When I post photos of smallish brownish muscoid flies from New York State, the CV almost always suggests they are Eutrichota – it did for all these. I have a feeling that can’t be right. I’m not even sure they’re all anthomyiids. Am I way off the mark, or is the CV?
hopefully someone better at fly ID than me weighs in but a phenomenon i think happens a lot with invertebrates is:
-a very large taxonomic group has many very visually similar species
-only one species manages to be both identifiable and abundant enough to make it into the CV
-the CV starts identifying every member of that large group as that species
issues like this were discussed here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalists-earthworm-problem-and-how-to-fix-it/70743
Basically what yongestation said above.
I’ll add that flies in this group, particularly Muscidae, Anthomyiidae, and Faniidae, can be difficult to tell apart in photos. Sometimes I feel confident enough to say Anthomyiidae but often I’m not entirely sure. Also Anthomyiidae is a difficult family taxonomically.
Eutrichota is fairly common though, at least in eastern North America.
Yep, happens with moths all the time. CV currently thinks every member of Phycitini in my area is a Dusky Raisin Moth. However, I notice improvements with every iteration of the model and I think it is a natural process. I make a special effort to disagree with IDs of species I know the CV tends to throw up false positives on if I know they are wrong or just insufficient.