FAQ: Identifications
Q: What happens if my plant/ goggo cannot be identified?
• Observations that cannot be identified to species level won't add to the species tally, but will still count to the number of observations score. But we hope to have experts and enthusiasts who will help us identify as many as possible.
Q: How will my observations be identified?
• We hope to get experts in many groups to help us with identifications. So with luck most of your observations will be identified to species level.
Q: Who will identify my observations?
• We will have teams to help make identifications after the data collection period of the City Nature Challenge. So your observations will be identified over the next few days from 4-9 May 2021.
• However, it will help if your observation contains good closeups of features, such as heads, legs, wings, and bodies of animals, and flowers, bracts, leaves and stems of plants, and views of the gills or undersides of fungi. Several pictures of different parts from different angles will help considerably with making an accurate identification.
• If you can help with identification, it will be appreciated. We need both experts who know all the local species in a group, as well as those who can help to put observations into families or genera. Identifiers can be from all around the world, so please rope in your relatives overseas if they can help!
Q: How many "agree"s are needed for identification?
• Two agreements are needed for "research grade". But for the purposes of the City Nature Challenge, a single identification will suffice. We would like to avoid incorrect Identifications; some will undoubtedly occur but we want to catch them as soon as possible.
Q: Are common names good enough or should an observation be identified to genus or species level?
• For purposes of posting the ID, just add the name that you know (common, vernacular, scientific, pet name). The identification teams will mop up afterwards. Get the observation in the bag, and don’t worry about identification during the four days of the Challenge.
• Our southern African common names are not yet on iNaturalist (we are waiting for the community to be installed before doing this). Otherwise the common name would give you the scientific name automatically (unless there are complications - like several species with the same name but iNat should show you these choose the most similar one).
Q: Who determines whether the plant is correctly identified?
• We do. You and I and everyone else. If you see an incorrectly named observation, provide a correct ID. Even if you don’t know what it is, if you know that it isn’t that, then make an ID to a higher level.
• Note that anyone can help. We will need people to ID plants to families or genera to help the expert teams make species-level IDs.
• An example. Someone posts an ant and uses the Image Recognition System to make an ID. It may happen that our southern African ants are misidentified by this as a North American species. If you notice this, just ID it as "Ant" (iNat will make it Formicidae - Ants: so don't worry about the vloekname), and choose, "I don't know, but it is definitely not North American Ant". The Ant team will then mop these up. If we don't have time during the Challenge, we will work through them more leisurely afterwards.
Q: If I photograph, say, a Daisy that I am not sure about, is it a good idea to take an educated guess as to the species, and which someone can correct if necessary, or to leave the identification as Daisy?
• Firstly, in the field, leave it out. Leave identifications until after all your observations are loaded. Unless you are sure and it does not take much time.
• During the identification period, if in doubt leave it out. It depends how much you are not sure, and how many other choices there are. But “Daisy” is good as it will bring it to the attention of our daisy specialists.
Q: Are there any arrangements being made for the identification stage or are we each just going to do what we can when we have time?
• You are welcome to work on your own. But we will be having ID parties. Courses and details will be made available closer to the time.
Q: When getting the total score for each city, what weight is given to the three criteria: number of species, number of observations, number of observers? Surely the number of species should count much more than the others if they want to find the most biodiverse city?
• The challenge is much more than that. There are three separate criteria, and they are not merged. The winning city is for each category, and if a particular city wins more than one of these, then it is the overall winner.
• There are also other criteria reported on, but not on the challenge per se. These are the proportion and number of observations identified, and identified to species. And obvious additional criterion could be the number of identifiers, but these tend to be worldwide and not specific to the City involved. And then of course there are other possible criteria, like taxa (e.g. birds, mammals, insects, plants (note that it is unlikely to be to families), fungi (ditto). And also marine vs terrestrial. And also wild versus planted. And additional perhaps: identified to research grade,
• And we will probably look at additional criteria in the post-challenge evaluation. But we will summarize these here.
• There will also be subchallenges: for instance: What nature reserves got the most observers or species? Which city in southern Africa did best? & there will be groupings – such cities in the tropics vs deserts.
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