Why Should You Make IDs?
In this journal post, I want to give you some reasons why you should make some IDs on other people’s observations, not just make observations of your own. However, please don’t interpret this as a passive-aggressive way to make you feel guilty if you don’t make IDs, because, really, life is hard enough right now without unnecessary guilt. (Necessary guilt is when you step on a Goodyera plant because you weren’t watching your step.)
Reason #1: You’ll learn stuff. You’ll learn what makes a good set of photos to ID. You’ll learn there are three taxa of Reynoutria in New England (it took me a while to learn that one). You’ll finally straighten out the leaf characters in Pyrola (maybe; I'm not there yet). You’ll find some cool places to go visit, once winter is over. You might take a stab at learning Cyperus or Plantago or Platanthera.
Reason #2: You’ll help educate the public about the natural world. So many iNaturalists, particularly students who are told they have to use iNat in a biology class, know very little about plants. They don’t know the difference between wild and cultivated plants. They don’t know which plants are native or exotic or invasive. They don’t know what characters to photograph to make an identifiable observation of an oak or a fern or a St. John’s-wort. Even good naturalists – even professional botanists with decades of experience in New England! – don’t know every single plant. If you can help open someone’s eyes to the botanical diversity around them, that’s a win for them and for the preservation of nature. Posting observations to iNat is fun, but getting feedback from an identifier is even more fun and deepens the observers’ connections to the natural world.
Reason #3: You’ll join a rather select group, because not everyone on iNaturalist is an identifier. In fact, probably there are too few identifiers on iNat (except for birds, perhaps). Here’s a quote from the iNaturalist blog from May of 2020 (https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/35758-we-ve-reached-1-000-000-observers):
“To put in perspective what a small fraction of the iNaturalist community of identifiers is, the graph below [you’ll have to go to the blog for this] shows all 2,500,000 iNaturalist users where each circle below represents 1,000 iNaturalist users. 51% of users have posted an observation (blue and yellow), but only 4% have made identifications for other people (yellow and pink). Nonetheless, these 107,000 identifiers have generated 53 million identifications for other people compared with 43 million observations generated by 1,265,000 observers…”
And from the iNat forum on Jan. 22, 2022, from user graysquirrel (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identification-etiquette-on-inaturalist-wiki/1503/165?u=lynnharper):
“At the moment, iNaturalist has 2,000,000 accounts who have posted observations. We’re closing in on 90,000,000 individual observations. Of those… guess how many people have posted identifications? 232,000. And that’s ANY identifications.
The top 50 identifiers on the site have, between us, published 16,000,000 identifications. That’s an average of 320,000 per person. Almost 20% of all observations published get identified by one of the top 50. And 60% of all observations get identified by someone in the top 500. …
Now, of those nearly 90m observations, only 54m are research grade. There are 34m that still need an ID of some kind. Of those 34m, 12m are at species level already, meaning they only need a confirming ID (if the given one is correct). The rest will all require a minimum of 2 IDs to get to research grade, and only if they happen to be spotted by people who know exactly what they are. Most likely they will need 3 or 4 IDs applied to send them into the right subcategories where the appropriate experts will see them.
So say it averages out to 3 IDs needed for each of those, that’s 102 MILLION identifications needed… done mostly by 500 unpaid volunteers.”
In some sense, the whole iNat system rests on the shoulders of the identifiers.
Reason #4: What else are you doing in February in a pandemic, anyway?
Comments
Sort of a comment on your first of these good reasons. I started IDing partly because I wanted to have to look at the details of species/groups I didn't know well (the fall flowering Composites were the trigger, others followed). That helped but I was annoyed that I didn't remember the discerning characters (I do keep a long list, not quite a spreadsheet) of the characteristics I use for for each species, but it's not all in my head. Then I saw a note by someone in a discussion I wasn't really following about the lists of leading identifiers. This person said she didn't want anyone to expect her to remember what details she had used months before in differentiating different insects (or maybe spiders). YES!, the details are important and, for me, kept track of in a paper (electronic) list, but not all are remembered. I like that. Lynn, your important point above about looking at photos helping one to be a better observer/photographer rings really true for me, too. Taking photos for other people to use to ID species can mean a different mind set -- not just a "here it is", but "this is how I know what it is". Or how can you help me decide what it is?
Good project, thanks for organizing us.
Reason #3: you'll have fun!
I have to say, I love seeing what others are finding and adding ID's. Perhaps because I'm not too active in other forms of social media, so I get my fix on iNat! Great article! William
@patswain, you do a fantastic job of leaving notes about why you IDed something as species X! I don't have that kind of patience, unfortunately.
@williamwisephoto, shhhh! That's our little secret, about how much FUN iNat is!
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