Traditional projects for hard-to-categorize unidentified observations

[schizoform]

When trying to ID a new observation, it’s very helpful to start by saying what basic group an observation might belong to (i.e. plant, animal, fungus). In a few circumstances, however, this can be really tough. Traditional projects can be a way around this: by adding observations for a few types of hard-to-categorize observations, we can help gather experts on hard-to-distinguish taxa.

I wanted to highlight three examples:

• I just created a traditional project “Aquatica” ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/aquatica ) for underwater organisms anywhere in the globe that might not follow typical body plans or be in familiar and easily-distinguished base taxa. This might include for example seaweeds / bryozoans / worms.
• I previously created a traditional project “Slimes/Molds” ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/slime-molds-ea454c31-6fc9-46db-94e9-912a7fd456b3 )” for things that are ambiguously bacteria, slime molds, or fungi.
• A project for generally quirky organisms can be found at “WeirdWildWonders” ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/weirdwildwonders ).

Are there other similar examples where a traditional project might be helpful to get hard-to-categorize species IDed? How can we make them more salient?

Finally, I’d like to include a reminder of an old effort: a wiki on guides to IDing animals by clade and region, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observing-identifying-wildlife-wiki/15332 .

[zoology123]

I do this which seems like a similar in concept.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/unknown-chiro-morphs

An umbrella project to help hold them all.

I also use https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/chironomid-data-projects

Really i probably have over 100 traditional projects as they are best for adding things selectively and when not in huge amount like 10s of 1000s.

[spookyaranhas]

I’ve been doing something similar with undescribed species of Tarantula. There are a ton of species that are commonly observed and known to be undescribed species or genera, and often people will just leave a comment with “Genus sp. ‘Name’” or “Undescribed” or whatever, but this isn’t super helpful when looking for these observations specifically. Recently one of these species was described and we had to trawl through all sorts of unrelated observations because they were from the same region and Tribe. Plenty of old observations of this species still ended up buried though. My hope is that by compiling these observations, it might make them easier to categorize we can avoid this trouble when new species are described in the future.