That is indeed how I understand it. I try to remember to check that box for my own observations, once someone agrees at the genus level, so that a few more observations are removed from the Needs ID pile.
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That is one of my bugaboos. Why can’t experts just say “It is genus X and that is the best we can get from the photo”, and then just click the “No, it is as good as it can be button”?
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Because that button is somewhat intimidating…
… And because in many cases it is the best I can do, but I am not sure if another expert might be able to move it further.
In the spider world a lot of observations get left at genus actually, but only in rare cases this DQA is used frequently
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On some of the plants I used to consider not identifiable past genus without flowers I’ve since learned (often from other identifiers adding IDs after me) that in some cases they can actually be narrowed further, e.g. by counting teeth along the edge of the leaf or looking for hairs on the leaf surface etc. So I’m hesitant to add that DQA so I don’t miss out on learning something new, especially if the pictures are decent and show some details. I’m always hoping someone more knowledgeable will come along.
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I second this point. Unless I possess expert knowledge that, indeed, no one could possibly refine the ID further based on the available evidence (including the observer’s notes and comments), I am very hesitant to vote no, it’s as good as it can be. I’m much more likely to vote yes, it can still be improved, when I don’t think something has had enough expert review yet.
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Because once in a while the observer objects, and I do the gracious thing and remove my As Good As It Can Be vote. And then I go make IDs in some other way (Unknowns, confirming easy plants already at species level, etc.)
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I understand but perhaps an example is in order. It used to be thought that of the ater group arion slugs only one species, Arion rufus, was present in Canada’s pacific northwest. While many observers (often prompted by the CV) assumed that any all-black slug must be A. ater and any brownish/orangish slug was A. rufus the observations were usually quickly corrected to A. rufus by the iNat hive mind. More recent research has determined that both species are now present here. Since the expert opinion is that the two species cannot be distinguished by external morphology alone it is not possible to ID most iNat Ater group observations to species.
Unfortunately, even if several people revert the ID to the correct “Ater-group Arion Slugs” the CV and ‘commonsense’ will still prompt observers to identify to species level. A copy-pasted note and a DQA of “It’s as good as it can be” usually solves the problem.
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Ive mentioned it before, but Russula mushrooms are a huge one. The genus is an absolute mess, and thats being kind. There a bunch of different red species that all look the same, european vs american species are a mess, its just… a mess. The way to differentiate them is taste, microscopy, or genetic testing, all of which are rare as notes on observations.
Every red one I put up i just ID to genus, mark it ‘cannot be improved’ and then move on with mh life because beyond that is 100% not going to happen
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That is why I don’t even bother with Russula anymore. At one point I assumed I could at least distinguish between Russula xerampelina and others by the purported shellfish scent but a trip with an expert mycologist assured me I can’t. I can definitely smell boiled shrimp and crab but for me Russula xerampelina smells pretty much like most mushrooms.
There’s just some mushrooms that may or may not smell like other mushrooms so its sometimes, but not always, a useful ID.
a good example is these three mushrooms: Baorangia bicolor (bicolor bolete), Boletus sensibilis (curry bolete), and Lanmoa pseudosensibilis (thought this one was still Boletus but GUESS NOT.) Here’s a handy ID key https://www.mushroomexpert.com/threeoftenconfusedboletes.pdf
So the biggest differences are smell (the first two can smell like curry, the third doesn’t,) but guess what - B. bicolor is a delicious edible, and B. sensibilis might give you a tummy ache, and those two are the ones that may or may not smell like curry. Also I can tell you from experience that the size on B. bicolor has a HUGE variation, I’ve found ones that were eight inches across and some that were only a few across on the cap.
Okay, so smell is out - thankfully for this one, you can usually tell B. bicolor because it has extremely, ridiculously, hilariously shallow pores, and it either doesn’t bruise blue or is slow to bruise - but like, neither of these are things that most people are going to bother with noting unless they know that that is what you need to ID it.
So any given reddish & yellow, yellow pored bolete might be B. bicolor or it might be one of the other two, and an IDer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference unless there was a picture of the pore surface and notation of bruising speed. L. pseudosensibilis can be ruled out with a drop of ammonia but again… no one is doing ammonia drop tests unless they already know mushrooms. And the smell can’t rule it out for someone just foraging and not doing IDs because, well, two of them may or may not smell like curry.
Mushrooms are nuts, man
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I am still waiting for the DNA analysis wand I was promised DECADES ago.
(But of course, even if we had one, we’d still feel the need to stuff organisms into anthropogenic boxes that clearly have remarkably little to do with reality. More like ameboid, ever-changing ‘clouds’ or ‘currents’ of genetic relationships than the Linnaean boxes we humans so favor, I think.)
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TBH I feel like DNA is going to create more bottlenecks that edges ameteur naturalists even further out of the loop. The whole concept of what makes a species is fuzzy as it is, is DNA really more important than things like ability to interbreed, physiological and behavioral differences, habitat niche, etc?
Like, why do some mushroom species (as defined by science) have a ton of different variation within one species, meanwhile you have historical scientists making vague mumblings about different colors of off-white on the gills of Russulas, leading to the mess that we have today (which… actually probably one of the better uses of DNA.)
And DNA has definitely helped in cases where convergent evolution has led to two different species looking the same, or diverging in ways that aren’t visual (Suillus weaverae is associated with white pines and is native to N.A., Suillus granulatus is associated with red pines and is native to Europe, but both look exactly the same)
But like, if a given creature hybridizes easily and fully with another animal that just happen to have different range, will DNA tell us anything more useful than ‘this population has more of these alleles and this other population has more of these.’ Is further speciating when two species are ENTIRELY similar but have different DNA actually useful?
I spend a lot of time thinking about Chickadees and Juncos, and honestly someone probably more familiar with songbirds might be able to give a reason for this, but I am constantly confused as to why Black Capped Chickadees & Carolina Chickadees are considered separate species (while fully hybridizing where their ranges overlap and looking almost visually inseparable,) meanwhile there’s like seven incredibly regional Dark Eyed Junco populations with wildly different color patterns. Juncos in ohio are slate gray with white bellies, whereas Juncos in oregon are brown birds with dark heads. Will DNA sequencing help much when, to me, it seems obvious that both this groups are somewhere in the really fuzzy zone of speciation where stuff starts to get weird
Tl;DR I got off on a tangent and I lost my point halfway though, but mushrooms are a pain and I have a hard time reconciling Poecile atricapillus and Poecile carolinensis as being separate species
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Yes, exactly. To all of that. I don’t know enough about DNA analysis to say anything worthwhile about its usefulness in species delineation, but then, that’s also true of all sorts of characters used for determining what is or is not a species for many groups (say, sea cucumbers - I haven’t the foggiest). Already, there are many pairs or small groups of moths in my region that cannot be separated accurately into species without genital dissection, I am told, so I happily leave those at genus because I simply don’t care enough to learn how to dissect moth genitalia. I think most of us would feel comfortable with the use of moth genitalia as determinants of species identification and very few of us ever bother to learn how to dissect those genitalia. DNA is just a few more steps down into the murk of Things Too Tiny to See with the Naked Eye.
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If you have to kill the last living specimen, to find out, what it, was.
Something is broken. I’m a naturalist, I would like nature to live.
(But, science, maybe)
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Sometimes I think about how historically, the way people catalogued birds was… to shoot the birds so they could study the birds. I think about it probably too much, because its just wild to me.
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And not so historically, people always collected and pinned moths to identify them. That’s necessary for some species, but now many species can be identified with good photos.
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