I honestly can’t choose but I like “Unknowns” , most of the time because I’m not an expert in that taxa I can still narrow it down but not get it down to the point.
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The oft-overlooked mollusks: second only to arthropods in diversity and terrestrial gastropods are arguably the most threatened group of organisms out there.
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Dolichopodidae (Diptera) for sure! There are so many cool colors and shapes, and most species have unique male secondary sexual characteristics (MSSC) that make them easy to recognize.
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Aves. Because it’s what I know best. The down part to it is that is what it seems most people know and ID also.
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This topic is a bit skewed to what taxa user know how to best identify, but so enjoy IDing reptiles and amphibians (and isopods on occasion). Sometimes if so find a cool taxa (such as Mastigoproctus tohono or Atocion armeria), I’ll research it more in depth and make a bunch of IDs.
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Plants. People are very appreciative when I ID their long idle observations. I also learn more as I go.
Edit: mostly flowering plants
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Mallards…ermmm…no…I mean Araneomorphae.
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Spiders. Actually I love social spiders (mainly Stegodyphus an Anelosimus) most, but they do not get observed that often in comparison. So I kind of got hooked on Argiope spiders and Pisaurids… and any other spider taxa that manages to catch my attention for any reason.
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Butterflies (Papilionoidea)! Specifically from Ontario. I’m not great at some of the harder species, but I absolutely love lepidoptera and I work with butterflies during the spring and summer.
I’d also like to shout out anyone on this thread who goes through and IDs a ton of observations regularly! I know that I personally notice when somebody is really good at IDing certain taxa when they add IDs to my observations frequently. I have a gentleman who helps me out with spiders quite often, and while I have maybe spoken to him once (if ever), I always think of him when I post a spider observation.
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Bombus (I know, shocking).
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For favorite, I would pick something with charismatic and unmistakable flowers like Penstemon ambiguus http://www.polyploid.net/swplants/pages/Penstemon_amb.html
Most of the taxa I spend time reviewing for iNaturalist are frustrating (in a good way). For example, nocturnal wasps of Chyphotes, which look a lot like certain Mutillidae.
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I do pine trees and orb weaver spiders mostly.
I also like to do crabs and jelly fish found along the US east coast.
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Also one of the groups with an absurdly high number of undiscovered species as well.
I work in a tropical karst area with lots of cave environments of all sizes. There’s a snail specialist from the Netherlanders I’ve worked with a few times, and every time he comes to my area he finds a bunch of new species of snails in the caves. Most are nearly microscopic, but just about every untouched cave seems to have 1 or 2 unique species that appear to be endemic to that specific cave, even it’s a cave that’s only the size of a small house or large apartment.
Conversely, in every cave that’s been developed for tourism the species have been paired down to the same 3-5 or so species across the board.
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Insects, but I like iding everything within a region instead of one taxon, I want to help people and encourage them to observe more, it also helps with the wish to visit different places when I can’t do that (without having a car), I at least can see what lives there. (Sadly it doesn’t work for places I crave the most, abandoned villages)
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Lepidoptera for me! For some reason I feel most confident with that order.
edit: “confident”
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Owls and feathers.
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I got interested in Senna identifications after the difficulties I had to identify this observation in Mauritius. For learning, I had to review observations of Senna, and started identifying them. Then @etantrah asked if I could help checking if there may be observations in North Carolina of Senna species coming from other states, in particular Senna chapmanii from Florida. I reviewed all Senna observations in Southeastern USA, then in all the USA.
We figured out later that the only alien candidates in NC were most likely native Senna hebecarpa, after we figured out that Senna hebecarpa shows a different position for extrafloral nectaries when young, a feature formerly reported only for Senna hirsuta, as mentioned in Diversity and evolution of a trait mediating ant-plant interactions: Insights from extrafloral nectaries in Senna (Leguminosae) and as can be seen in these observations of Senna hirsuta.
This observation of @threelark is the 1st ever confirmation on iNaturalist that Senna hebecarpa has extrafloral nectaries between the most proximal leaflets when young:
Other similar observations: 1, 2, 3…
Starting from the genus Senna, I got interested in the whole subfamily Caesalpinioideae.
All this just by chance (and because I like to focus on such questions), thanks to this individual, in a small wasteland next to my Hotel in Mauritius, with leaflets looking like Senna obtusifolia and with extrafloral nectaries like Senna lindheimeriana:
I was then happy to find this one in a shop in Belgium. Likely a “cultivar”, present almost only in cultivation, and misnamed after a Senna species it even does not look like.
All similar observations are in the “Senna cultivar” project.
Would someone have an explanation about it?
Wikipedia shows this “cultivar” instead of the true Senna corymbosa: 1, 2.
Fix needed…
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I’m an Unknown junkie.
There are the mindless clicks - when I can recognise it already from the thumbnail (check multiple pictures are not also multiple species, capture placeholder text … sigh)
The easy ones to pass on - bird, fish, insecty, pelargonium, orchid … where taxon specialists wait at their filters. My lion photo got an ID in … minutes!
Secondly the ones to open because I have 2 options in mind to tease apart.
Third the fascinating ones that trigger long convoluted discussions. And @mentions where I try to spread the load instead of deluging one poor embattled identifier (apologies)
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Reptiles, amphibians, and birds are often the easiest for me, as usually the interspecific variation is obvious enough to tell the difference between species easily using computer vision alone, allowing me to confirm observations with a pretty good confidence, even in areas of the world I’m not familiar with. Similarly, because these types of animals are often observed pretty often when compared to secretive mammals, plants, fungi, etc (which is a shame in its own right), the range maps provided are usually pretty helpful for me.
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I enjoy plants filtered locally, but I would say my favorite is when someone has nice photos of a tree/shrub in winter and I have no idea what it is and spend time trying to figure it out. The first time this happened it took me three or four hours to figure out what plant it was, if you’ve never knowingly seen a young eastern cottonwood it can be surprising how different they look, especially in winter;
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