Filter for Unknowns with a date range that ends a few weeks prior to the current date. Whole world Don’t use a url. “Mark all as reviewed” is our favorite function
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One fun approach: Go to the taxon page for a species of interest, one that does not have a worldwide distribution. Notice the out-of-range observations. Click on them and check them, thus cleaning up the maps.
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I have done this several times with millipedes, it’s quite funny how species that are very “popular” tend to start showing up around the globe, ha ha.
Thanks,
Arthroverts
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I do that whenever the distribution map (for my current species) is off.
Seen Nearby offers a suggestion, even if it is, only one obs, and with only one ID. Bonus points if I can’t ID past planty. Not helpful. Once I got hammered for querying the ID of I Am A BOTANIST.
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I am a botanist (not that one) and fairly often have my ID’s queried, sometimes because I’m wrong! Getting used to this is an important part of growing up, I think.
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Also an important part of being a good biologist.
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I don’t have a “regimen”, and I don’t do as much identification as I would like either. When I do some, I mainly search for Unknowns via “identified=false” rather than using the Unknown iconic taxon. Sometimes I check Life with disagreements separately, since I can often vote for a kingdom easily. If I get bored of those, I’ll check a common bird species like Dark-eyed Junco or Bald Eagle and just bump recent observations to Research Grade. For a while I was checking observations at Kingdom level (excluding Fungi since I can’t get that below Kingdom unless it’s a basidiomycete), but I found it very boring to bump pages and pages of Plants down to Dicots, so I gave up on that. I was also working on annotating all my observations for a while, but that seems like an even more futile project than identifying, since hardly anyone annotates their observations.
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I usually try isolating the most specific guaranteed clade for the observation and put it into explore and either start with a near radius from the location and move up or start more open of a location and narrow it down, whatever is more manageable. Then I look at the species list given and find from the featured photos what seems most similar and move into the research grade observations for the species.
If its super clear which one it is, I could be confident enough to choose it. If not, I google the species or whatever most specific clade it belongs to with a location and go through google images. If that doesn’t work, I check the webpage results for credible sources (like BugGuide). If not that, Google Scholar to look at descriptions with the same search string.
If I’m confused between 2 or more specific species, I tend to google to look at diagnostic features and see if there are any that are discernible. Beyond that, then it just becomes further intense googling until i give up or find it.
Used this method recently to find a paper that shows a diagnostic photo and another that confirmed the location for a species of wasp I observed in Pakistan that hasn’t been documented on the app before. Used it a long while for an observation I made to dig up scans of a journal from 1800s with the description and location as well as another paper with diagnostic drawings of a species of scutelleridae which doesn’t have photos online or was even an option on the app.
I doubt it is the most efficient method, would love to optimize it.
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The issue with this method is that most species are not on iNat, or don’t have photos, so there is a high chance of error.
Finding generic revisions is generally more effective as the include all papers for the specified region.
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Originally I was trying to cover all UK and Ireland observations, but iNaturalist has got too popular and I don’t have time for them all. So now I concentrate on the counties where I have lived. I enter them in turn in the Place box and look for species I recognise, or observations where the identification is unknown or a very broad taxon. They comprise about 10%. Some are so obvious that I know they will reach research grade without me, so I skip them so that I don’t get dozens of notifications. Looking through the remainder, I usually find the location is wrong or too vague for the record to be useful, so I skip them, which leaves 1 - 2% of the total to which I add an identification. After an hour of that, I think this isn’t a very productive use of my evening, I could be reading. So I open a book and am asleep in 10 minutes.
I also keep an eye on UK and Irish Crustacea and European Donaciinae (reed beetles). And for a taste of the exotic, I look at Faroe Islands.
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I change how I identify every time. Sometimes I will limit the search to species I know better, but I like to look at a lot of observations. I have learned many new species doing it this way. I also do a lot of unknowns so have typed things like spider, bird and snake a lot. Sometimes I change the search to ascending and check out older observations that may have been left for dead. It becomes a little treasure hunt.
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I usually identify every night before bedtime. I include Casual observations as well as Needs ID because many beginners start with the stuff in their yard or house and I want to encourage them; also they often leave off a date or location, which effectively hides their observations from many identifiers because they’re automatically Casual. I have a collection on my Chrome browser Favorites bar that contains my fav iNaturalist pages. I’m fond of this addition to the identify URL that shows more observations per page: &per_page=100 (just paste it on the very end of the identify URL and you’ll get 100 per page).
I start by sorting the Unknowns in my area. If I see a newbie with a low number of observations, I check out their list to see if I can help out by confirming or refining an ID. Then I look at plants in my area–if I encounter a species that I know well, sometimes I focus on that for a while. If I feel like a little extra fun, I check out the handful of colorful tropical marine shrimp species that I know well enough. Every now and then, I go through the Needs ID and Casual observations of Nandina domestica worldwide–it’s my goal to filter out the incorrect suggestions of Nandina, which is often any plant with red leaves. If I can’t sleep or need a little more excitement, I pick a country I’ve been to or want to visit–I can’t do much more than sort through the unknowns, casuals, and plant classes/families, but I get to see different organisms while I help sort.
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And that’s unfortunate, because I have seen some really excellent photos of wild organisms that got stuck this way.
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