I think there are some folks who can do multiple clades pretty far down the line – I like to fancy I’m one of them – but I tend to be very locally focused and to lean on c.v. a lot. I think to myself “oh, I bet this is…” and then see if c.v. agrees, and if it doesn’t i try to get the gist from c.v. and ID to a higher taxonomic level.
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Yes, no question about that. In part, this thread was born out of my “love bombing.” I pick one observer’s profile and go through pages of their observations, unfiltered for taxon. Even if I can only identify or verify on average two per page, after six or ten pages, that’s still a lot more identifications than I have ever received in one day. An average of two per page is fairly common when I do this. The only ones whom I cannot help are those who are either in a part of the world with which I am unfamiliar or are hyperspecialist observers who so happen to focus on a taxonomic group that I know little about.
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I absolutely love this idea, and will probably start doing some “love bombing” myself! Seems like a fun way to ID eclectically
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Yes, major concern for me as well. Maybe someday we will be able to turn off refining notifications as well. I want to be notified if I’m wrong, but not if I’m just more broad.
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…and it was much appreciated! Thank you.
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For me it’s exactly what @thomaseverest says… I can identify quite a few species of flowering plants, the species of a single genus of fly, multiple species of ladybugs and a few lichens. (Plus those species which I’d say are general knowledge: most common bird species, western honey bee, dog, cat, etc…)
I feel like I’m far more useful going through unknowns, where I can identify like 20-25 per page on average rather than sorting by “lecanoromycetes” and cherrypicking the 2 observations of the lichens I know.
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That’s a great strategy! My social anxiety or whatever has told me in the past that I should not do this so as not to seem like I’m stalking someone. Haha
But now that I know others do it too, I’ll try doing that from time to time
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I do “love bombing” sometimes too. Often it is someone who IDed something of mine or helped me out when IDing someone else’s obs. Other times I see obs from someone who has visited my area (I’m near a lot of nature preserves) and try to do IDs on their obs from other locations as well as doing all the local ones.
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I’m a generalist, but only for the Northeast Texas Pineywoods. If I go somewhere else, like Oklahoma or El Paso, I don’t what anything is. I mostly know the common plants and animals. Some things I don’t try to identify, like flies. I usually don’t bother with most mushrooms because most users don’t include enough information to get to an ID, like spore print color.
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Counting down to my midnight - The Identifier Gap - for this year’s (monster!) CNC.
Lots of little projects … are waiting for anyone to help out.
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And don’t forget there are many, many people like me.
I can identify common birds from my neighbourhood and see that an unknown is a mushroom, or recognize other common things like some True Bugs (Heteroptera), papaver or hedera. Some things that touched me when I observed them will always be remembered, like snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) or an Isopod Iridescent Virus.
IDing common birds leads to four IDs being added to my ID - I stopped IDing birds because there are too many IDs being added that I don’t feel mine has any additional value.
I sometimes ID some unknowns to mushrooms.
Sometimes I open the identify page and add common IDs to what I described above. But I do this rarely.
And that’s about as interested as I am in identifying. I don’t like it much. I like observing nature in all its diversified forms!
I have to admit that over the past few years I did get to learn some common beetles. I learned to see a hoverfly as a hoverfly. I can spot ranunculus because it is everywhere all the time. With my lack of interest, the learning does go very slow, and the retention is bad too. But it is what it is, I have different qualities in life.
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I’m very much a generalist focused on my region (and aware that I have so far to go in that area.)
What’s been interesting to notice recently is that, as a working naturalist, there have been more and more people in my life who keep asking questions essentially about when I’ll pick what to specialize and what that will end up being. I like being a generalist…
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Hahaha I get the exact same question! My go-to response is usually that, rather than specializing in taxa, I like to focus on patterns and processes – things like community assemblage, biogeography, urban adaptation, etc. I tend to see confusion and blank faces in response, even from other researchers
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(Finally signed up for the forums after lurking because my angle on this is a bit different than those posted so far!)
I grew up gardening and going on guided local wildlife hikes. I’ve always liked animals and I enjoy taking pictures of the ones I come across on bike rides. But the natural sciences have never flipped my switch for hyperfixation or special interest for some reason!
I ended up learning a bit about contemporary taxonomy debates just because I love listening to people talk about THEIR special interests. It’s a surefire way to cheer me up when I have a terrible day. I’m starting to realize that the closest thing to a lifelong special interest I have is humans and human communication actually! (I’m adult diagnosis AuDHD, so I’m still in the weeds with re-contextualizing a lot of my experiences.)
If anything, iNaturalist scratches my itch for maximizing the contributions of things I already do (taking pictures wherever I go, sharing neat looking plants and animals with my friends) and pursuing my one true love: data organization and hierarchy. I love finding holes in observations and filling out what I can. I love making existing material as useful, searchable, and efficient as possible. I love making it communicative - on a human level, on a computer level, on a human-computer interface level.
But differentiating species? A lot of that is beyond me. I’m curious about it and learning as I go, increasing the number of local organisms I can assign to the right categories. I love listening to podcasts or youtube videos about all the history and human drama that goes into deciding how taxonomies should be structured. But the small peculiarities that separate one type of sparrow from another? That, in and of itself, just doesn’t interest me as much. I still want to learn how to do it because it’s an important data point for specialists and I’m all about the data - but it’s just not my thing.
I can’t say whether or not this is representative of anyone else’s experience, so perhaps this tangent doesn’t really get any closer to answering the original question. But I thought I’d chime in from the social sciences & liberal arts side of things :-)
[edited for formatting]
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then you might enjoy annotating for the phenology graphs?
When does it flower? When does it fruit?
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I’m on the educator side, but similar! I’ve done way more training on pedagogy, group dynamics, teaching methods than biology/geology/hydrology.
I think sometimes (though not always) there’s a bit of bias for “hard” sciences to “soft” ones with it. I really want to keep growing with all of that, but I’m always going to be more of an interpreter than researcher, and being a generalist works well for that.
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That’s 3 people that can be proud of the fact that they improved iNaturalist.
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You bet I do! I’ve been on a bird kick lately, but whether or not something is flowering is about as much as I can contribute on most plants for now 
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You are contributing, though, and that is worthy of note. I run into situations where I feel as though an ID is above my pay grade, but I can put in annotations.
Welcome to the forum, by the way!
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