@sgene - Exactly. The current system (if I understand it correctly) involves setting the ‘Can the ID be improved’ to No, but my impression is that is not commonly used, and requires expertise a lot of people don’t have. If it’s accepted by the community that, for example, an observation can’t be improved to below genus with just a photo it could tag it automatically as Research Grade. It could still be classified down to species in the same way a Research Grade species can be classified to ssp.
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I think it’s a good idea. I could see going even further, so that Research Grade could occur at whatever is likely the lowest level that can be expected to be identifiable by photos. It seems more fair to me to have it applied automatically across all observations rather than only on those observations that get enough attention to get the DQA box checked.
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Identification at the molecular level is critical, my concern is how do we keep people who do not have access to it involved. We have a system that drives people to seek research grade, without the knowledge that with a hand lens in the field it is not achievable. We are learning alot from DNA analysis, and other molecular investigations. The relationships between species and the concept of clades are all critical to understanding the evolutionary relationships between species.
The keys in the Flora of Virginia were written to “minimize the need for a dissecting scope for the identification of flower parts”, some how we need to convey the importance of field identification and that it is perfectly all right if it is not to the species level.
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