Help ID Unknowns

What are Unknowns and where do they come from?

“Unknowns” are observations with no identification label. This occurs for a number of reasons including when users:

don’t realize that they can add an identification in the app/website
aren’t confident in what they observed and how to add a coarseID - perhaps they don’t realize they can just type “plant” or “butterfly”
are confused about what they saw and don’t know which coarse ID might be appropriate
don’t have Internet service, so the suggest an ID field isn’t fully functional
want to delay adding an identification until they have time to consult resources, but are doing a batch upload (frequently seen as a large volume of unknowns from a single user - frequently one that has a large number of observations on iNat already).
forgets to add an ID. This can happen to anyone and is easy to overlook.

Observations that have a community ID of “Life” will also show up in unknowns. This ID can be added. It will also occur when there are conflicting IDs that do not agree on kingdom (aka “high level disagreements”).

Why Identify Unknowns

Help observations get into taxonomic groups that will make it possible to link them with someone who can provide a more specific ID.
Train new users and reinforce iNat culture. iNaturalist has a low barrier to entry, but learning how to really take advantage of it does take a bit of time. Using common language to onboard and educate users helps establish a common system. I have provided my common comments below and encourage you to read iNaturalists’.
Learn organisms in this area. Unless you elect to unfollow an observation, you will receive notifications when someone else IDs it. As IDs progress, you will learn from the future identifications.
Increase your understanding of how identifications work on iNaturalist, so that as you start identifying other organisms, you have a strong background in the tool.

Learning to ID on iNaturalist

iNat community guidelines - not specific to identification, but essential background as you increase your engagement with iNat
Identification etiquette tutorial
Video tutorial for Identify Page. You can also click into the observations from the identify page. I suggest playing around with both approaches to see what works for you.
Useful Tasks for Nonexperts - guidance on identifying unknowns and other ways to engage with iNaturalist
iNat Frequently Used Responses

IDing Unknowns Best Practices

Only ID what you know. It is okay (and typical) to go very broad, starting with kingdom (“plant”, “animal”, “fungi”). Get more specific as your confidence and knowledge grows. Sometimes I add an ID I feel is right and the comment “I think”. Sometimes I add a broader ID and a comment about a more specific suspected ID. When to do this is a judgement call. Use feedback from the community to fine tune your approach: If you have many missed IDs, go more broad; if you have many hunches that were right, trust yourself to go more specific.
Watch for placeholders when you click into the observation. These are entered by the user and are sometimes useful or even the correct ID, but did not match with the database for some reason. Look for the placeholder in parentheses next to “Unknown” where the name of the organism would usually be at the top left.
If someone disagrees with your observation and you want to defer to them, withdraw your ID. Don’t Agree with IDs you can’t independently confirm.
Keep an eye on your notifications. If you ID a lot of Unknowns, you will get more notifications. This is how you can learn from the subsequent IDs. I open each notification into a new tab to check my work and see if I want to add additional comments or withdraw.

Links to Identify Unknowns

You can search for unknowns without a specific link by going to the Identify page and filtering for the “something” iconic taxa. This is the icon with the dotted outline of a leaf and a question mark in it. If you do this, in addition to unknowns and high level disagreements, you will also see observations with IDs to taxa that do not have a well-understood place in the tree of life, e.g. viruses and Cyanobacteria. In Yellowstone, this equates to pages of bacterial mats at geothermal features. Those taxa with unspecified locations on the tree of life are excluded from the Unknowns of the Yellowstone Ecosystem Project. You will not see them if you use the link specific to the project below. You will see these taxa on the links to the State unknowns.

Request Exclusion of Your Unknowns from the Project

I think quick feedback leads to better results for most users, so I do plan to ID recent observations regardless of account age. If you are doing bulk IDs and don’t want immediate broad IDs, please message me. I am happy to exclude you from the Greater Yellowstone unknowns project. I can’t stop others from IDing your unknowns and there is no mechanism to prevent people from adding IDs - other than your asking in observation comments/notes.

I will likely get to all unknowns in WY, ID, and MT eventually when I go through state level unknowns in the off season. Hopefully that will give high volume observers sufficient time to add their own IDs.

Frequent Comments

When I started identifying unknowns in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, I found unknowns that had been languishing for years. I also noticed a pattern of users that were not new, but were not frequent users. I think people that have used iNaturalist a little bit in the past, pick it up again when visiting this area. Thus, much of the language targeting new users in the iNaturalist Frequent Responses, did not apply. However, I still wanted to explain what I was doing. The other thing I noticed is that there are some comments that frequently go together, so I did some merging of content that had been separate. I will still sometimes use more than one of the comments below in a single comment when relevant.

Should you see these from me. Know they are never a judgement about your personal use of iNat. I know that a range of situations can occur. Comments are meant to help in a number of circumstances, but cannot cover all.

Adding Coarse ID: I've been helping identify observations that aren't yet identified as any organism at all. Many people helping identify observations on iNaturalist filter the observations by the group of species they know how to identify, like "plants" or "insects", and this general ID will help them find it more quickly. I've added this identification for now, but let me know if you were focusing on a different organism here. Thanks! https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#coarse-ids
Multiple: Looks like you've observed a few different species in the photos here. Each species should be on its own separate observation. There are some tips for splitting the observation up here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-fix-your-observation-with-photos-of-multiple-species/15096. I have tried to identify this to a level that represents all organisms present. Unless the organisms are separated, the ID cannot advance further. Please make a comment if you split the photos, so I can update my ID.
Cultivated/Captive: If you upload captive or planted things like house plants, garden plants, zoo animals, or pets, please mark them as "captive/cultivated" on the add observation screen. That helps make sure the range maps only represent wild populations. Here's a short video showing how to do it in the mobile app: https://vimeo.com/331151155. What does captivated/cultivated mean: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#captive.
Single Observation in Multiple Posts. Hi, it looks like photos of this organism are uploaded as separate observations. When you want to share more than one photo of an organism taken at almost the same time, those photos need to be together. On iNaturalist, multiple photos of one organism taken at the same time and in the same place should all be uploaded as one observation. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses#multipleobs
Exact Duplicates: This observation appears to be the same as another observation you have uploaded. I have flagged this as a duplicate. In the upper right corner of the observation page, you can click the downward arrow next to "Edit" and choose "Delete." Thank you!
Not an organism: Hi, welcome to iNaturalist! iNaturalist is for observations of plants, animals, and other organisms. That is the only identification options available to us in the database. If you need some more help, be sure to check out the Getting Started page: http://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started and Frequently Asked Questions: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help
Low probability of ID: Do you have additional pictures of this organism or additional information about what you saw to help us with identification?
Can’t be improved: A previous identifier has asked for clarification/fix of the observation and the observer has not replied. Marking “community taxon as good as it can be”.
Plant diseases To help direct IDs on iNaturalist, observations typically need to be put into at least a taxonomic kingdom, this can be challenging with plant diseases/infestations because these signs can come from diverse organisms. If you are trying to determine which category to place your potential disease/pest, this website may help: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/signs_and_symptoms_of_plant_disease_is_it_fungal_viral_or_bacterial. While not required, when looking for an identification for plant diseases/parasites, it is helpful to include the host plant information. This can be done in a note, comment or by adding the Observation Field: “Host Plant ID”. If you do not know the host plant, you can request the plant ID first. Once you have that, you can then duplicate the observation and request ID for the disease. You can add the URLs for related observations as notes, comments, or by adding the Observation Field: “Related Observation”. There are projects in iNatuaralist that focus on plant diseases. Projects will frequently require information as a condition of adding an observation (such as host plant ID). If you join the project, it will be available in the projects list on the observation on the iNaturalist website. Plant disease projects for North America include: Galls of North America: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/galls-of-north-america; Leaf Miners of North America: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/leafminers-of-north-america; Non-Metazoan Plant Diseases of North America: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/non-metazoan-plant-diseases-of-north-america; Animal-Caused Plant Diseases of North America: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/animal-caused-plant-diseases-of-north-america.