The Annotatathometer is set! Here goes...
Last updated 00:00
Hi all,
Looking forward to seeing what we can achieve this weekend. I really have no idea! Rather than spamming you all with notifications all weekend, I'll add regular updates in this post about every 4 hours during the day - including the 'annotatathometer' below! If you've missed it, details of this weekend's team activity are here. Doesn't matter if you want to try to do three, or three thousand, it all counts! I hope this proves a good opportunity for some new people to have a go :)
And here are the identify portal links:
All UK hoverflies needing sex annotation
UK hoverflies needing sex annotation, excluding the difficult groups
All UK hoverflies needing life stage annotation
New Sex Annotations = 14076
New Life Stage Annotations = 18968
24-Nov 12:00 A decent start, especially as most of us are presumably at work! Both types of annotation have already increased by 1%
24-Nov 16:00 Life Stage annotations have overtaken sex annotations (as it should be really - no observation needs to be without life stage, but sex determination is sometimes hard and occasionally impossible).
24-Nov Really nice progress so far this evening! Great work everyone involved, it's really adding up. Hope it makes you feel that the return for your effort is being multiplied! I wonder if we can get close to 40% by the end of the day?
25-Nov 00:01 A really productive first day methinks! Over 12 000 annotations added between us - thanks everyone. And yes, 'Life Stage' just made it over the line to 40.01% (sex is on just over 38%). Let's see what the weekend proper enables :-)
25-Nov 1630 A bit of a slower day so far today - thanks for those of you keeping it going. I know I've had a busy day offline today, so hopefully I'll be able to do a bit more this evening :)
25-Nov 2020 Some nice progress this evening so far. Both annotations are now well over 40%. Nearly 10000 new life stage annotations!
25-Nov 2220 A late surge!
25-Nov 2330 So we've added more than another 10000 today. Life stage annotations are heading towards 50%, sex is on about 45%. Last day tomorrow - I wonder where we'll end up! Thanks everyone for your hard work :-)
26-Nov 0810 Incidentally, the European stats started a bit below ours - sex on just over 27% and life stage on 25% - but we've moved both of them to over 30%!
26-Nov 1400 We have added >10000 sex annotations! And life stage has passed 50%! Two landmarks in one go.
26-Nov 1750 Into the home straight. I wonder if the sex annotations will get over 50%? 1500 more to make it!
26-Nov 2230 The last update before the final result is in :-) sooooo close to getting sex over 50% now, I think we'll make it.
27-Nov 0000 And BONG! time is up. Sex annotations made it to 50.6% and life stage to 55.6%. Great work everyone! I guess I'll have to summarise this soon, but right now it's bed time! Suffice it to say we've done well this weekend - thanks to everyone who's contributed! Quite a team effort :-)
Comments
I am surprised at the amount of larva observations, there look to be at least 4 distinct variations of them, are there any keys/descriptions that would help take them down to subfamily or even genus? Fully aware species will not be possible for pretty much all of them.
@a_emmerson There are quite a few resources out there - including the Facebook Hoverfly Larvae group which has loads of resources. The main published resource is this one https://diptera.info/downloads/df_1_9_Colour_Guide_to%20Hoverfly_Larvae.pdf
Most can in theory be identified to genus microscopically. Subfamily is easy. From photos, realistically Eristalinae don't go further, but the Microdontines can go to species, and the Syrphines usually at least to genus, occasionally to species. Only about 70% of our species are known as larvae. Eriozona syrphoides was only discovered last year I think, and there's one on iNat!
I'm hitting an increasing number of observations where gender is specified but not life stage
@rkl interesting, what URL are you using?
I just click the link on this page. Most of the the genders have been tagged by you (mostly Syrphus) or Florian.
Unfortunately there's no way in iNat to filter for observations lacking both sex and life stage. Presumably you clicked the life stage link - nice to hear that it's filling up with sexed observations :). I've been working from the sex link and I'm finding increasing numbers of observations with life stage but no sex (I'm adding both as I go though).
I do think that some of our overseas members and friends have been joining in - the annotations for Europe as a whole have increased by an additional 4000 on top of the UK annotations this weekend :-)
Not a problem, just an observation - they need to be filled at some stage. Thinking about it it's an inevitable result of our starting with more sex than life stage, especially if the 'no life stage' records were clustered.
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