I believe there are projects for fungus observations with some of these extra details included. @lothlin may be able to help advise on how your skills might be best applied as an identifier.
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If it helps, not all users expect a species level ID for every observation. Some do, but many people realize that this is not possible for all taxa all the time.
As someone who finds fungi and lichens quite mystifying, I am generally happy for any ID that specialists provide for these taxa – family, subfamily, genus, whatever – because it tells me more than I knew before.
The fact that iNat relies primarily on photo/audio evidence for validation of observations does mean that it has some inherent limitations for taxa that are not amenable to being ID’d based only on field photos. I don’t think this means that specialists should dismiss iNat as useless for their taxon or that they shouldn’t provide IDs at all because they cannot ID as precisely as they could with specimens available.
I see it more as a question of accepting these limitations and managing expectations of both observers and specialists. It isn’t an admission of failure of either observer or IDer if a specialist suggests an ID that is broader than species level.
Unfortunately iNat’s system (the CV training, the requirements for RG, etc.) tends to treat it as the norm that observations should be IDable to species – even though there are countless taxa for which this is not realistic. I’d love to see the idea that different taxa have different requirements normalized a bit more, rather than it falling to IDers to educate observers (e.g. just because bird people can often put a species label on a tiny blob in the sky doesn’t mean this works for most insects).
(I’ve mentioned before that I wish iNat had a “cf.” option, as it seems like this might help bridge this gap between what can be confirmed based on the photographic evidence and what might be likely or plausible based on other factors – range, frequency, habitat, etc. – but can’t securely be confirmed.)
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I am a bee specialist who is frequently using iNat and the algorythm that defines who is the top identifier of any taxa makes me extremely discouraged to keep doing so. There is a lot of species that were first identified by me and the app just keeps showing the people that just agreed with my suggestion as the top identifiers. In my point of view, this way iNat just takes off the recognition of all the specialists that are carefully analizing all the thousand blurred pictures posted and making a tremendous effort to identify them to species or genus level to acknowledge some random guy that just agrees with anything thats suggested as the supposed “specialist” of that taxon, most of the times being even the one who made the observation. If this continues unchanged by the devs, the community will always have difficulties to tell a specialist from someone who takes iNat as a hobby, therefore won’t knowing who to tag in the observation when asking for the id.
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Some of us do check profiles if we want to be careful to get a correct ID. It’s helpful to tell what you research, what you are happy to help ID, etc. True, not everyone checks, but some do.
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Exactly. I don’t pay much attention to the leaderboards except as a starting point. One quickly starts to recognise who the experts are, and it definitely helps if you can describe your expertise on your profile.
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I know that some mushroom identifiers also use smell or taste. Tools such as The Bolete Filter even include taste as an item in the key. Do these features figure in your workflow? For example, if you see a gray-green Russula, does the fact that it tastes a bit like Swiss cheese tell you anything about what species it might be?
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Yes all ephemeral characters are part if the ID equation. Although some (latex color/color change in Lactarius; color changes in boletes) are sometimes captured in photos, others like taste and smell are not, and people may vary greatly in the sensitivity of their sense of smell particularly.
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More strength to your elbow!
Specialists talking to specialists is great for improving their in-house knowledge, but supporting inaturalist identifications will help spread knowledge more widely and more quickly.
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A nice video answer to this question, released on the iNat YouTube channel just now:
That was fascinating (I remember my first year botany class had an ‘older gentleman’ who was doing his degree by correspondence and wanted to do the practical classes with us at University of Cape Town. Exquisite drawings I still remember!!)
Thanks YouTube, my obligatory ad Kills Bugs DEAD. Matched to the subject of insects 
FWIW, as an occasional observer of fungi and a non-expert identifier of other things, I think that identifying the limits of identification is one of the areas where experts can be extremely helpful!
There are many observations which could be research grade at a higher level (and no longer in the needs ID pool) if only someone with enough expertise could determine that the community ID cannot be improved, and then check that little box way at the bottom of the DQA. That might be almost trivially easy for you, but completely impossible for even rather dedicated amateurs.
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Here’s a short video we posted last week with philwarb and johnascher. johnascher discusses why he makes IDs on iNat.
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That’s so incredibly cool, so many great stories!
It is absolutely the case that I am now more interested in bees because periodically my bee observations get identified. I am still completely at a loss when it comes to most of the species IDs (and I still mistake carpenter bees for bumble bees, argh), but at least I now know that there is something there. For me it is kind of like putting on my glasses and another part of the world comes into focus, where before it was just a blur in the background.
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Thank you. I do understand that. And I do provide those views where I can. And I see and appreciate the work you do. And I hang out with botanists and know it’s just a different standard. Please know how much I respect that. The last thing I meant by my post was to disrespect the experts who share their valuable and hard-won expertise with iNat.
But making the pool of IDers and rewards for them smaller, especially for areas where IDs are more straightforward, seems to be the opposite of what we need to do.
I am a perfectionist in my work, and I fight that all the time. I can do it better, but I can’t do it all. So I grit my teeth and delegate. Fortunately nobody’s going to die if someone I delegate to makes a mistake, and I prioritize getting the work done on deadlines. I’m guessing that’s true here as well. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
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(I can’t do perfect IDs)
Good enough has to be good enough.
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Specialists who avoid iNaturalist are like people who refuse to use cell phones: they get left behind in modern life.
Just as cell phones are essential for modern communication, iNaturalist is becoming vital for any field that involves real-world biodiversity.
Ignoring it limits their impact and their relevance in their field.
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:) And I can’t either.
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For the many unidetified flies:
wing venation is often the best way to ID
also a frontal and lateral angle is necessary for many fly taxa
And post all the angles you have, not only 1 photo (I am surprised to find out how many people have posted only 1 photo but do have more angles)
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Thank you to all who responded to my question, and taking the time to make thoughtful comments. It seems the topic generated lots of interest and useful replies. In particular, @tiwane, @sedgequeen, @thebeachcomber, @philwarb gave particularly good thoughts and data, and I used these in my presentation, along with some of their and my own photos. So, I can report that the three other presentations following mine in the short symposium were very on point and reiterated my commentary [in fact, those speakers specifically attended the Meeting because of the symposium]. I have not ascertained if the presentation was recorded and posted someplace that I could cite here, but I’ll ask about it. I didn’t find it in here: https://ecnweb.net/welcome/meeting/ecn-2024/2023-program/
A major topic of the ECN Meeting, it turns out, was about Outreach, so the points I made on that subject were particularly germaine, with special thanks to @sedgequeen for suggesting out this subject.
I got 2 bits of feedback from senior specialists. (1) an immediate point made was that it’s alot to expect them to do this because it takes away from their already heavy admin loads - but that generated no further public comment (however, I did include a slide citing @DKavanaugh’s 18,000+ identifications of Carabid beetles); and (2) a sidebar conversation was that there is a fear that the IDs made are subsequently overturned by some non-specialists, and would it be possible to have some mechanism they can turn on that prevents this? In rebuttal, I can say this has happened just once to me and it was a annoying and a little tricky to correct; It was easier to delete the observation and reload, and got another beetle specialist to hit Agree. [comment here - when it comes to MANY insects, there may be but one specialist worldwide; so the only way to get such observations, mine or otherwise, to research grade is to enlist their agreement to hit Agree and push them forward. Then, at least, iNaturalist can eventually “learn” what critters are and perhaps even “learn” that they exist.
Unfortunately, the time allotment was but 12 minutes and 3 minutes for questions & comments. However, I think I might revise the talk and give it again at next year’s Entomological Society of Canada Annual Meeting. People need to hear about these things and be encouraged to get involved.
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Or, you know, one could learn about how to ID the species oneself (for example, by doing one’s own research or asking the specialist to explain the ID criteria/provide references one can follow up on) and consequently ID it from a place of knowledge rather than just assuming that the expert is correct and rubber-stamping their ID in order to make the observation research grade.
If one specialist has acquired knowledge, this knowledge is something that can be shared; as a rule some portion of the knowledge (if not the skill) will also be published somewhere (at a minimum, the existence of a species entails that there is a published species description). There is therefore no reason why N=1 has to continue to be that way forever.
People keep arguing that “X is an expert” and “observations of taxon Y would otherwise never become RG” is a justification for why it is OK to ignore the purpose of requiring two independent IDs in the first place. I fail to see why observations of obscure species should be an exception – if anything, independent verification should be more important in such cases, because the likelihood that other people viewing or using the observation can evaluate the ID and correct it if necessary is much lower.
If an observation does not become RG, all this means is that it is not shared with GBIF and the observer does not get a badge on the observation. It does not mean that the observation cannot be found or used for scientific purposes. (It also does not prevent the photos from being used in the CV training – though again, I think it would be a mistake to make choices about observations entirely based on whether they are perceived as benefiting the CV. This is the wrong priority: The purpose of iNat is not to train the CV. The purpose of the CV is to assist users in identification.)
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