Week 0.5: Avoiding Pitfalls in iNaturalist

I'm really enjoying seeing everyone's observations, from all across the United States! A few tips to help you avoid some common iNaturalist pitfalls.

iNaturalist is a great platform for insect identification. But, it is also a social media community of scientists and naturalists. You may notice that you can 'earn' the designation of 'research grade ID', if two or more people agree on an ID for your specimen. This data is actually used by scientists to study biodiversity of various organisms, across the world! Keep this in mind when uploading your observations. Scientists may very well use your observation in their own research. Thus:

1) an observation that does not have date or locality information attached to it is useless to the iNaturalist community. Without this data, there is no way to make any sense of the biogeography or seasonality of the specimen. If your camera does not automatically populate this information, you MUST add it in manually.

2) iNaturalist may give you ID suggestions, all the way down to the species level. However, if you are unsure of what the species level ID is, back off your identification to the family level or to the order level. An iNaturalist community member may pop in and help you with your ID. The iNaturalist algorithm is really good at pointing you towards what your specimen might be . . . but the algorithm might sometimes lead you astray. And, if you're asked to choose among several potential species, please don't guess. It's better to have an identification that is at the broader level of Order or Family . . . that is correct . . . than to have an incorrect identifcation that is to the more specific level of species.

Publicado el septiembre 24, 2020 11:16 TARDE por gail61