Pan Species Listers anywhere? (2 Viewers)

[Owene]

But I completely agree AI needs to be employed cautiously. I have had photos of insects with busy backgrounds be identified as northern right whale!

As someone who uses apps a lot I’ve had bad photos ID’d as all sorts of things, frog seems the most common but I ve very rarely had a bad photo with gps position identified confidently as a confusion species.

I think you need to be really honest yourself about the quality of your photo and whether it shows the things you need to see.

Which in turn needs you to learn the things you need to see.

I probably do have some misidentified insects and plants but I also now in the field can go ‘that’s a sphaerophoria and I won’t get an Id from photo’ or ‘wolf spider but won’t get to species’ and be happy with that and that’s more knowledge than I had before.

You also have to pay proper attention when an app shows a confidence level

I’ve also had an app Id an out of range pectoral sandpiper from a wobbly phone scope shot that looked like a rock on a background of mud. (Which id seen clearly in said scope before trying for a record shot obviously). at some point we have to realise that a phone searching thousands or millions of photos of a species will over take one aging man looking at a paper guide but it does require honesty from the observer about what they are putting in and how they are reading what comes out and a willingness to leave things at ‘I don’t know’ that some people don’t have

Also it is of course a starting point. Take multiple pictures and when an app suggests something then read further even if only a google image search of your own.

 

[Tiraya]

Oh yeah, I've brought that point up before. Using an AI recognition isn't too dissimilar to using a field guide. You can view likely options, but it's on you to make the correct ID and choose from the selected options. Or if it doesn't match any, back to the drawing board!

 

[Tiraya]

As Owene also said above, a lot of the challenge is realizing that you not only have to get identifications on anything and everything, but ideally understand those identifications yourself. Especially if you want to be able to recognize potential lifers in the field and know which views you might need to confirm it.

As for me, I have some backlog to sort through here...I suspect my list won't be changing much until then, although I did have a new type of rose sawfly on the garden roses yesterday -- Cladius pecticornis.

 

[opisska]

7000 animal taxa broken during the Ghana trip. According to iNat IDers, we accidentally got first ever iNat observations of two species in the process. While it's a completely random occurrence (we had no idea what we were looking at), it makes me feel groundbreaking A lot of things will remain unIDed though as the experts on this area are scarce (it took a surprising time to get IDs even on birds!). We could have done more but one DSLR camera broke down on the third day so we had to do macro photography either by switching lenses (risking missing birds during the time) or with a small compact camera (which has to be put close to the subject and often scares it away).