[https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/246426587]
I have observed a rodent of some sort on my trail cam. If I don’t know what it is what do I enter under What did you see?. Should I guess “black rat”. It could be a black rat and Australian bush rat or an antechinus. Does the What do I see field get changed if it is identified as something else? Or should I put unknown species?
How about just ‘rodents’? Someone will find it and help ID it to species.
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Best practice is to put your ID as low as you are confident - if you’re sure it’s a black rat, put that. If you’re sure it’s a rodent, but not sure after that, put Rodents.
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Firstly, it is usually a bad idea to leave it at Unknown. That will take longer to get it in front of the people that specialize in the right taxon.
One route to go would be to Place your ID as low as you are confident with the ID. In this case the Taxon level that includes all three of your options is Subclass Therians (no I did not know that before just now).
The other route would be to examine and ID one of the three you think it is to species. Just remember to withdraw your ID if an identifier disagrees.
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If it might be an antechinus, I would just enter it as “mammals”. Antechinuses aren’t rodents, they are marsupials. So “mammals” would cover that. If the photo is clear enough, an expert will be able to refine that ID.
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Mammals works; also, on inat, looking at the taxonomy tab of both species, Therians appears to be the identification that is the lowest common taxa between Antechinuses and Black rat.
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This is a common problem for many users, so you are not alone. One big issue is that iNat Computer Vision will suggest specific species, but sometimes it’s not clear which broader group to chose. Unfortunately it’s usually better (by which I mean it will be ID’d faster) to suggest a random, hopefully related species rather than leave it blank and let it be entered as “unknown”. While not ideal, until iNat makes it easier to pick a kingdom ID, this will always be the case.
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You could. But do you follow your notifications?
Otherwise the CID algorithm will require THREE more identifiers to convince it to RG against you.
Since
at least if you ‘guess rodents’ it will be quickly pushed back. Again follow your notifications.
“What do I see” is just the app’s way of asking you to suggest an ID. iNat will take the text that you enter in this field and look for a match with names in its database. When you select one of the options, it will be entered as an ID. You can change or withdraw your ID at any time by entering a new ID.
If other users suggest an ID that conflicts with yours, iNat will calculate a new community ID – this will be the shared parent of both suggested IDs. If other users suggest a more specific ID than you, the community ID on the observation will reflect this more specific ID.
However, this only changes how the observation is listed on iNat; your ID will not change unless you change it and you can always see what your ID is by opening the observation and looking at the list of IDs.
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The lowest common denominator of these 3 choices is Therians
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