Hello everyone. I’m new to iNat and have just begun to upload my collection of diatom observations, many of which I have never been able to identify, which is most of the reason that I joined iNat in the first place.
In submitting an observation, with a darkfield micrograph of a personally collected marine diatom, I provisionally ID’d it as “Unknown diatom” hoping that someone could help me narrow down possibilities or even outright specifically identify it.
Someone ID’d it as “Life”. Is this a useful ID? Is this a useful ID from someone with no record of diatom observation? I would not have thought so, and I was not successfully able to edit my observation back to “Unknown diatom”.
Question 1) What is value of the “Life” ID?
Question 2) How to I edit or remove someone else’s erroneous ID from my observation?
Welcome to iNaturalist! It sounds like you uploaded your observation with a placeholder name, which is just text and not an actual identification tied to our taxonomy. Someone else came along and added an identification, which always overrides a placeholder name. You cannot reinstate your placeholder name, but you can add an identification. In this case it sounds like you should ID it as “diatoms”. This will then label the observation as a diatom and people who are looking for diatom observations can find it. If you want to add notes about the ID (e.g. unknown) that should go in the observation or ID notes, not in the actual ID field.
I’ll also add that in this instance “Life” is not very specific, but it is not incorrect. People often add higher level IDs so that they can be found and properly identified to finer levels.
When you add an ID, such as ‘diatoms’ you also need to click on the ID you want from the drop down menu that iNat provides. If you know the scientific name of the species, you can enter that. But, you must also click on a selection from the drop down menu that is provided, so that what you select is an ID recognized by iNat. and can be listed in the ID section. If you don’t select from that menu, your label will be a ‘note’ and not an ID.
I would certainly include any information in the note (or comments) about it being unknown, any details about the environment it was in, etc., to help the people that will see it and may be able to make an exact ID. Remember, they can only go by the picture and any written info you include, so giving them any/all details that might be helpful is a great kindness! (and will help you get an ID sooner).
Welcome! iNaturalist definitely is confusing, and I hope that does not put you off!
As people before me have explained, you want to be careful to put an actual taxon selected from the drop-down menu. That’s a “real” ID. In this case, probably Class Bacillariophyceae (Diatoms), is good for you. As long as you have Internet connection, the drop-down will populate suggestions as you start typing, and then you can select the correct thing from it. If you type something, but don’t select a taxon off the menu, what you typed is a “placeholder” and it doesn’t function as an ID. From the perspective of the iNat database, your observation has no ID. If I do a search for diatoms, your observation will not show up.
There are users who go through observations with no ID (“unknowns”) and try to move them to a finer category. In this case the person who looked at your diatom didn’t have the knowledge to verify whether it was a diatom (and possibly they missed your placeholder as well, since unfortunately iNaturalist doesn’t make placeholder text all that easy to see), so the best they could do was Life. I know, the ID of Life sounds very stupid, but it does have some functions. It is basically saying, this is a valid observation (not a rock or a cloud or a plastic flower or a completely dark photo) and it’s a thing that’s difficult to identify (not obviously a honey bee or a plant, etc), so someone who likes to browse the category Life for difficult observations should take a look at it. We do have people who enjoy combing through the Life category. In short it’s not the best of IDs but it helps a bit. If you can work out how to put an ID of diatoms, that would be better!
I think the replies have covered the issue. I just wanted to say your images are beautiful and will be a great help to others once they are identified. Welcome to iNaturalist!
Hi! Speaking as a diatom ID-er specifically, your photos have been really great to see on iNat! They’re awesome photos! It seems like you may have been just not adding an official ID base on others responses, but I’ll add a bit more insight from a microscopy identifier side of things:
This ID to “life” happens often in microscopic observations moreso than others. For example, I will ID something as “life” if I’m certain it’s not a diatom, but I cannot narrow it to something else like a different (e.g. desmid) or something that could even be a fungal spore or plant matter. I try to leave a comment when this happens explaining as such, but I admit to being somewhat inconsistent.
So, provisionally labeling an observation with a custom ID is useless as iNat won’t display it. I’ll have to select from the available drop-down ID items, funneling them down to the one ID that’s as specific as possible, stating the uncertainty of the ID in the observation’s comments. Got it.
Thanks, everyone, for your help (and flattering comments)!
Correct. You can not enter a custom ID not recognized within iNat.
Just a note - sometimes it is helpful to funnel up to a broader ID, and add ‘comments’ as to any provisional ID, etc.. Any ID you actually make, with the drop down menu, should be what you are confident in. It is fine to make it a fairly broad ID, and then let it get narrowed down as other people add their impressions/IDs, having reviewed your comments, etc. Even a broad ID (e.g. diatoms) is better than ‘unknown,’ as that broad ID will get it to the people interested in diatoms, in this case.
The system usually does work pretty well, though sometimes it can take a bit of time. From the comments of others, it sounds like you are good at making high quality photos of the organisms, which helps more than you know.
What do you mean by “available drop-down ID items”?
You can enter IDs in roughly two ways on iNat: by using one of the automatic suggestions based on its image recognition algorithm (which is likely not very good at diatoms) OR by typing in the name of a taxon. If you type in a name, iNat will search for corresponding name in its database and present you with a list of matches. This is important because by linking the ID with a taxon rather than just a bit of text, it means that the observation is classified as a diatom or whatever and thereby searchable for people who specialize in the particular taxon. Noting that it is an “unknown diatom” is thus redundant in this context, since by labelling it as a diatom but not specifying further you are already implicitly indicating that you don’t know what type of diatom it is. All observations with complete information are automatically treated as “needs ID” by the system, so you don’t need to explicitly comment that you want help refining the ID – this is assumed.
Diatoms are underobserved on iNat because most users don’t have access to microscopes, so it is possible that many species are not yet included in its database. However, broader taxonomic categories likely are. So if you want a species or genus that iNat can’t find, it is best to enter the next-broader category that it can find. You can then create a flag for curation on the taxon page requesting that the species you need be added. It helps to add a reference and link to the observation, as iNat does not try to maintain a full catalog of species if many of these may never be observed.
For really niche taxa, there may not be many identifiers, so it sometimes takes a while for observations to get ID’d. You may find it helps to add your observations to relevant projects like the one for microscopy to get a few more eyes on them.
Your diatom photos are very beautiful! A glimpse into an unseen world, for most of us.
I know your question has been answered very nicely above.
I just want to add that the proccess of getting observations identified can be a long one, even once you’ve mastered giving them the best start by IDing as finely as possible yourself. So don’t become discouraged if you find that even properly identified organisms don’t reach “Research Grade” fast enough, or ever.
The reasons include, but are not limited to:
All identifiers are volunteers.
For some taxa there are not enough knowledgeable identifiers.
Some taxa have far too many observations for Identifiers to keep up with (but this will not likely be the case for diatoms.)
Some taxa are difficult to identify from photos (even good photos)
Observations show up in the order of most recent first (unless identifiers choose to sort in reverse order) so older observations get pushed further down the pile of “needs ID.” You may find a flurry of interest when you first post them, then there may not seem to be much interest for a while. (But it is exciting when something you forgot about gets a delayed response.)
I know nothing about diatoms, so I don’t know how your observations will fare, but I do know that the forum is a good place to find answers about the workings of iNat, as you are already discovering.