On the Taxa page. Right under the picture, third tab.
Goes: Map - About - Taxonomy - Status - Similar Species
Look here to see:
But please look carefully before adding a basic level ID. I’ve seen a few this week where a new identifier has enthusiastically added an ID of “Plants” when there is an insect or a bird or something in that plant that was what the observer really wanted to have identified.
Of course we wouldn’t have this problem if people always added either an ID or a comment when they created the observation, but given that they don’t, identifiers have to be careful there isn’t something hiding in that “plant”, or else all you acheive is sending the observation to “Life” when someone later IDs the insect or bird.
Please also keep an eye on your notifications and withdraw IDs that turned out to be for the wrong thing!
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From what I’ve observed on iNat, if there’s an animal - any kind of animal - in an Unknown observation, the observer probably intended to focus on that, not on the fungi or plants that might also be in the photo.
If there’s no animal, but there is a fungus, the observer probably intended to focus on that, not on any plants also in the photo.
If there are no animals or fungi in the photo, just plants, the observer probably intended to focus on a vascular plant, not on any mosses or liverworts or algae, etc.
It’s interesting to me how rigid this set of priorities is: animals are more important to observers than fungi, which are more important than vascular plants, which are more important than non-vascular plants.
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And don’t be shy to tag@ the person that should review an ID.. I will miss most of those when not tagged and often just run into those again by accident. A lot of mis-IDs could have been much quicker resolved, but often I just see my mistakes when they are already mavericks (I can filter and check for). I have an IDer running through some of my older non-spider IDs at the moment and I already know I should check those observations again when their name pops up in my notifications (and I had to withdraw a few), but I will not generally go through every non-tag@ and non-comment notificationI get.. it’s just to much. So, please @tag me, if I need to take a second look!
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I am not shy about writing a comment to the originator of the observation requesting them to tell us exactly what in the photo they want to have identified.For example, an obviously new user posted a photo of some waterfowl on the water and there were distinctly three different species in the photo with no directions such as “the bird in the foreground” or “the two on the right.” I try to encourage observers such as this to submit separate photos for each perceive species with either a written description of which one, or to use the “mark-up” function on their photo to circle the bird for each separate observation to help make the iNat observations more quality and grade.
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I ask too, but if someone has already added an incorrect ID if doesn’t help when they leave it there. As an example this morning I’ve seen a tree IDed as “Dicot Skipper” - a butterfly not found on the same continent as the tree being IDed. Obviously the new identifier was trying for “Dicot”, but they misclicked and haven’t come back, so it has taken 3 more IDs to get back to something close to the correct ID.
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Also add a Life Stage annotation, at least for caterpillars (larvae), so the caterpillar identifiers can find them.
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Very cool. Thanks for this!
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