2682 species; of which 1515 to research grade (about 57%). A lot of inverts in an underserved region, so a lot of the time, I’m the only person I.D.ing, and if I’m not, I can’t agree to a given I.D. until a lot of reading because descriptions and identifying features are… difficult to find and often in languages that take me a long time to read.
(And of the 345 bird species I have apparently observed, 338 are RG. 98%. Because birders know no borders, and Cisticolas exist to give them empathy with everyone else).
(Edit: also slightly unfair to the inverts that several of mine can’t be RG for the near future, because I know they are new to science but failed take a specimen / the specimen got eaten by ants / haven’t done anything to get them described).
From my 2775 veryfiable species 1766 are RG, so around 63%, which is much better than I expected actually.
All vertebrates are above 90% RG. Insects (35%), Plants (40%) and Arachnids (41%) are the ones pushing the overall RG ratio down (fungi/lichen as well (21%) but they are only a minor proportion of my observations). The main reason for this is probably the locations where I observe. Not many experts on south american insects and plants and the few that are there have a rough job with many unsecure or undescribed species, so it is often the best choice not to go to species level, even if one observation looks like something known.
25,907 and 17,000 RG. Pretty good given I do a lot of insects (moths). A good amount of the easy ones are confirmed but there are probably hundreds of easy species that sit in “Needs ID” limbo just overlooked and old. If I come across them I will tag someone in the top IDers, but if they ignore it I usually will not bother tagging again. I know some of my moths will never get RGed because they are poor photos or not IDable without specimens
Can you describe the process you used to get the numbers you want? I assume you and not expecting people to go through their observations list and count each one.
I’m at ~65% RG (~1600 out of 2666). I have been photographing things that both difficult to ID without a microscope or aren’t particularly popular on inat (fungi, grasses, lichen, tiny insects). While I was hoping to get my species count up, it has actually come back to bite me in the butt since those observations don’t get verified as often which lowers the RG percentages.
Time to focus on mammals, herps, and birds for awhile.
You have to do it from the website and not the app. Go to your observations and click on the gray filter tab to the right of the search bar. In filters, look to the left and check the box that says research grade and then the blue tab that says ‘update search’. It will show you how many observations you have that are research grade. Then you can divide that number by your total observations and that will give you your percentage
It also depends on the area you live, and even within an iconic taxa and area, if you are better at spotting weird unusual things, you will probably be lower on this metric. Sometimes it seems like higher quality observations can actually take longer to go RG, maybe because people are less willing to guess on higher quality observations or maybe because the more features you show the more likely it is that one doesn’t match the key perfectly. Optimizing for converting ‘at species but needs ID’ to ‘RG’ also encourages observers to just blindly agree with suggestions, perhaps more than they sometimes should. I would honestly encourage people not to try to optimize for this metric.
For me 2391 species are research grade out of 3168 total species observed, which is about 75%. This is an interesting metric, I never considered what percent of my species weren’t confirmed by someone else (or suggested, but I never ‘agreed’ with). It will be interesting to go through and see which species aren’t research grade!
11% of my observations and 20% of species I have observed are research grade. Omani beetles are not commonly identified and that is what most of my observations are of.
83% of 7540 are RG. Non-RG are almost all cases of no other ID’s, so it’s mainly a backlog issue. My obs are mainly (81%) plants, the remainder mostly vertebrates. As an IDer, I know that I tend to focus on geographies that are largely undersampled, and it surprises me that most of my non-ID’d observations are in geographies that are largely untouched by any iNat observations.
I was recently at an EcoFlora presentation at Marie Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota, FL. One of the area’s top identifiers, jayhorn, was speaking. He mentioned that the algorithm that identifies plants has gotten better over time, so I went to some of my earlier observations and was able to try to id them again with quite a bit of success.
CV adds a bunch of new species almost each month.
It is rewarding to see that ‘my obs’ have helped get that species Included in CV.
(Needs about 60 obs to get to the required 100 photos) https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/81417-a-new-computer-vision-model-v2-4-including-1-994-new-taxa
There are links in there for all the iconic animal groups. And plants (the whole gamut - moss fern palm pine flowers and and and) Which you can filter to your location to see what was added for you and yours in this latest batch.
I’m very curious for what the average is, I suspect mine is likely higher because I live in a place with lots of people with phones which I feel like makes it more likely for people to ID stuff in my area than somewhere more remote.
I expected insects and arachnids to be at the top for number of observations and the ratios are somewhat close to what I expected. A bit lower than what I was hoping for arachnids but there aren’t many people familiar with Korean spiders adding IDs to my observations, even for some of the common and distinctive species. I didn’t realize the number for plants was so high. I imagine uploading photos of flowering plants in bloom - along with the leaves and stem/bark - helps.
Highest % RG
Before checking the numbers I thought birds would have the highest percentage. While a very high number of my bird photos are research grade at species, I also have bird observations with no interaction. I’ve mentioned this before in the forum, but the stereotype of ‘bird observations getting to research grade in seconds’ does seem tied to geography.
Korea, meanwhile, has a few regular iNat users who are well-versed in reptiles and amphibians, so it’s those that most easily get to research grade if the photos are decent. The one reptile I have that’s not at research grade is a local endangered species that I photographed in an enclosure at a botanical garden - so, casual. Mammals are likely low(er) because I have several photos of water deer (Hydropotes inermis) tracks and droppings that no one has come along to confirm. That, and any rodents that aren’t Siberian chipmunks (Eutamias sibiricus) are harder to get to species.
Lowest % RG
I’m not surprised to see fungi top the list here. There aren’t enough identifiers, there are too many lookalike species, my photos don’t include enough detail, and I don’t know enough about fungi to be able to confirm or get things started with a species level ID of my own. The Unknown category has two viruses and two ‘state of matter life’ observations, with Covid-19 being the one at RG.
My fish observations are all from the surface so there’s a combination of not many people IDing fish here and the photos being from a top-down angle that doesn’t always allow for great detail. I am bummed out that arachnids are third in the list but not a lot that can be done about that.
For comparison, here are the figures for five of the top observers in South Korea:
By number of observations:
-
-
1
Insects (46.3%)
Plants (23.1%)
Amphibians (96.0%)
2
Insects (34.4%)
Plants (20.0%)
Arachnids (26.7%)
3
Birds (83.0%)
Insects (56.9%)
Plants (28.6%)
4
Insects (44.7%)
Plants (30.2%)
Birds (88.1%)
5
Birds (87.8%)
Amphibians (57.1%)
Insects (32.8%)
By highest % RG:
-
-
1
Reptiles (96.4%)
Amphibians (96.0%)
Birds (81.5%)
2
Reptiles (87.3%)
Birds (68.4%)
Amphibians (65.7%)
3
Reptiles (90.5%)
Birds (83.0%)
Amphibians (79.5%)
4
Reptiles (95.5%)
Birds (88.1%)
Amphibians (79.7%)
5
Birds (87.8%)
Reptiles (85.0%)
Mammals (71.4%)
There was one case where an observer had fewer than 50 research grade observations of the taxa (42 of 44 verifiable) but otherwise there were at least 100 verifiable observations for each of those taxa.
