What species / taxon is being the most actively identified / has the most community interest in it?

[averagewalrus]

Yeah Phymata in particular can be tricky, it’d definitely be worth it to bust out some keys and bugguide to figure out the visually similar species in your area so you can get familiar with what you need to look for/get in pictures to try and get a species level id

[fffffffff]

@brnhn

plant galling insects

That’s a reach, they get no attention outside of NA. I get much more ids on grasses than any galls.

[lappelbaum]

@fffffffff

I get much more ids on grasses than any galls.

Can you add plant IDs in notes section or observation field? That makes it easier to ID a gall.

Edit to add:
This gall project is not location specific. It has observation fields associated with it. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/leaf-and-plant-galls

[fffffffff]

I have field for most of those observations, it’s not linked to that, just most of active experts come from one place.

[jasonhernandez74]

@rayray

Watching deepsea ROV dives like Nautilus or Okeanos which are posted on Youtube would be fun to have organism records harvested as screenshots and put on iNat. I’m sure there are copyright issues for that though.

How deep can a GoPro go? That would tend to set a limit for observations by people not affiliated with research institutes.

@kevintoo

I think interest would be more accurately represented by how many favs, IDs, and follows an observation gets.

Now I’m waiting for one of our internet mavens to post those exact statistics, retrieved automatically through whatever magic internet mavens work.

[kevintoo]

I’ll use the project I most participate in as an example. The first image indicates the species most commonly observed and the second is the ones with the most likes, faves and comments.

You can see that the most commonly observed species don’t show up in the most ‘interesting’ list. In fact our most interesting observation doesn’t show up at all for reasons I can’t explain.

[kimbrint]

That has been studied and published:
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/71/11/1179/6357804?login=false

[anon93074988]

Is it possible that the most interesting hasn’t been IDd to species level?

[lappelbaum]

I thought I could maybe help get to genus since they are likely related to the ones in USA. I need to know what the plants are though. I didn’t see any that had the host species listed. I saw you answered on the two that I left a comment asking.

[fffffffff]

I add host id/host plant id where they’re not clear from photos, at least for mines they’re almost everywhere, but for galls the host plant I can always find through observations of the day. You asked about two common trees, I expect European experts to know them. Thank you for your effort on reviewing them!

[thebeachcomber]

@rayray

Among large and charismatic groups, marine mollusks are VERY poorly represented outside common beach shells. I was looking at entire gastropod families like Volutidae or Buccinidae in the tropical W. Atlantic, and although there are hundreds of species listed for this region, there are probably only a handful of species on iNat, and most are misidentified shell fragments.

highlighting a regional difference, Australia is great in this area on iNat; we’ve got a core group of dedicated observers and IDers for marine molluscs, including many obscure species

[brnhn]

We’re both speaking to what we see in our parts of the world, no trends are universal. In NA galling insects are popular, in eastern Europe/western Asia not so much I guess. But it’s not exclusively NA, in places like Germany or South Africa they get a lot of attention.

For galls and leafminers I’ve seen a lot of NA experts ID galls in other parts of the world when asked for for help. Just don’t assume the plant is obvious because it’s common, it can be easier for a gall expert in the US to look up a gall in a different part of the world than it is for them to ID the local plant. I can ID a lot of African galls but not their hosts, if the host isn’t listed I just move on.

[fffffffff]

@brnhn

don’t assume the plant is obvious because it’s common

Those were obvious pictures, I need help from experts that have more knowledge than myself, I can look up list for hosts myself.

[kevintoo]

@anon93074988

Is it possible that the most interesting hasn’t been IDd to species level?

Apparently it has something to do with the species being listed as vulnerable. It attracted a lot of attention because this species was thought to be extirpated from Galiano island. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26849039?fbclid=IwAR2QTLWoXssxbFdnLmTDa6DXgPmk5D_97Jxs3fLbFWdF6kFJwOhtbWc04E8

[jasonhernandez74]

@anon93074988

Is it possible that the most interesting hasn’t been IDd to species level?

Sure. Because it might be an undescribed species.

[brnhn]

@fffffffff

@brnhn

don’t assume the plant is obvious because it’s common

Those were obvious pictures, I need help from experts that have more knowledge than myself, I can look up list for hosts myself.

I don’t think I understand what you’re saying.

[fffffffff]

I wrote about 2 major trees almost anyone living in Eurasia would know how to name, experts in gall for sure would know them. I don’t need NA experts to id them, I can’t prove their knowledge, they only can operate via databases anyone can have access to, because they never were there or saw those species, that means observer can do it as good as ider from a different part of the world, I too can open https://bladmineerders.nl/ and see if they have or don’t have a right galler (plus I saw how someone asked for help and NA ider didn’t know what it was, but the site had it). Local expert knows if there’re undescribed species, knows how to id many gallers because they saw them irl. If that’s an expert in one particular taxon, it’s different, but most of them are wider iders and can’t specialize on the whole world. I’m not sure what to discuss here, we need more regional experts. I wrote everything clear, so if you have questions please say them, I can’t guess.

[sl_liew]

I revived my school day interest in butterfly catching long ago into butterfly spotting and photography. There are over 1,000 butterfly species in Peninsular Malaysia. I found many Malaysia/Singapore butterfly FB group and was introduced to iNaturalist by a few active butterfly enthusiasts.

So I would add that butterflies are a great interest in iNaturalist id in Peninsular Malaysia/Singapore besides birds.

[brnhn]

@fffffffff

I wrote about 2 major trees almost anyone living in Eurasia would know how to name, experts in gall for sure would know them. I don’t need NA experts to id them, I can’t prove their knowledge, they only can operate via databases anyone can have access to, because they never were there or saw those species, that means observer can do it as good as ider from a different part of the world

You’re mistaken, there are north american gall identifiers with access to non-public databases, they regularly check those for inat users in regions the identifiers are unfamiliar with. For example see the comment on this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/81259916

I’m using a database of eriophyid species created by Jim Amrine that isn’t publicly available

So there is a value to supplying host IDs for plants even if you think that ID is obvious.