igor117

19151 Observations 3531 Species 24233 Identifications 2 Journal Posts 2 Lists 72 Followers

Igor Balashov Curator

Joined: May 21, 2020 Last Active: Jun 9, 2023 iNaturalist

Zoologist from Ukraine, competent in terrestrial molluscs of Europe and North Asia.

My basic suggestions on how to photograph molluscs for iNat

iNat project on terrestrial molluscs of Ukraine

What I like the most about iN is its phone app that allows anyone to document nature easily at the scientific value level (with auto-detected coordinates and date). So that's what I'm mainly uploading here: the photos from my phone taken directly through the iN app, not necessarily good photos, but photos that only intended to demonstrate the organism's characters required for the identification. Though I also like to "collect" taxa. My phone is Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro (till March 2021 - Xiaomi Redmi 3S, often with a cheap macro lens, iLens clip, now it's not needed with 10 Pro, great macro camera here). Also have Canon A650 and Nikon D7100, but not using them often to upload something here. I mainly use my Nikon with a macro lens (Nikkor 60 f/2.8D) for molluscs, not in the field, and nearly never uploading those photos here (with some exceptions like 1➚, 2➚, 3➚), but in November 2022 I've got an old Nikkor 75-300 and now occasionally using it to take some pics for iN (since January 2023 often with Tamron MC7 2x tele-converter).

What I don't like is when people are adding observations without precise coordinates. Please try to indicate coordinates with accuracy at least within 100 m when possible and make sure that it's correct and will not mislead someone later. Your observations could be interesting to scientists and it's possible that someone will try to rediscover some species following your observations or will even use your observations in some sort of study.

Thanks to iN I've become fascinated with 3 very different groups of organisms that I was nearly ignoring earlier: lichens, leafhoppers (Cicadellidae) and leaf miners (mostly moths and flies-agromyzids). While I'm at a very basic level of identifying the first two groups, I'm trying to ID the leaf mines more seriously using the keys and descriptions from bladmineerders.nl (same with galls), but of course it's still at the amateur level, I'm nowhere near to be an expert in this.

I've published 3 scientific papers based largely on the data from iNaturalist, all about expansions of the invasive terrestrial molluscs in Eastern Europe and elsewhere: