If I’m in the mood of not wanting to think too hard but still contribute to iNat, I’ll use the Identify page to annotate observations. Many, many observations lack any annotations and for some taxa it’s quite easy to go through them and add a life stage, sex, or plant phenology annotation without much specific knowledge. If enough observations of a taxon are annotated, we can start to get some cool data on them, eg for Monarchs (although look at how many still need a life stage annotation!):
Here’s my approach:
- On the Identify page, here are the basic settings I’ll use choose for life stage annotations:
The URL for this is: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&order_by=random&without_term_id=1&captive=false
This should show me all Needs ID and RG observations lacking a life stage annotation, sorted randomly.
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I’ll choose a taxon compatible with life stage, for example Lepidoptera.
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Then, when I click on the first observation, I’ll make sure to go to the Annotations tab. There is a handy list of keyboard commands on the bottom left-hand corner.
- It’s pretty easy to rapidly go through the observations and tell which ones are of eggs, larvae, pupae, or adults and add annotations for those.
Things to remember:
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If you are unsure, it’s better to not add the annotation, feel free to move on to the next observation.
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Don’t go too quickly, sometimes you’ll add the wrong annotation! Be sure to correct any errors you make
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Some taxa can be tricky. For example, there are larviform female adult beetles and other insects, which are difficult to distinguish from actual larvae. Again, if you’re unsure, don’t add an annotation.
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If you would like to bulk annotate your own observations, there is another tutorial for that.
That’s about it!
