Why specialists should do identifications etc

Excellent points. I did use the phrase “can” carefully since I know that anyone in a “role model” position has as much potential to have a negative influence as a positive one.

It’s probably important to note to experts how some of their behaviors, etc. might look to members of the general public and how vital it can be to include comments/notes when context is necessary. Discussion is a pretty vital part–and major strength–of the iNat community.

(Yes I’m slightly cheating in my response by ignoring some of the specific behaviors mentioned, but I think for the OP’s purposes it will probably be more useful to focus on broad notes/trends rather than getting into the weeds with specific cases or behaviors–especially since most of those noted aren’t necessarily unique to experts)

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“Outreach” or “service” is supposed to be a component of most academic positions for people who might do identifications here. iNaturalist is a form of outreach! Include in each annual report the number of observations posted that year, the number of identifications done, the number of journal posts made. The numbers can easily look impressive.

There’s something trivial for most people that my colleagues and I found handy. We work with plant species for which identification usually involves several photos showing different features. We can post the observations on iNaturalist and send links to colleagues without clogging up e-mail with large files or dealing with the passwords and sometimes costs of file-sharing programs.

Writers above have made more important points, of course. iNaturalist is great!

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Well, first thing that cames to my mind is that as an entomologist doing regular changes in the database, I ended up publishing a short article regarding a homonym that a friend spotted while browsing the site.

Second things is that, as an expert in phasmids, thepresence that we have here on the site is just amazing. As more and more phasmatologist have worked here, not only the ammount of records started to dramatically increase (people tend up to post more and observe more taxa that get identified) but it also resulted in a lot of new species and genera being recorded for the first time. In some cases we even managed to collect specimens and described them. This, and the obvious fact that having actual pictures of live specimens for studies and comparisons is invaluable. Most, if not all my recent work now uses inaturalist data to complement my findings.

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The little heart icon just doesn’t cover how much I love what you’ve articulated here–I have to spell it out! I’m so glad you and ingolfaskevold and others like you are out there instigating symposia and campaigning to get more specialists to stop complaining about misidentifications and actually do something to fix them, and to teach others.

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As an academic and taxon specialist, perhaps my perspective will help. My appreciation for iNaturalist came slowly, then all at once as a series of epiphanies. I was a member for about two years before I really started using the site seriously.

The first realization was as observer. I realized that I had quite a few photos sitting on my computer that weren’t really doing me any good, but that perhaps this community might be interested in. As part of this, I realized that at my passing those would just go ‘poof’, that no one was going to be able to use them because I was the only one who knew where they came from. So, one winter break I started uploading all of my observations initially as a means of saving them for posterity, but then as a means of contributing to the available date for my primary study species. Doing this with the thousand or so observations of that species led to my interest in identifying.

Initially my role as identifier was quite selfish…I wanted to understand my own study species better. It was a particularly snowy winter that year so I ended up identifying every observation of that species. About 10,000 identifications into that process I realized I could/should be collecting data on the mis-identifications I was encountering as a means of estimating the accuracy of existing IDs. That got me hooked as it became apparent how easy it was for me to ID and how some people struggled, but could be improved as identifiers with a few pointers. So, my second epiphany was there are data projects to be had relatively easily.

A series of personal tragedies led me to turn to identifying as a means of distracting myself from things I didn’t want to think about. However, that led me to my third epiphany in that identifying forced me to figure out what the relevant traits were to ID something to species. The little box that was ever-present saying ‘tell us why’ meant I could transfer my knowledge bit by bit to the community. Again, the realization that I knew things that others wanted to know meant I could provide value-added to the community by clarifying not just WHAT something was, but WHY it was that thing.

Doing this led me to my first project as an attempt to centralize some of that information and tips withing iNat itself. These started as notes to myself, but ended as notes that anyone might use instead of having to pour through endless keys or species descriptions. That is, by identifying obsessively, I realized that I had a really good eye for picking out the relevant differences among taxa.

Eventually I realized the effect that all this had on me, which is to make me much better at being able to distinguish among taxa as well as fo understand the biogeographic distributions of those taxa. This epiphany was a welcome surprise and is one of the biggest reasons I advocate for taxon specialists to get involved in IDing…it’ll make you a better biologist. For me, it has allowed me to see things like rare occurrences (predation or feeding events) as well as get an understanding of the variation present in my study species.

The final epiphany was that there are quite a few research opportunities if I can just. figure out a way to harness the power of the community. We like to say that one should assume people mean well on this site, but it’s more than thst…people want to help on this site, but often don’t know how. So, as a supposed expert, I can guide efforts that might enhance the available data over time. This ranges from telling people what they are seeing in terms of taxon, but also behavior, or age or sex of the things they are seeing. I can do these things at a glance because I’ve been doing it for decades.

My current feelings are that iNat represents an underutilized resource that provides free environmental monitoring.
…that we biologists might be able ti detect change in real time if we are clever enough. There are at least four ways I’m using iNat to provide data.

First, as a real-time window into species extinctions through species current occurrence and eventual absence.

Second, a means of tracking how species move around due to climate change. Given that biologists have already documented ample evidence of low-latitude extinctions and high-latitude colonizations, being able to monitor existing populations for these changes due to climate change is a powerful draw.

Third, temporal changes inactivity are occurring just as spatial occurrences are changing. So being able to document firsts and last for species means changes in biological timing (phenology) are possible with data from iNat.

Fourth, once I understood biogeographic occurrences of certain sister taxa, I began to notice patterns of what can be described in evolutionary as reinforcement. That is, where species come together, the pattern in variation became explainable in the context of those lineages reinforcing their differences as part of the speciation process.

I’ve talked about these ideas with a number of other academics and usually meet with enthusiasm for what I am doing, but reluctance or resistance to actually do it themselves. Many view the community as a bunch of amateurs who don’t really know much biology, but that has not been my experience at all. I have met a number of well-trained individuals as well as autodidacts, who always impress the hell out of me for their ability to self-teach.

The biggest hurdle seems to be getting over the ignorance of what iNat is and what it can provide. There are a lot of misconceptions in older academics about why they should invest their time, what the value to them is, and why what they have to offer is of value. Part of this is that the work academics do on this site isn’t easy to justify in any of the typical categories of teaching, scholarship, and service. iNat has made this easier by allowing one to do things like quantify how many observers one has aided and I’m quite proud of the fact that I have helped over 70,000 observers identify their observations. So the service provided by each of those micro interactions might not seem large via any one ID, in aggregate they mean that I probably have reached many more people through 18 month as a serious identifier than I ever could in a lifetime of teaching. For underserved communities, such as in the tropics, the impact is probably even greater than any one ID can convey.

Sorry for such a long-winded answer, but I wanted to convey the various ways that both observing and identifying has affected me as a biologist. Moving forward, I anticipate building on the relationships I have begun by helping guide observations, by potentially making trips to interact with some of these people, and by continuing to reinforce a skill I took years as a biologist to develop and now get to give back to this community one interaction at a time.

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Bravo! Extremely well-said. Thank you for your thoughtfulness in describing your journey.

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I cannot find the iNat thread again - but - Pareto principle. The observer. Then the visible engagement with IDs and comments etc.

But MANY more people look at and use iNat without visibly engaging - so the visible ripple of petezani on iNat is a real life tsunami, of the gentlest kindest sort. No iNat observers or observeds were harmed.

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Now I agree wholeheartedly with the many positive things said here and that is where your emphasis should be, but I think it may also be important to feather the brakes a little bit. It is important that experts joining iNat buy into the spirit of the site - to encourage engagement with nature by non-scientists, and produce usable data in the process. Using iNat requires a little compromise, and interpersonal engagement: some professionals may be very fixed in their view of how a particular species must be identified for example, and when joining iNat they will find themselves in a community of knowledgeable people who may have different perspectives, use different characters or have a different threshold of certainty; or they may want everything to fit into their own national taxonomic scheme - but this does not work internationally; or they may bristle at the thought that their vote carries no more weight than others. They must understand that nurturing the community is a primary goal. Once you get that, and you are willing to converse as ‘experts among equals’ exploring nature, everything else follows, and they will gain more as well as giving more as a result, but not every expert will have an approach or temperament that is compatible with the ethos of the site.

Most of all, they need to find it fun! (at least most of the time!) Then others will have fun learning from them, or even disagreeing with them.

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When I asked if this ‘jonquil’ should have one or two ells, I didn’t expect the answer to come - from the author of my field guide, who checked thru the publications to find the answer for us!

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Simply clicking the heart icon doesn’t say how much I absolutely LOVE this phrase!

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Something I have not seen mentioned is that some experts who developed an expertise at identifying dead specimens are concerned that they will not be “expert” at identifying from photos. There is a learning curve that some do not want to go through because they fear for their professional reputation. It is something real that needs to be addressed.

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All the important points have been made by others. I would just add that iNaturalist is growing rapidly. There were 45M insect observations at the end of 2023 and 1.5m observers. With the current rate of growth there will be 100M within five years and 2.5M observers. A base of data of that size is just too important not to get involved - it is too large to ignore.

As The Beachcomber pointed out, there is a concern that there is a tsunami of incorrect IDs to deal with before the data can be used in research. I agree with him that this shouldn’t be a concern. It hasn’t stopped the thousands of projects that use the data. There is a team in Singapore that has vetted millions of observations of Hymenoptera to sanitise the ID data for their projects. And various other taxons have a similar effort underway. Various taxons groups within Lepidoptera, Hemiptera and Coleoptera, for example, have a high standard of accuracy as a result. The more of these research projects that exist, the more the data quality improves.

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I think the experts in that category have found their own solution to the ‘reputational risk’ issue. A rough scan of the top 500 identifiers shows that a significant number chose not to reveal their personal information. And who can blame them.

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An interesting contrast

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No help for your presentation, but personally, I think it a GREAT Idea! Too many (including myself!) make IDs without fully knowing WHY other than the visual aspects of a creature, usually an Insect. Thank you!

From my perspective, expert help would be greatly appreciated! Especially on the follwing topics:

(1) check the taxonomic tree; if there are errors, flag them (with reference) or become a curator, if you can spend the time. As a hobby entomologist, I can implement published checklists and books, but very often I might miss a follow-up publication. Reasons: I have no good way to keep up with 100% of the scientific literature, and I have no access to a large number of publications, particularly, (1) 1930-1990 papers (no internet, copyright still active, not on biodiversity library) (2) Asian papers (Chinese, Korean etc) and (3) some of the very recent book series (too expensive, e.g. The Witt catalogue, 60 volumes at 100-150$ each).

(2) identify easy-to-recognize tropical / Central Asian species; it is very helpful even if only a handful species get some IDs. Areas of interest, e.g., for moths would be Mexico, South America, Kazakhstan, W China, tropical Africa and Indonesia/Papua.

(3) make your own research available! As a hobby entomologist, I appreciate every “open access” publication! I also appreciate public checklists and websites. Good examples:

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I am so happy to see this post and learn that observations make a difference! I would like to add to all the other excellent comments that making some headway on IDs in plants, insects, and fungi would encourage iNaturalists to seek out and post more of these observations. It would be amazing if you could write a post about what would be helpful and any tips (if there are any) that would improve the quality of observations in your field. I think this is mostly just a rephrasing of some of your bullet points. So, to summarize and echo others, Huzzah!

I’ve about given up on photographing those three taxa because they seem to be virtually (in the sense of on the web) ignored.

Plants and insects are three quarters of iNat obs. iNatters do not ignore them. But the IDs are not as quick and easy as birds and ‘animals’.

Try offering identifiers 3 different views of your subject. Flower / fruit, leaf detail, and a wide view. Or face, side and back for a not plant.

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Thank you for that link. Hopefully people will use resources like this for underserved parts of the world.

I’m a mycologist not an entomologist but your point really resonates with me. My workflow when I identify mushrooms is to first fit them to at least a form genus then examine microscopic characters, which are important for this group: spore size, shape, ornamentation, along with other cell and tissue structures. It’s often only when I take that look under the microscope that I feel confident to approach an ID and in many cases I wait for a DNA barcode before proclaiming a final ID. Not only do I not feel expert for many mushroom groups when looking at a photo, I don’t believe that anyone can reliably identify some taxon groups from a photo (which doesn’t stop people from doing so - there really should be a category “can not be reliably identified from a photo”). My compromise is that I try to post high quality observations with a fungarium-accessioned specimen, photos, microscopic characters (if diagnostic) and DNA barcodes for my observations. I have considerable difficulty adapting to an ID workflow based only upon photos and this has impeded me from contributing as an identifier.

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