What ID of yours are you most proud of?

I am a low level IDer, I don’t have the skill to place IDs finer than order or genus, excepting a few local things. However, every now and then I pull back on a rather bold initial ID, and put something at genus or family, such as this Evaniidae member. The initial ID was placed as Evania appendigaster, and while I don’t know enough to know what it is, I knew enough to know what it isn’t. After IDing it at family, Evaniidae, someone more skilled ID’d it as Brachygaster minutus, a much more interesting observation!

Little things like this add a little data, and enrich the CV with photos of less documented organisms, which is particularly useful for families that are overwhelmingly represented by a single species.

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I am no ornithologist. When I see a bird, I’m content to call it a bird, though I’ve IDed a heron and macaws.

A few days ago, I came across a feather. I IDed it as Numididae, which someone soon specified. Out of Africa, it could hardly be anything but N. meleagris.

How did I know? My landlady has guineas, and I recognized the spots.

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Really can’t decide between https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106411274 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213071928 (first mine, 2nd for someone else).

The first observation is of one of my favorite species of all time, an extremely poorly documented olive relative from the dry tropical forests of Peru (it is not listed for the country yet!). It flowers when leafless and it has very odd flowers (for starters, it smells like expired milk, and the perianth is so fragile it often collapses as soon as the flowers open, hence the genus’ name, “soon-naked-flowers”). It is locally abundant but it is gravely threatened by selective logging, hence my excitement at seeing what appears to be a mature individual.

The second one is an Amaryllid. I love that group yet I seldom see them in the field. The species in the observation is one I had always dreamed of seeing since it was first described; it has gorgeous wild tulip-like flowers and it grows larger than most amaryllids we get here. Hopefully I get to see one myself in the wild!

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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12879903

My initial ID of Diptera was refined to family (Syrphidae / hover flies) and from there I was able to do the research to arrive at a species, though there was some confusion at first between Ceriana rachmaninovi and Sphiximorpha rachmaninovi.

My observation is from 2018 and the species was first described as being present in Korea in 2015.

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I have recently gone back through observations by observers whom I follow, re-checking what I had previously reviewed now that I have leaened more. I came upon one that was uploaded Sep 9, 2023, and which I identified simply as “Dicots” a year ago. It had no activity since.

Noting that the observer left a note calling it “Aquetantera ekmanii,” I decided to investigate. As it tuned out, it seemed like a good match for what GBIF has as Asketanthera ekmaniana; probably the observer misheard and/or misremembered something. The species was not in iNaturalist.

Of course, we can’t cite GBIF to add a taxon, so next I had to try to trace it in POWO. There, I found that it is a synonym of Asketanthera longiflora. That species also was not in iNaturalist. And so occurred my first curatorial act, as I am now about to post in the thread about iNat milestones.

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New one from last night: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/228565874

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