What new identifiers should ID / What is under-IDed and feasible?

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One resource we can provide to those who want to get started with IDing is an all-in-one place list of suggestions of things that they could start IDing. I realize that they could start IDing literally any observations on the site, but clearly some groups are more in need than others, and some groups are easier to get started on without formal training than others. We don’t need another identifier of California Scrub Jays, and while many crustose lichens lack IDs, they are not an easy first project for new identifiers. And while it is often very useful to identify plants to Order, or unidentifieds to Kingdom, this is a compelling task for only some people.

What specific groups could someone learn, either in your area or globally, and get started in IDing?

In my area, based on this search https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2764&quality_grade=needs_id&subview=map&view=species we clearly need help with Iris, Quercus, and Lupinus. I know from experience that Trichoptera (Caddisflies) almost never get IDed, although I don’t know how feasible it would be for someone to start IDing them.

So what would you advise a relatively new observer who wants to jump into some group? Bonus points if you suggest something other than what you usually ID!

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and the Quercus could be annotated for fruit (and phenology).

For my Cape Peninsula https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/404420 bietou is everywhere.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49322-Carpobrotus-edulis sourfig if it has flowers.

For the rest of the queue varying levels of challenging, including some that I will not tackle.

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Quercus can be trickier than it might seem. The Red Oaks (section Lobatae) have many lookalike, sympatric species, and I usually only take those to section. However, with the right combination of characters, these could be taken to the species level; the problem is that few observations have the right characters, since acorn morphology is at least as important as leaf morphology in this group.

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I think it could be good to get identifiers started with putting “unknown” obs into the right bucket (animals, plants, fungi, etc.; maybe more specific if the user is knowledgeable, like mammals, birds, etc.), starting from the oldest they can find. That way they stand a better chance of getting a more specific ID.

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I agree that putting unknown to Kingdom or Phylum is a useful thing to do. It also just doesn’t appeal to a lot of people, and if we don’t offer alternatives to that they may never get into IDing.

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In undergrad I had a key book for caddisflies that was so thick that you could kill a man with it. Family is about as far down as you can get without a microscope and deep knowledge of insect anatomy. Caddisflies are definitely not beginner friendly.

My recommendation would always be local weed species. Get to know a few very well. Plant blindness is a real thing, and learning weeds helps overcome that. It’s also very useful to document spread of invasive weeds.

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I made a project that may be a good starting point. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/natev-s-identification-project.

My original idea for this project was a collection of species that were so easy for me to ID from photos, at least when flowering, fruiting or mature, that I could identify them from the thumbnail view of the identify tab. I have since almost completely stopped thumbnail-identifying, because my error rate predictably went up, but the species selected are still easy enough for almost anyone to ID, with lookalikes that are easily separable. My favorite thing about it is that it covers the eastern US except for Florida, as Florida plant ID is not for new identifiers.

Plants such as Albizia, Salvia lyrata, Erechtites heriaciifolius, Cirsium horridulum, Modiola carolinianum, and many other plants that are almost idiot-proof, at least when flowering, are included in that project. There’s always a small backlog of Arilus cristatus, and it’s hard to confuse anything else for a giant grey bug with a gear sticking out of its back.

A few other places where newbies could be helpful, although maybe a taxon swap would work better: Lantana “camara” in the US (it should all be pushed either to Lantana strigocamara, Lantana urticoides, or just Lantana section Lantana, we’ve known this since 2006 but sources have been slow to change) and Mimosa quadrivalvis in the eastern US (should almost all be Mimosa microphylla).

And right now at least, there’s Thomisus citrinellus in South Africa, which should almost all be pushed to Thomisus stenningi or pushed back to genus Thomisus. Help is especially needed because there’s a local expert who has gone rouge, ignoring her previous peer-reviewed research findings and working with novel polyphyletic species concepts that she published through newsletters. She admits that her novel species concepts arose from seeing photos on platforms such as iNaturalist rather than from careful lab study, and she’s managed to sway a number of local identifiers to her side by denigrating me and several other knowledgeable identifiers for our alleged lack of experience. So, maybe not quite what a new identifier needs from a politics perspective, but certainly an instance of where not much training would be needed to push back against the incorrect IDs, and help would be most welcome.

One more idea would be working with observations not expected nearby. Many of these observations are simply from 4+ years ago when iNaturalist’s CV didn’t include as many species, and the current CV suggestions are often a better starting point. Opening a few tabs to compare similar species and their ranges is perhaps closer to intermediate than beginner, but it may be a good transitory stage for identifiers who have nailed a few common local flora but haven’t learned enough about the process of learning how to identify a new taxon from photos to become a productive “specialist.” Once you learn the process of finding relevant information online asking the right questions to the observer and fellow identifiers, and then applying that information to photos, you then have a well-rounded foundation to specialize without getting too myopic and nearsighted. If you only ever ID one group, you could be missing out on skills and knowledge that would help your IDs.

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This is a great idea! I have a few plants that are relatively easy to ID that I try to keep up with. I think if we had a list of species that are relatively easy to ID with some instructions about what to look for, it would be a great way to get new users involved in making IDs (and also people like me who are lay people that want to help, but also want to feel confident when making IDs).

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It appeals to me, as I’m not an expert on an order or family. There are a few species I can identify, such as the white-tail and mule deer, which I had an accident with years ago. The list slowly grows; I learned Argiope aurantia and fan clubmoss last year, both from the same lot (my first ob of Argiope has clubmoss in the photo). Now I know Chinese bushclover and mistflower too. But usually I identify unknowns to winged insect, or monocot, or some other high-level taxon.

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I had presumed that the basic kingdom ID is the easiest thing to do and I’ve personally never found it that annoying myself. (I once wondered whether this was too embarrassing, but I’ve gotten over that.) My main issue with this is that there isn’t necessarily much to do in this regard? At least, I only sometimes run into observations with this issue.

looks at my location and the majority of my observations

[chuckles] I’m in danger.

My recommendation would always be local weed species. Get to know a few very well. Plant blindness is a real thing, and learning weeds helps overcome that. It’s also very useful to document spread of invasive weeds.

I definitely recommend this.

The weeds around here do tend to get ID’d rather quickly, but maybe that’s just because we have a pretty active iNat userbase including some people who are surprisingly diligent IDers.

And once a person learns basic weed ID they can also start doing things like confirming IDs.

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There are nearly 240,000 observations listed as “Insecta.” A lot of people know basic orders of insects, so attacking this group (can find them by setting the “Low Rank” filter to “class”) would be doable and very helpful.

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I just tried this, and despite being fairly familiar with major groups of insects, was able to further identify maybe one in 15 observations stuck at Insect.

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Contrary to the popular advice that people start with unknowns or with broad groups like “Insecta," I would suggest starting with a species. I say that because a majority of people know nothing about taxonomy at all whatsoever, which can make its upper levels hard to understand. Your mind is going to say “all these things look so different, what do you mean this one and that one should go together in the same category?” Even if you do know some of the possible kingdoms/orders/families/whatever, picking them out of an even higher rank is more difficult than it sounds (as @dlevitis just found!) A wide search that turns up a great variety of observations can easily overwhelm a new identifier.

You might be thinking, surely anyone can pick “plants” out of unknowns. Maybe that’s true. But in the land of unknowns, there’s tide-pool life, there’s bad photography, there’s observers that react unkindly to receiving a high ID…

So. I say start with a species. Find one that’s very commonly observed, but that you still enjoy. There doesn’t have to be a giant backlog of it as long as the new observations are coming in at a steady rate. Your IDs will be appreciated by the observers and by other IDers who would rather look at something more rare. I have over 7,000 IDs of Encelia californica. It’s cute, I like yellow, and new observations of it are made constantly. Even if the species you pick isn’t the absolute easiest, you can learn to deal with a few look-alikes (in my Encelia californica example, those would most often be Helianthus spp., and Encelia californica x farinosa.) If you have no knowledge at all of the jargon used by keys and papers, you may also want to pick a species belonging to a group for which a plain-language guide book/website is easily available. (I know that’s not possible for some taxa and some parts of the world–I’m sorry!) Or even better if you know of a friendly fellow naturalist who can explain things to you in plain terms.

So that is my general answer. I’m a plant person, so I may be biased, but I think a plant is a reasonable place to start because they make up a high percentage of total observations. If you don’t like plants, try something else, and I don’t care if it is the California Scrub Jay. Whatever gets you started learning the interface and the search URLs and the DQA and…and…and! There’s a lot to learn. It’s fun :)

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High-level IDs of monotypic taxa? Not sure how many wild ginkgos are getting photographed here, but anything at “Ginkgoopsida,” for example, would be very easy to knock down to "Ginkgo biloba.”

Just drawing from the Wikipedia list of monotypic plant taxa: Sciadopityaceae, Cathaya, Diselma, Fitzroya, Glyptostrobus, Metasequoia, Microcachrys, Nothotsuga, Parasitaxus, Saxegothaea, Sequoia, Sequoiadendron, Sundacarpus, Tetraclinis, Thujopsis, Wollemia, Breonadia, Cephalotaceae.

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But if I were to advise a newbie where to start - I would like an individual. With some hundreds of obs. What do you observe, what interests you? Where? Here is an URL you can try … Eaten that one? Try a broader taxon? Or a wider location? Or annotate your favourite taxon for phenology. And rather not start with the oldest, the problems which others have looked at and discarded in despair. If you are new, and help to encourage other newbies (today 5K across the world), you can kindly (you will be more willing to spend time explaining your ID) encourage each other to learn to ID together.

We want identifying to be fun (love ginkgos, admired them at Kirstenbosch yesterday) and a good learning curve (monotypic!) Thomisus with TWO portions of lunch!

Kingdom Disagreements could be another good place to start. Filter to your preferred location. And because this is Not Work, if in doubt - Mark as Reviewed and try the next one.

Level 2 can tackle Placeholders or Pre-Mavericks.

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I just tried the question mark icon in filters (which results in Bacteria as well as Life) sorted backward, and I wouldn’t put a newbie through that. Lots of microorganisms and pictures where I couldn’t tell what was going on. It’s a lot easier to handle disagreements from one or two days before. (If you identify without selecting the upload date, you’re going to get the ob list sliding as people upload new obs while you’re identifying them.) There was an insect identified as both a small-winged beetle and an earwig; after thinking for a while that its abdomen was broken open by a parasitoid emerging, I realized that it’s an earwig with its abdomen bent upward to show the underside of the pincers pointed almost at the observer.

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I recommend setting this to subclass so you also get the pterygota (“winged and once-winged insect”) observations as well.

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My recommendation is to pick something you have the ability to look at in real life. And don’t bother with vertebrates, they’re covered.

Even better if you can convince a local identifier to give you pointers. What seems easy in one place may be a nightmare to ID elsewhere (eg Medicago in Israel - we’ve got a couple dozen species whereas in most of the USA you’ve got like. three.)

And you must consider your skill level, realistically. All of the above suggestions are good, but they have different relevant target audience. If you’re only starting out, coarse ID is always needed. If you know a little bit, start with local organisms - maybe charismatic plants.

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Honestly, I think this is going to be different for everyone, because we all start out from different places with different interests and different amounts of background knowledge. It also depends on how comfortable one is with finding, consulting, and interpreting external resources where observations go beyond one’s own knowledge.

I agree that this is important:

I think the first step here is to give some thought to figuring out three things:

  • What you know. I don’t necessarily mean formal knowledge, but rather what sorts of things are familiar to you and you can recognize them without the CV, whether at a broad level or a finer one.
  • What you are interested in. This may not be identical with what you know. Maybe there are areas where you don’t yet have more than basic knowledge but you are willing to put in the work to learn more.
  • Where there seems to be a need. E.g., if nearly all observations of a particular taxon that meets criteria 1 and 2 become RG quite quickly with multiple confirming IDs, maybe there are other areas where your efforts will have more of an impact.

If there is some area where these things overlap, this is probably a good place to start.

What I found useful as a new user was exploring recent observations in my area without any filters at all – just seeing what was being uploaded, what IDs were being applied to them, and which ones I recognized. Here and there I would come across an observation where I knew that the ID was wrong or where there was a broad ID that I could improve, either based on existing knowledge or a bit of research. Once I noticed that I was gravitating towards certain taxa – e.g, I knew enough to be of some use with plants and insects but nothing whatsoever about mushrooms or snails – I was able to narrow the search to focus on particular taxa I was interested in.

It can also be useful to spend some time exploring the taxonomic tree and seeing where one starts to recognize family resemblances and broad categories.

I don’t recommend relying on the CV when first starting to ID other people’s observations. I think the CV can be a useful tool for people who refine observations with broad IDs, but it requires that one has a certain amount of experience evaluating the suggestions for taxa one is not familiar with (that is, developing a sense for when something is distinctive enough that the suggestions can be used and when one should back off to a broader ID). A good way to get this experience is to critically engage with the CV on one’s own observations: making a note of which suggestions of which taxa get corrected and which ones seem to be reliable; checking observations in the same family for lookalikes; noting whether specific IDs are likely to get confirmed or whether there are a large percentage of needs ID observations, which is often a sign that the taxon is tricky.

Concretely I would say that hymenoptera are tricky and they seem to be somewhat unintuitive to many people compared to many other insect taxa, because we have a tendency to focus on color patterns, which are often not very useful for hymenopterans. So if one is a new IDer this is an area where caution is advised. However, there are exceptions – for example, honeybees are probably fairly easy to learn, as in much of the world there is only one species and it is fairly distinctive if one familiarizes oneself with a few key traits. And there are a few other strategies for general sorting (e.g., if it lacks a visible waist it is probably symphyta and if it has really long antennae with 20+ segments it can go in ichneumnonoidea).

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If you are a bird nerd, find a subspecies that is peculiar to your area. For example we have Blue-faced Honeyeaters all over Australia. But in Darwin where I live we have the White Quilled Honeyeater subspecies.

And our masked lapwings are the Vanellus miles miles subspecies.

So whenever you have a common species, check the children in the taxonomy and see which subspecies are local. If there are two overlapping subspecies then try to see if there is a distinctive feature that can separate the two. It might be something like different colour gapes at different times of the year ie breeding vs non-breeding.

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