Off to a good start!
1489 species observed, of which 1129 are RG. That makes 75.8%.
The vast majority of my observations are moths, followed by other insects, followed by birds, mammals, and then plants and fungi. Some moths can’t be narrowed down to species without dissection, which I do not do.
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To be honest I don’t fully understand how you found these numbers easily, since RG/Needs ID is assigned at the observation level and not the species level. I have several species that have both RG and Needs OD observations, so my ratio ends up over 100%:
56% are RG and 50% are Needs ID, so I guess the ratio would be 53/47. That is without ever ticking the cannot be further improved for my genus level obs since I always hold out hope someone will spot a difference.
Aside from the obvious factors relating to photo quality and species selection, I have found that your location makes a significant impact to the amount of your observations that get reviewed. Some regions simply have much more active expert identifiers (and perhaps users in general) than others. For example, when I was living in the Prague area I was only one of many daily uploaders and I could count on my plant observations being reviewed by at least 3 different local experts and many other regular identifiers, whereas in my current rural location in Catalunya I am by far the most regular user and rely on only 1 or 2 regular identifiers who are not able to review/ID all of my plant observations.
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I currently have 1516 spp. in Needs ID and 2280 spp. in RG.
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I have 414 RG observations and 244 Needs ID. That is 296 RG species and 167 Needs ID species. If you want to help ID the remainder you can use the link below, but don’t feel obligated.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&quality_grade=needs_id&user_id=cbirds22
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About 65% RG species (1083 / 1689). Almost all of my observations are small arthropods so that actually seems pretty reasonable. Some of these groups are pretty difficult with only photos - for US spiders, only ~42% of all observations are RG.
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3710 RG out of 5931 observations and 31 casual. A ratio of 62%. My new camera is upping my RG ratio (or at least maintaining it as I am putting up increasingly less common taxa), but I still need to work more on getting the right kind of photos.
I also have 1536 species that are RG out of 2068 species for a ratio of 74%. 14 species are casual grade.
Species ratios with at least one RG observations: vertebrates 95%, plants 83%, insects 71%, molluscs 72%, spiders 50%, fungi 48%.
68% and 67% observations are RG for plants and insects respectively. Fungi and Lichens are the lowest at 27%.
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I have 1,683 species, 1,229 Research Grade, 669 Needs ID. I will say that I study nature a lot to understand the characteristics that will help with ID. If I know my photo doesn’t show the field marks that make ID possible, I don’t upload it. If I know it is unlikely that I’ll be able to take a photo showing the relevant fieldmarks, I often don’t take photos - I mean I try to enjoy seeing the plant or animal but I don’t worry about capturing for it science.
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how do you even calculate this? (what if you have a research grade observation for a particular species and a needs ID observation for the same species? do you count the species as being research grade or not or both?)
what is even the point of this kind of metric? if you just want to see that it’s easy to get vertebrate observations to research grade and not so easy to get fungi to research grade, you can see this by calculating based on observations. for example: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_obs_counts_by_iconic_taxa?user_id=broacher.
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I have observed 2880 species, of which 1889 are RG, which is 66%. Almost exactly half of those species are moths or other insects (1448), of which 822 species or 57% are RG. Most of the remaining species are plants (1222), of which 935 or 77% are RG. I do better on the plants because I am a field botanist and know most of the local plants or figure them out by collecting a specimen. I’m grateful to the smart and generous iNatters who contribute IDs, but achieving Research Grade is not my end goal. I really like having a running record of what I’ve seen in my home patch and while traveling, and I also like adding regional specialties to the map and to the CV.
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46% research grade
That said when I post new-to-me creatures, they often take a long time to be identified, so I have learned to be patient. My most recent observation, for example, I think is a spider but it has like… lures (??) on its front legs that mimic stamen and then additional lures on its antennae? So maybe it is an assassin bug. I get a lot of things like that, where the AI just sort goes “huh” so I take a starting place that seems likely and then tag and hope. It is a process.
Thank you for this thread @broacher. 46% seems not too abysmal!
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640 species (woof it seems low when I put it that way,) 392 research grade - so, 61%
out of curiosity, non fungi species comes in at 441/286/64% and fungi comes in at 185/95/51% - I think that fungi number is above the curve, so yay?
(but I don’t fully understand why do it at species instead of observation? What happens when I have a species where some are research grade and some aren’t?
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I have 32,407 species-level observations at RG, and 8,930 Needs ID.
Additionally, 200 are RG at genus level.
And 12,331 need ID and have not yet reached species level.
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I have 16,241 observations with 11,672 being research grade. This is just under 72% research grade. Granted the majority is birds which do seem to get a lot of attention. I usually don’t chase IDs, just wait until someone gets to it. But I do get really excited when something new I’ve seen or unusual gets ID’d.
85% RG by observations
87% by species (although there is a lot of overlap)
It’s probably so high cause I don’t take many pictures of plants (I’m always afraid it’s a super common plant and I’d just be adding to the backlog).
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Observations: 39% (2350 RG, 5964 total)
Species: 44% (732 RG, 1668 total)
Weirdly low compared to other people on here
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If you don’t know what the plant is it’s always ok to post it. Just don’t post photos of the same species over and over and over again unless you have valid reasoning (E.g. surveying, estimating population sizes, etc)
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Plants can be easier, but there are tons of bird photos which, as you note, can be difficult to ID and which nonetheless receive ample IDs: “And a blurry photo of a bird in a sky, which has been IDed 5 minutes after being uploaded.”
My thought is that there’s more of a historically strong bird-watching community of interest, hence lots of people with strong bird-ID skills. I listened to a lecture recently on how wisdom is socially transmitted, and that same idea definitely applies to the wisdom and skill involved in bird watching. There’s a strong community, so many more opportunities to learn by apprenticeship and association.
I see some hints of this in other areas where senior iNat folks often mention offline conversations with experts who aren’t on iNat when confirming or rejecting a particular ID.
The strong, historically active social community is also why butterfly photos get IDed relatively quickly compared to moths or other insects.
The larger community of interest around plants is more centred on their cultivation, and although there have always been plant collectors, I suspect it’s always been associated with the functional aspects of plants (food, medicine, or academic study). The structure of iNaturalist tends to work against the inclusion of these folks as the platform explicitly disfavours cultivated plants. (My opinion here is that iNat should probably change that, as it would help onboard more of the plant-lover community and, in the process, obtain more valuable information about the food sources available to Animalia in urban environments where such a large chunk of observations are collected!)
Another aspect is that the species list of birds (10k to 20k taxa) and butterflies (17.5k) is much smaller than the number of plant (391k) species. Simply put: 1 in 20,000 is 20x better odds than 1 in 400,000.
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This is almost 100% certainly why the fungi I do see get quick IDs are usually ones that are also edible (OR look alikes for edibles.) There’s a strong foraging community, even in the US where people are mycophobic.
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Observations 68% (3,327 RG, 4,918 total)
Species 70% (1,164 RG, 1,667 total)
The species percentage should actually be lower if you take into account situations were you have obs that are not yet IDed to species but you can tell that they are different from other species in that species leaf (that may or may not be IDed to species).