Hmm, interesting. I don´t feel that “all of them” are commonly IDed wrong in my field (of course, there is always a certain amount indeed wrong, but not that often so commonly like I experienced in the case described in the first post).
In the spider realm most people do not go to species or even genus, unless the know a thing or two about it and have a hunch (of course excluding very new members that sometimes just go with the CV) or they ID a certain species when indeed that is not possible… but that is something else.
Only observations that would not match either superfamily would be in the Araneae project.
Estimations on the basis of a cache presently containing 380,000 observations.
Phragmites mistaken for typha and vice versa is a big one. Also phragmites mistaken for arundo and vice versa. I definitely see why and how but when you look through a whole bunch of phragmites observations, you start realizing a lot of them aren’t even phragmites.
In the plant realm, people love picking the first CV thumbnail that looks a close match or a leaf gall that occurs on that plant if that’s the first suggestion, because the CV can’t tell what the observer is focused on.
Here’s a species with 396 research grade observations and this similar species list
Oh, yes, and how many American Holly (Ilex opaca) have I seen misidentified as Native Holly Leafminer (Phytomyza iliciola)? Well, it is a “native holly,” right? People start typing that, and see a suggestion that starts with that.
I cannot tell you how many of my own Sweet-Fern, Comptonia peregrina, observations I have confidently IDed as Sweet Fern, Pteris macilenta (which doesn’t even occur around here!). Oopsie.
The two cross spiders Argiope keyserlingi and Argiope aetherea are incredibly similar and overlap quite significantly in range, so of course everyone mixes them up! I can usually ID them confidently but it’s just so difficult to even explain to people what the differences are that I mostly give up on an explanation :P
Cotoneaster horizontalis! Unfortunately, this is rather a “nomen hortulanorum” for any low-growing Cotoneaster. As I´ve done a revision of this taxon in Inat, roughly 2/3 of the findings were wrongly identified (trying to solve it, but it´s more then 2000 items).
Please note that true C. horizontalis is winter deciduous (!), with small apiculate leaves and small, closed, pink flowers (!). And, of course, it has alternate leaves (unlike similar looking Lonicera ligustrina).
Thats helpful. Im familiar with with the NA ones then so thats something i can expand to ID outside of Alabama then.
OMG YES Ilex opaca here gets tossed on everything even all cultivars. Im always fixing it sigh. Since students often photograph bushes for landscaping - all of those hollies theyll label I opaca too.
I think personally one i find most miss-ID is Stereum ostera, which is a turkey tail look alike (but smooth underside and tbh doesnt look alike to me). It historically was split into more than one taxon and rejoined a few times based on morphological features; and dec 2020 study published shows DNA supports the split and not only that but what is described as S ostera is an Asian taxon. So. Not here in US. But a long history of it being IDd on iNat plus ID books not been updated; i fix a lot of those. Not sure if you can count that as wrong; just new info people dont know. Most i can get reID’d to new species - as mentioned there are morphological differences. (Yes i have a blurb i always paste in about it including source info).
I wouldn’t say typically but the two trailing cranberry species (or three if you lump in lingonberry) in the northeastern US are often misidentified. V. macrocarpon is often misidentified as oxycoccos, which is usually restricted to areas of expansive sphagnum. The three are usually pretty easy to tell apart just from leaf shape alone, and this thread made me stop procrastinating making an image comparing the three, which I’ve pasted below. They’re not the best photos but what I had on hand from my observations.
Thanks a lot for mentioning. No more spiders are proposed by the c.v., so I guess that I downloaded worse c.v. suggestions a year ago. (I still have all the data but I won’t check the details. By now, this is not a big issue).
Usnea longissima. Usnea is a world-wide genus of epiphytic lichens, most species with such overlapping morphologies that species identification is impossible without chemical tests. You can probably count on the fingers of one hand the readily identifiable Usnea species. One of these is Usnea longissima. Unfortunately, the CV has labeled nearly all Usnea that are longer than wide as U. longissima, so the CV gets trained on misidentified Usneas and applies the name U. longissima to multiple Usnea species and sometimes Spanish Moss, and round and round we go. The situation isn’t helped by iNaturalist applying the name “Methuselah’s Beard” to U. longissima, although that common name is much more often for a moderately long Usnea of northeastern North America. I’ve tackled correcting the identifications a few times, but each time I give up after a while.
Timothy Grass, Phleum pratense is often misidentified as many other grasses, some dicots, and occasionally animals (see https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/sedgequeen/55127-timothy-more-of-a-mystery-than-you-might-think ), especially in early spring when similar species bloom. (Timothy flowers a bit later.) The CV learned to call everything approximately cylindrical Timothy, so another circular misidentification pattern occurred. I think it’s getting better, but there are still problems.
The shared common name “Wintergreen” leads to mix-ups between Pyrola and Gaultheria but that’s not as big a problem.
Oh true, I see a lot of Usnea ID’d to species that shouldn’t be there. And it likes to suggest an Usnea sp. that doesn’t exist here; but anyone using seek or the ap in particular tend to put it to that species anyway. As soon as someone puts another Usnea on mine I bump them to good as it gets. There’s a few we got to species because I got good enough macro photos of certain features; but not many. Luckily there are two local-ish lichen folk who help me so we keep things pretty cleaned out for our region at least.
