I come down on the dynamic side of this question, but with some degree of stability as people can and do use that primary thumbnail as a visual reminder of the taxon.
related to #1, but periodically adding newer better pictures, these pages should improve the visual representation of that species. So while the first pictures are essential, I don’t think they are the end point for those pages.
I strongly feel that these pages should span the visual diversity of the taxon, especially at higher taxonomic levels. So, if a species has distinct visual morphs, growth forms or ecotypes, it can be useful to illustrate those. If there is sexual dimorphism in an animal species, it can be useful to illustrate that. So my rule of thumb for species pages is start with either the male or female (doesn’t matter which, but males seem to be more typical as first picture), then the other sex, then a distinct morph if it occurs, then a photo with a size-scale of some sort (usually someone holding the animal). In any of these I try to show images that capture at least some of the distinguishing traits. So, for example, a close-up of a snake or lizard head might look nice, but if it doesn’t communicate what this whole animal actually looks like, it is less valuable to me. At higher taxonomic ranks, I feel it imperative to capture the range of diversity within that taxon. So for families, I try to show each genus in that family. For Class Reptilia, I tried to capture each iconic order or sub-order so it can be easily assessed what is included in that taxon.
For me, any image’s quality is not about how it looks in the photo page, but how it looks as thumbnail on the taxon page. So an ultra-close up that shows only the snout of a lizard or snake is fairly useless as taxon photo because it fails the thumbnail test. So this means, I’m always on the lookout for photos that will not only capture the organism’s essence, but retain that essence as thumbnail.
It’s nice when the feature emphasized in the thumbnail matches what is shown for the other members of the group. For example, when trying to decide which species of plant you might have, it is a little frustrating when most thumbnails show flowers, but a couple show fruit. Then you have to go to the taxon page for those couple to see flowers to compare.
When ordering the photos, try to keep them mixed up so that people can see the range of variety, especially if there are very different life stages or morphs. I do a lot of Lepidoptera IDs and it’s really helpful when all the photos of caterpillars and other immature life stages aren’t hidden behind 3+ photos of adults. It makes sense to have a couple of adult photos in the front because they’re usually to most commonly observed stage, but there are a lot of insect species that don’t have any immature photos, so it’s really helpful to quickly be able to see that there are some when working in Identify mode
Interesting question. I find myself periodically tweaking the available images on a taxon pages, and thus I have formed some personal opinions based on my usage of those images/pages. To your questions:
Dynamic? FWIW, absolutely not! Stability in presenting optimal, identifiable examples of a species should be paramount. Certainly the best available images are likely to change over time, and those are fair game to add or trade out. The primary taxon photo, and any secondary ones available for quick examination on the taxon page should be there to aid identification and show variation. Nothing more.
First images are only appropriate for the rarest taxa. As more and better images (for ID purposes) are available, the “first image” becomes irrelevant. There is a wonderful and informative project for “First Known Photographs of Living Specimens”–a great repository for those first taxon photos.
Diversity? I think the array of photos accessible on that taxon page should include at least a representative array of expected forms (like sexual dimorphism or other pattern polymorphism), if available. The primary image should show a good view of the most common phenotype.
Favorites or good in humbnails? Nope, absolutely irrelevant–unless a really good image of the typical form of a species is one of your favorites. A small number of times, I have traded out “artsy” images of a species for another image that shows what the plant/animal really looks like commonly. One caveat is that some well-cropped, high-res images, although excellent for examination in detail, may display an animal which gets “out-of-bounds” in the thumbnails on the taxon page. I view that as a minor annoyance because I normally want to click on the photo anyway to see a full-size view.
I think the first photo should definitely look good on a thumbnail. For the rest, show the variation within the taxon, as you said. The first photo should represent the most likely variant. For sexually dimorphic species like many birds, the best-case scenario is to get both sexes in one photo, like the current one for House Sparrows.
Dynamic - if there is a better photo, which better shows the ‘lesser spotted’ field marks - yes. But first, respect an existing taxon picture which DOES show field marks.
Recent is often better as I edit out ‘dubious ID and pretty’ pictures from Flickr (not ALL Flickr photos)
Diversity, but predominant first. For plants I want to see in the first few (visible) taxon pictures - flower, leaf, wide view for habitat and scale, fruit. Not 12 pictures which are gentle variations on Been There Done That! (For Lepidoptera moth and caterpillar in the 12 ?)
Must be useful at thumbnail scale. For a plant I don’t want the taxon picture to be a Wow picture of the insect on the flower.
My decision would be influenced by whether a given taxon is frequently misidentified and on what basis. For example, Silverpuffs at seed were almost always misidentified as Blow Wives. Part of the reason was because its default photo was of its flower, just a generic yellow “dandelion” type. People were passing it over and choosing Blow Wives because they picked the one seed head picture that kinda looked like the seed head they were seeing. I changed it to the seed head so that people observing the seed head would see that image among the suggestions.
Something I’ve noticed with birds is that sometimes there will be several photos, usually of the male in classic breeding plumage, often in the same characteristic pose. I assume this happens because these photos are gorgeous and it’s hard to choose! But it’s not very helpful to people trying to figure out how to identify the species.
So, my rule of thumb is to try to add photos that add new information. Add photos that show other common plumages, or highlight other field marks, or demonstrate a typical behavior or habitat, or really anything other than just another gorgeous photo that shows the same features as the others.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that some people are not going to go to the taxon page and look at all the full-size images. (They might not know there is a taxon page.) They may only see the tiny images that appear next to the names in the drop-down. So it’s really helpful if those thumbnails convey at least some relevant information. You won’t get every field mark into such a tiny space, but you can often get something.