One of our longest, ongoing discussion threads on iNatForum is #IdentiFriday is the happiest day of the week. The inspiration for that thread is the fact that there is an ever-growing mountain of observations on iNat that needs identifications and that more help is always needed to deal with this task. Power identifiers are often reporting on the particular taxa from particular regions that they have been working on.
What’s missing from that thread is a sense of joy or excitement. When you’re identifying tens or hundreds or thousands of observations from the same group, is any one of them particularly memorable? Or do they all just blend into the category of the routine, the tedious, or the outright annoying (in the sense of “why can’t these observers ever post photos showing the features I need to identify them”)? Is it just a Sisyphean struggle that we’re doomed to endlessly repeat?
Observers have a thread, What is your Favorite Lifer from this week?, in which they can celebrate their new discoveries and share them with our community. So I’d like to issue a similar challenge. What individual observation that you identified for others in the past week has been memorable for you? Perhaps it’s an “Identification Lifer” (i.e. a taxon that you’ve never identified on iNaturalist before). Perhaps it’s a taxon you commonly work with, but something about this one observation made it stand out in your mind from all of the others?
I already have my choice picked out, an identification that was the highlight of my Friday evening, but I’ll wait a bit to see if there’s any feedback on this general concept or the ground rules for the challenge. One important difference between this and posting our own observations is that we have to consider the licensing terms of the observation. We should always be able to post a link to the original observation, but if we want to post a copy of the image, which would make this thread more interesting to read, we’ll have to check if that image has the appropriate Creative Commons licensing. If it’s copyrighted, we’ll need to get permission from the observer. (I’ve already received permission for the image I plan to post.)
I think this is a great idea. I’d say my favorite identification form this past week was this one. I’ve never seen this before but I was so fascinated that I had to look into it. I’m pretty sure I’m correct in my ID that these are molts left behind when lady beetles emerged as adults. It’s interesting that it appears that they are double molts. The pupa molt is inside the larval molt. There are also a couple of larva in the photo that helped me with my ID.
Along the same lines… A few weeks ago I was going through a lot of rabbit observations checking for misidentifications in RG observations and kept coming across cute photos of rabbits lying down sometimes even rolling around in the dirt. I was adding so many to my favorites that I decided to make a project for these types of observations so other people can contribute. Super Chill Buns
This observation of a lady-beetle ( Anatis lecontei ) was really cool. I never saw that species before, but it has very distinctive white lines on the pronotum that I have never seen in another lady-beetle before.
As the image has all rights reserved, I can only share the link, but it’s a really cool photo as well with the tiny water droplets giving the beetle a “frosted” look. :D
As one of a handful of identifiers of Caribbean butterflies,
is because it seems that everyone feels the need to observe the same three species of grass skippers and one species of grass yellow. And these groups look enough alike that I need to look through and compare the color plates in the guidebook before concluding that, yes, it is indeed the umpteenth observation of that species today.
It has been eight days now, so technically last week, but still, that
broke through the tedium when I made the first identification of Calisto arcas, and then made it the taxon photo. Most Calisto observations in the Dominican Republic are of the two common, widespread species, and the rare, localized species look similar enough that I have to look carefully at each observation, just to be sure.
This is a great idea for a topic and will proof to be very valuable and fun, thank you!
I barely do IDs, but sometimes I look through observations of Amsterdam or the Netherlands for a bit and add some very simple IDs.
Last week I saw a butterfly of which the location was probably added incorrectly. I saw this happen more often. This Tiger Longwing (Heliconius hecale) only occurs from Mexico until Peru, so it was a clear candidate. Especially since it is the user’s first observation. But…
Great replies, everyone! Let’s keep the topic going!
Hmmm. A species endemic to western North America, with observations particularly clustered in the valleys. I’m planning a road trip out west next year; I’ll have to keep my eyes open for this.
Those two photos are of the dorsal and ventral surfaces? I can see where the common name comes from!
The first iNat identification of a species–can’t get much more exciting than that!
So here’s my identification. On Friday evening, after reviewing the taxa I usually identify and then scrolling through the newest unknown observations, I started checking some of the Phylogenetic Projects for ‘unknown’ observations. In the project for Order Littorinimorpha I saw this observation, which still didn’t have a better identification than “Life”. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/215655876
From my time as a museum volunteer cataloging mollusca from all over the world, I thought I recognized that shape as a marine mollusk with an aperture that extended the entire length of the shell (but not having real identification expertise, I couldn’t put a name on either the species or that particular shell morphology). Paging through my copy of Abbott and Dance’s Compendium of Seashells, I found a family, Ovulidae, that seemed to fit. Using the iNat Explore tab to review species of this family from the west coast, I found a match with Vidler’s Simnia (Simnia arcuata). Many of the other underwater observations of this species are similarly associated with the same corals.
So why was this memorable for me?
It was a victory for my expertise-adjacency. It’s always nice when I can use the resources available and understandable to me to arrive at the right answer.
It was a victory for @jeanphilippeb and his Phylogenetic Projects, since this species is in Littorinimorpha and I’d have never noticed this observation in the pile of “Life” observations.
This is only one of 49 observations of this species on iNat. Now that it has reached Research Grade, it’s one step closer to being added to the Computer Vision model.
It’s beautiful! Doesn’t it just look like it was clothed by a chic fashion designer? And it’s a beauty that’s ephemeral. Because those red polka dots are only on the periostracum, anyone who found one of these washed up on a beach would see a shell that was a plain beige or brown.
OK, this is one that I suggested as an observation of the day. When @tiwane selected it as such, two week ago, I thought that was the end the matter. But according to today’s iNatBlog post, it’s been promoted to observation of the week!
My identification activity has been pretty routine since my last post. Or it was until I got a flurry of notifications, last Wednesday.
So, a year ago, I saw something interesting among the Unknown observations. My amateur efforts at identifying it couldn’t come up with anything better than the very obvious “it’s a fish!” (Well, Class Actinopterygii, so “it’s a fish, but not a shark.”) I asked a couple questions, another identifier @clauden suggested a family, and there the observation sat.
Until last Wednesday, when the observer finally answered my questions! Within a few hours, @clauden gave it another look, discussed it with @gmucientes and arrived at a specific ID.
And now, iNaturalist has its very first observation of a Painted Anglerfish (Chaunax pictus).
