UK Hoverflies (Syrphidae)'s Journal

Hello all!

It's clear now that we are finally in identifying season! For the first time since the project started the number of UK hoverfly observations needing ID has actually fallen (albeit only by 1%).

As we move into the long dark evenings and do a bit more identifying etc, do please feel free to use the comments section of these articles to share your own plans, experiences or questions!

Identification

Let's break down this slightly reduced Needs ID pile. Both Syrphinae and Eristalinae are down about 1%, but this masks a bigger (3%) fall in Syrphini, partly cancelled out by rises in Bacchini and Melanostomini. 26 genera are down, compared to only 13 up (and 31 unmoved), which is great. The biggest fallers (with >50obs) are Sphaerophoria (-24%), Dasysyrphus (-20%), Rhingia (-17%), Meliscaeva (-14%), and Parhelophilus (-9%). The fall in Sphaerophoria is particularly pleasing - the other really big genera moved as follows: Eristalis (-1%), Eupeodes (0%) and Syrphus (+4%).

If you want to try your hand at identification check out the resources page, just doing a few will get you started, feel free to tag me or another of the recent top identifiers if you want your ID checked or have another question - you can do this by putting @ in front of the username e.g. @matthewvosper. You might want to consider adopting one simple genus (learning all 280ish UK hoverfly species is a rather daunting task), or using the Syrphus and Sphaerophoria guides in this project. Alternatively you could try moving observations that are currently identified only as 'family Syrphidae' to whatever lower level you feel comfortable with. So many options :) - there are handy URLs here to find the observations that still need annotations or IDs. I'm continuing to attack Sphaerophoria this month, feel free to join me!

Annoation

On the annotatons front, we are continuing to make a huge difference. Well done everyone involved!

Adding annotations to observations is a great way to get started contributing to iNat and the UK recording scheme. Read the annotations and sexing hoverflies articles if you think you might like to chip in!

All the best to everyone.

(All data compiled on 31-Oct-23)

Hello all!

Now the season is upon us when we can engage the UK hoverfly pile in battle! it's always more fun to work as a team, when we can support each other and see more progress getting made.

In that spirit I'd like to declare next weekend (Fri 24 - Sun 26) our first UK Syrphidae Annotatothon! Working together, let's how many sex and life stage annotations we can add over the course of the weekend.

We now have 72 members of the project - thank you! I am aware that people have joined the project for a variety of reasons - not all with the aim of adding annotations and IDs - and that's fine. But I'm after those of you who might like to have a go :-). I've said a few times that adding annotations is an easy way in to contributing to iNat data. So here's a few snippets of info that might encourage you!

Did you know? If everyone in this project annotated just 6 observations per week, that would be enough to keep up with the average rate of new UK hoverfly observations across the year, that's less than one per day! (9 per day and we'd keep up with the world!!) The same is true for IDs of course.

Currently, just over 30% of UK hoverfly observations have sex annotations, and the same for life stage. That's already an improvement since before the project started. About 50 000 remain unannotated. Let's see how far we can shift that dial next weekend! Any contribution large or small is welcome (we can't break down who did what anyway!)

For more information on how to do this see Determining and annotating the sex of hoverflies in iNat. And remember, the easiest way to add annotations is on the annotations tab on the identify page, using the keyboard shortcuts. 'la' for life stage=adult, 'll' for life stage=larva, 'lp' for life stage=pupa, 'sm' for sex=male, 'sf' for sex=female and 'sc' for sex=cannot be determined, cursor key to move onto the next observation.

Feel free to contact me or @rkl for help information or advice before or during the weekend. Tag one of us into an observation if you want another opinion.

Here are URLs that you can use next weekend:

All UK hoverflies needing sex annotation
UK hoverflies needing sex annotation, excluding the difficult groups

All UK hoverflies needing life stage annotation

Feel free to use the comments section below to discuss anything you want about this :-)

Happy annotating!

[PS This month I've managed to complete the annotation of all the Sphaerophoria observations in Europe: Have a look at the sex and life stage graphs on the Sphaerophoria taxon page to see how much benefit there is to data quality compared to a less well annotated genus like Eristalis (you'll have to filter to Europe or UK yourself if you're on the international site).]

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 :-)

Hello all,

Great work on the annotations so far this weekend - it'll be great to see where we end up!

Apparently some of our annotating is triggering old observations that have been research grade for ages but were never sent to HRS because of a glitch, to be sent to HRS. Unfortunately quite a few of these have obscured locations, which is a pain in the backside for them. I've updated the URLs in the main post to exclude obscured locations - please could you refresh the URLs you are using. (If you are not using the links in the main post - just add &geoprivacy=open to the end of whatever URL you are using)

For a reminder of why obscured locations are a problem for HRS see Optimise your own observations for the UK Hoverfly Recording Scheme

Many thanks