The Red Book and insects

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IT IS AND WHO DRIVES IT ALL ????

This is the second time I've seen an ad for it. Most likely, another stillborn project. The idea is good, but the implementation is lame. It is clear that everything was done by enthusiasts on the knee. The phone app, judging by the reviews, is raw and hangs.
To be successful in such a project, the first step was to draw up a business plan for how it would all work, find an investor interested in it, hire a team of professionals, and already attract users based on human psychology, building a motivation system. And you can't get very far on volunteers alone.

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IT IS AND WHO DRIVES IT ALL ????

Pictures:

big_brother_amateur.png — (270.9к)

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IT IS AND WHO DRIVES IT ALL ????
https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Why don't you check out wickipedia? Everything is there
iNaturalist.org began in 2008 as a UC Berkeley School of Information Master's final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda.[1] Nate Agrin and Ken-ichi Ueda continued work on the site with Sean McGregor, a web developer. In 2011, Ueda began collaboration with Scott Loarie, a research fellow at Stanford University and lecturer at UC Berkeley. Ueda and Loarie are the current co-directors of iNaturalist.org. The organization merged with the California Academy of Sciences on April 24, 2014.[9] In 2014, iNaturalist celebrated its one millionth observation.[10] In 2017, iNaturalist became a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

The phrase from the final part of the mailing list explains a lot:

You have received this message because you are subscribed to the group "GBIF in Russia".

Well, what can I say? Valuev?
It is necessary to study the literature on methods of including insects in the CC.
In general terms, eurybiotic species and migrants, such as the admiral, cannot be included in any CC, since they can live in almost any biotopes. They are also migrants.
And is it a lot or a little - about 1 admiral per kilometer of the route? And from what distance can a pedestrian see the admiral? It turns out that about 5 or slightly more admirals were seen on an area of about 60 hectares (6000x100 m). And if you take a parallel route 200 m from the main one? And what else? A eurybiont migrant, such as the admiral, can be seen in dozens of copies. And how much of it is there in the entire territory of Bashkiria (maybe, except for large agrocenoses)? The bill will go to hundreds of thousands. In addition, a migrant who constantly arrives from the west.
Dear T. Valuev! Insects have long been introduced to the CC not only because they are large and beautiful, but also because they are local and vulnerable - that is, they live in small, specific and vulnerable areas. To do this, you need to attract specialists who know where and who to look for.

You can write to him personally. He doesn't go to the forum. So he will remain a genius - in his thoughts...

iNaturalist is a good project. I like. I will participate in it. And here is an article about it: http://ai-news.ru/2017/12/inaturalist.html.

I like the map in it too. Northern Russia is surveyed worse than Greenland.

The phrase from the final part of the mailing list explains a lot:

In fact, the students sent me this-almost with the same question. I don't see anything reprehensible in the fact that they are at least interested in something on the subject of natural science...

In fact, the students sent me this-almost with the same question. I don't see anything reprehensible in the fact that they are at least interested in something on the subject of natural science...

It would be better if you told them to give photos to you and your colleagues. Because photos sent "there" will simply disappear without a trace.

It would be better if you told them to give photos to you and your colleagues. Because photos sent "there" will simply disappear without a trace.

Where are they going to go? Unless the server barks at them (because now the project is growing almost exponentially)... But let's hope that doesn't happen.

In general, a project is useful if you are aware of its capabilities. Of course, for groups like the majority of "micro-lepidoptera", it is almost completely useless (unless they start uploading collectible specimens there, which may happen sooner or later). But for groups that are clearly (or at least in principle) distinguishable by (fairly adequate) photos , this is very useful. Here, for example, the European coverage of Odonata right now.

Pictures:

inaturalist_odonata.jpg — (279.75к)

Why do some people dislike the project? You want to participate, but you don't want to.
My opinion is that the project is useful and I participate in it. I uploaded photos to Yandex. Fotki, but they've accumulated and now it's called Yandex. Pictures, loaded on flickr and there, too, everything became not okay, paid content if more than 1000 photos. Deleted all uploaded photos there.
Naturalist is still the only narrowly focused site for nature lovers. The site interface is quite user-friendly (the map with observation points deserves special attention), there are also enough participants from all over the world and from Russia.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?pl...&verifiable=any

Insecta.pro why didn't you like it?

I read Valuev.
A lot of letters is the first one.
Completely unstructured text is the second one.
Well, it's clear that everyone around us is to blame, except for the author.

One question arises: why did you spend time on this scribble?

Insecta.pro why didn't you like it?

And I also load it there, close some holes.

Yes, the server works until the person managing it gets tired of it...or something worse could happen.
That "European" coverage is no better than what was written more than 10 years ago in the book of Djikstra and Levington. But it is not "European", but only Western European. We have 3 orders of magnitude more information about this common and ubiquitous species than is indicated there. It's just that the authors don't know. And this is the fate of all such local amateur projects.
If the Ennalagma cyatigerum type should not have any tricks, it is easily defined and ubiquitous (and you don't even need to waste time mapping in the middle latitudes), then with many others there will be unavoidable, unverifiable and uncorrectable errors. As long as this information dump does not die a natural death (see above).
We don't need it. We have a normal literature where it is possible to mark the contribution of everyone.

Dear Mr. Nemov,

You constantly use the pronoun "we". Who is "we"?

As for your substantive objections.

1) In the case of the dragonflies of Europe, no uncorrectable and unverifiable errors are expected. All dragonfly species in Europe are relatively easy to identify (at least by a specialist) from a properly taken photo. What is undetectable from the photo (up to the view) simply won't get the "research" status. With complex groups, the situation is different, but I have already noted this above.

2) The project as a whole does not have" authors " in the literal sense of the word; observations have authors and definitions have their own (each has its own). Dragonfly experts participating in the project know and understand everything. The advantage of such projects (compared to books like Dykstra) is that there are specific points, often with very precise coordinates. I pressed the button and looked at it. Dykstra's distribution maps are given "in general". One complements the other well.

3) You will laugh, but the really widespread and, as a rule, ubiquitous species of E. cyathigerum in Kharkiv region is for some reason relatively rare.

In general, such projects are, of course, purely voluntary; those who do not want to-do not participate, do not use, and generally do not look there. But I wouldn't just throw mud at you like that. But this is your style, what can you do?

Something like that.

But I wouldn't just throw mud at you like that.

So say it as if throwing mud and showing a negative attitude is something bad. Negativity, especially on the Internet, is the norm! Malysheva Street.jpg

1) Not all of them can be identified from the photo. I can show you photos of Aeshna juncae et Ae. subarctica, and I wonder how you can "define" them. You can hardly identify them in your hands with the naked eye. Yes, and many others-depending on the angle and clarity. And have you seen a lot of random people taking pictures of all the views in a row "right"?

Yes, this pair is not easy... But show me what's out there. You can try it. Just not collectible (such - where neither the color nor the pattern can be properly disassembled-you really need to look, and it would be nice under binoculars). In nature or alive in the hands.

There are such good people. There are not so few of them.

2) Well, I don't know what kind of experts there are. I see there are a lot of" experts " here And why should the local ones be better? Is it really because the condos are "Europeans"? And why bother mapping obviously ubiquitous species? Maybe the admiral and rutabaga will start mapping it, too?

Go in and take a look. Or don't go in if you don't want to, but then you shouldn't make unsubstantiated conclusions.

I don't see any harm in mapping rutabaga and Admiral, especially if it happens completely automatically, without any special effort.

3) Relatively rare - does not mean that it is not ubiquitous. Because there are enough reservoirs in Slobozhanshin. This isn't a desert.

In order not to be unfounded, here are the data (puella for comparison). Therefore, any cyathigerum finds from my region are interesting to me.

You have to "water", what can you do.

Go ahead!

It's been a long time since I looked in, and then Vona said something...
not really, though, I understood where the connection with the Red Book is, well, come on.
In general, kharkovbut has already described everything in sufficient detail here, but, so, I decided to get involved. I'll add my own voice

My experience of using the iNat site is about 2 months.
There are several similar projects of different scale and scope, and each has its own pros and cons. Why should this particular one be rejected?
For Russia and other countries from the USSR, there is still little data, but the increase is obvious, and even the naked eye can see the" reddening " of the map in recent months. I think that the more people learn about this site, the better our territory will soon be represented.

From the pros – there is a database of not only insects + arachnids, but all the world's flora, fauna and mycobiota in one bottle. It is constantly growing. Your observation points will be saved in your profile. The interface is intuitive and easy to use (at the level of young students), it's translated into Russian clumsily, but everything is clear; help, however, and all communication on the site is in English, but who is stopping now?

Observations of the "research level", and this makes utilitarian sense, are automatically transferred to the GBIF database – these are already other servers, and the probability that everything will "crash" at once is much less.

You should not think that the entire "elite" of the world of entomology is just sitting and waiting for you to upload your photos there in order to race to determine them. Different groups have different fates. Experts regularly monitor all new infusions for some groups, occasionally visit them for others, and no progress is visible for other groups at all. But there is a hope that once the case will reach them, they will not go anywhere from there.

There are and will always be errors on the site. This is unavoidable. There are also "fake experts"from the category of those who "can't keep silent", even if no one asks, there are mistakes and normal specialists. Frankly unhealthy people also come in. Not everything can be determined by the photo, and even more so by the bad one, which is also poured in a lot. All this should be taken as an unavoidable cost of such a resource.

But for each observation, there is its author (point, time) and the history of definitions – who and when and how determined it, on the basis of whose definitions it received a research level and also migrated to the GBIF website-so there are no secrets with personal contributions.

The site helped me a lot with analyzing photos from Mexico and Korea, when you don't know the local fauna, make mistakes based on incomplete information, or don't know the local insects and not only insects at all.

Another question about the benefits – the other day I saw a photo of a rider from New Zealand on the site. This genus has not yet been described for the entire Australasian region. Yes, the species has not yet been described, but the exact coordinates of the point where it was found and the date of observation are already available. That is, based on this information, you can already purposefully search for it there, which will definitely attract the attention of your Aboriginal colleagues.

No one pulls anyone there by the ears or forces them to post their observations there, although what will change for you personally if this data gets somewhere else from this site, and not from the Russian one, for example, and becomes available to other people (even if you don't like them)?
The coordinates of your observations can, if desired, be roughened to a reasonable required value (for example, the local population of the Red Book Apollo)

There are, of course, its drawbacks
Initially, everything is sharpened for the fauna of North America, and first of all, the views are offered from there. There are also quite a few observations from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. Other regions include South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, and Costa Rica. Other countries, including Europe, are still significantly worse represented. This is what I deduced for myself by looking through some of the e-mails. I think that in general and in other groups the situation is similar, the Anglo-Saxons rule there. Widespread common types are determined by the site quite well, which I was, frankly, surprised (to what extent progress has been made!).

I haven't used the app for smartphones, and I don't intend to yet. Photos taken by these devices are often of no quality, where it is difficult to see anything at all, let alone determine most of the views. In addition, they are loaded "as is", without cropping or editing.

The system for some groups is outdated! This, I think, can be eliminated, but it will require some body movements, correspondence with admins, which I don't really want to do right now. In some places, there are problems with synonymy.

I didn't like it one more time. For some reason, the opinion of the author of the observation, who initially could not correctly determine even the squad, is later taken into account along with the opinion of the "expert", which he then followed (agreed with his definition). And if there are two identical species definitions, this observation automatically gets the status of "research level". In my opinion, the opinion of such authors cannot be taken into account later, since the probability of an error in the definition by one person increases significantly from this. I think that this is not difficult to implement, but the level of confidence in the definition will undoubtedly increase.

It would be better if you told them to give photos to you and your colleagues. Because photos sent "there" will simply disappear without a trace.

"Does one necessarily exclude the other?"

Mr. Nemov, is your criticism unconstructive, or do you offer anything in return? And if you personally don't need this site, then there is a fairly large community of people who need this site and will be useful. And, probably, you should not speak out for others if no one has delegated such powers to you (as kharkovbut correctly pointed out-who are we?); everyone is able to decide for themselves whether to use this service or not.
Or just the credo "And Baba Yaga is against"?

I'll add more on my own.
Launched the project"Entomofauna of the Russian Fennoscandia" on the iNat website https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/insect...an-fennoscandia - this is for the Karelo-Kola region, if anyone does not know. So, if anyone has data on this territory – you are welcome to share, including the admiral with the turnip

Let me explain. Our northern territories are of little interest to domestic entomologists. Everyone is more drawn to the south: Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Altai, Far East, etc. Local entomologists can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even with the busiest travel schedule in the field season - how many places do we manage to visit during the summer? Here observations of amateur naturalists will be useful, since now almost every schoolchild has a phone with a built-in camera in his pocket. The chances that they will come across something worthwhile on the way are small, but, nevertheless, they exist, which is already confirmed by practice.
The northern distribution boundaries of many species pass through my region, and it's no secret that they are changing, sometimes before our eyes. Many species move north, but it is often not possible to track these processes with small forces.

A good example is the Colorado Potato beetle, a quarantine object. It has been trying to gain a foothold on the territory of Karelia since the late 1990s, but so far it has not been able to. There are no forces or special desires to track this on a national scale. Yes, and who will let some entomologists trample on their gardens, and interested citizens themselves can collect this information and post it on the site, if they know about this possibility, of course. It is simply impossible to confuse this view with something else.

This post was edited by IchMan - 19.01.2019 17: 35

I went to your site in Fennoscandia , and immediately the wrong definition catches the eye, and several participants. In the photo, the butterfly Notodonta ziczac, and signed Phalera bucephala. This is the danger that points will now be quoted or copied without checking the definition. It would be necessary to introduce at least some kind of regulator for the correctness of definitions.

I went to your site in Fennoscandia , and immediately the wrong definition catches the eye, and several participants. In the photo, the butterfly Notodonta ziczac, and signed Phalera bucephala. This is the danger that points will now be quoted or copied without checking the definition. It would be necessary to introduce at least some kind of regulator for the correctness of definitions.

Thank you for your vigilance. This is fresh, and I didn't track it after the holidays, so I switched to defining it. Yes, of course, you can't insure against this, but everything can be corrected, if there was an interest in this.
The first determinant is a naturalist who is interested in everything in a row, and the second is generally some kind of Mexican who somehow came here. You need to know who you trust and whose knowledge needs to be verified

I also don't like such sites, such as macros of all sorts. Once I went to the section of weevils, saw among the Baris artemisiae sphenophorus (another family even!!!) and I almost had a heart attack. I don't go in anymore - too much stress)

Even interesting, Comrade.Nemov, and, from your point of view, regional publications and collections of " Reading them. Petrov and Sidorov", which exist only in paper form-is it a" funeral " of data or a worthy application of the author's efforts?
Where is "you",

that is, all sane people

can you provide your data? Are they sure they won't fade into oblivion?

Even interesting, Comrade.Nemov, and, from your point of view, regional publications and collections of " Reading them. Petrov and Sidorov", which exist only in paper form-is it a" funeral " of data or a worthy application of the author's efforts?
Where do "you",
, present your data? Are they sure they won't fade into oblivion?

What is in paper form is more durable than the Internet. Although there are also mistakes in paper ones. But there they are fixed for a long time and can be discussed. In general, the paper format provides for some kind of editing and a filter for incorrect information. And the Internet in this regard is still a complete garbage dump, where it is time-consuming to find something worthwhile.
Yes, I do. Who needs it, use.

I'll tell you and others. I don't offer anything for those who like to draw on fences. Everything has long been proposed and implemented.

Thank God that even if you don't tell me what to do, it's probably clear that these tips won't be in demand. But why do you suddenly start putting up labels, accusing people who don't share your views of lack of sanity, and that you are carried away to fence themes and some cults?

If someone in the sandbox is interested - for God's sake, I do not have the authority to prohibit, but simply state the fact.
We, i.e. all sane people, are against the American "Baba Yaga" and the servants of her cult.

OK, if you like, sandbox, frog house, etc. You need to clearly understand the purpose of such projects. The main contingent there are "young people" of different ages who have an interest, in this case, in entomology, but for some reason cannot realize it, because in their environment this hobby is not understood. You need to start somewhere, and such sites can provide the necessary support that is important for your own awareness of your aspirations. For some, this will pass over time, for some it will remain a hobby for life, and someone will suddenly decide to study entomology (so that they can teach everyone else later )

I, for one, very much regret that during my childhood there was nothing like this. Well, even books on entomological subjects were hard to find, especially in the provinces.

Do not confuse God's gift with scrambled eggs – this site is for amateurs, it positions itself as such, but why not use its resources for your own non-disinterested purposes? Do you really think that a serious researcher will blindly trust the definitions of some Vasya Pupkin( or John Smith there), using other people's data for their work? And what's wrong if a person who knows something shares his knowledge with Vasya Pupkin and a lot of other people who have an interest in it? He will simply say: "this is your kind of so-and-so correctly defined, but here you wrote nonsense, and in general this group is not defined further from the photo in principle." You see, another time this "yunnat" will think more before signing something without proper confidence.

Maximalism and categorical judgments usually pass over the years, but not always…

And about your site is described below. You can't define elementary things - don't clog up the ether.

I do not have a website there, but only a small project on local entomofauna, which does not imply that its initiator will have to personally verify all the definitions of insects from different groups that have fallen there by geographical criterion. I don't have the necessary qualifications to do this (this is, after all, at least 20 thousand species), nor the time, nor the special desire. What I know - I will determine, it will not take much of my time, and delve into unfamiliar groups-please. This is why the site was created to help you identify specialists.
So "don't clog up the airwaves"

I went to your site in Fennoscandia , and immediately the wrong definition catches the eye, and several participants. In the photo, the butterfly Notodonta ziczac, and signed Phalera bucephala. This is the danger that points will now be quoted or copied without checking the definition. It would be necessary to introduce at least some kind of regulator for the correctness of definitions.

I don't quite understand who and how these points will be quoted and copied? All these observations are linked to specific photos, and if you suddenly want to use this data, don't you even look at them? It's just not serious.

I also don't like such sites, such as macros of all sorts. Once I went to the section of weevils, saw among the Baris artemisiae sphenophorus (another family even!!!) and I almost had a heart attack. I don't go in anymore - it's too stressful)

You can only trust yourself because even if you make mistakes, it is only sincerely mistaken...
But you can, without saying what fools you are all here, take and correct errors in the definition. You look, and the entropy in the world decreases
But in principle, "if you don't like it, don't eat it", no one says that everyone should go to the iNaturalist website together, in rows and columns, or where else to eradicate entomological illiteracy

IchMan, thank you. I was going to write almost the same thing, and now there is no point, everything is written...

Good afternoon!

Following the Flora of Russia project, a similar project dedicated to mushrooms was created on the iNaturalist platform - Mushrooms of Russia.

Until the next field season begins, you can analyze the archive photos. If there are high-quality photos of fungi and lichens with geographical references, feel free to upload them to iNaturalist. They will immediately be included in both regional and general projects. With the definition of common types of macroscopic fungi, iNaturalist does a good job on its own, and in more complex cases, specialists are involved. To date (January 29, 2019), the project has already made more than 6,000 observations and about 1,500 species of fungi and lichens.

Join us!

Sincerely,
Lyudmila Kalinina

Question: who will skim the cream off this project?

I've been using the Inaturalist platform since last year, and it's a very good resource that helps you find the right taxa around the world.
I am engaged in spiders, and in terms of assistance, this resource helped me a lot, it also lit up new species for the country that no one had seen before.
And in general, this resource gives the naturalist, amateur, and everyone else, a lot of interesting information.

And scientific literature, even in its modern form, looks like machine text, with the names of species, the date of collection of material, and the approximate geolocation point, and most works related to scientific nomenclature and scientific activities look like this. Methods for determining species, their accounting and collection, no one describes in their works, there are also no normal photos, I don't say anything about video recording at all.
And yes, most of the techniques were laid down during the Soviet era, when there was no current technology at all.
And precisely because everyone is guided by paper scribbling, which they wrote a lot of years ago, without having modern resources for research at hand, it can be equated with the mammoth stone in terms of its statute of limitations, as well as in terms of its utility coefficient.


And do not hayat someone else's, if your normal no ©

This post was edited by Odessa13-01.02.2019 00: 09

I've been using the Inaturalist platform since last year, and it's a very good resource that helps you find the right taxa around the world.
I am engaged in spiders, and in terms of assistance, this resource helped me a lot, it also lit up new species for the country that no one had seen before.
And in general, this resource gives the naturalist, amateur, and everyone else, a lot of interesting information.

And scientific literature, even in its modern form, looks like machine text, with the names of species, the date of collection of material, and the approximate geolocation point, and most works related to scientific nomenclature and scientific activities look like this. Methods for determining species, their accounting and collection, no one describes in their works, there are also no normal photos, I don't say anything about video recording at all.
And yes, most of the techniques were laid down during the Soviet era, when there was no current technology at all.
And precisely because everyone is guided by paper scribbling, which they wrote a lot of years ago, without having modern resources for research at hand, it can be equated with the mammoth stone in terms of its statute of limitations, as well as in terms of its utility coefficient.
And do not hayat someone else's, if your normal no ©

I take it there's a stone in my garden?"

I'll make you sad. Destroying such a project is quite easy. It is enough to catch a cryptographic virus, or be attacked by hackers with permanent removal of content. This happened as recently as in the winter with the well-known macroid project.

But you can invest time in these unicorn pups. I will remain loyal to the mammoth demon as a more stable and millennia-old substance.

I wanted to keep quiet, but in the light of recent comments, I will express my opinion.

I looked at what is available for my group on iNaturalist. And, you know, without going over all cases, I will say that for my group, as well as for many other groups of insects, this project is completely useless, both in scientific and popular science terms. A huge number of "artistic" (none) and/or not sorted photos at all, a lot of incorrect definitions. They will say - you are an expert, so fix it! But the trouble is that the group, as soon as you go out in the tropics, is largely genital, you can't tell from the photo. At the same time, judging by the definitions, every second person thinks of himself as an expert, which creates a terrible noise, which makes the reverse task-to find points from the records available in the database - also difficult.

Yes, for vertebrae, where the view is often determined almost by a photo of the tip of a pen taken on a mobile phone by a photographer who is crouched in three deaths, such resources are most likely quite useful. But not for most insects in tropical regions.

Interestingly, flickr, a completely commercial resource and not focused on citizen science, has dozens of times more interesting information for me - both geographical points, high-quality photos of species, and captured some interesting behavioral situations. Photographers by vocation do their best, and despite the latest destructive actions of the new management, it's still nice to be there and it's nice to define "for nothing", because, unlike an iNaturalist, you feel that the benefits can be mutual.

As for attacks on paper, well, that's ridiculous. This is indeed the most reliable carrier. According to the "utility coefficient", most of the "paper scribbling that was written a bunch of years ago" will shut up any current citizen science projects. Digitization-yes (paper for reference copy, e-mail for quick access and convenience), but digitalization of publications-no.

https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/21543-a-ra...he-week-2-10-19

Question: who will skim the cream off this project?

Without any doubt, iNaturalist, this is one of the keys to infiltrating and influencing long-suffering Russia - in the West, many simply dream of destroying it by hook or crook... Alas, history teaches us nothing (look at what happened to Ukraine) - at least in school, they don't want to serve in the army, patriotic education is lame, science is at the top of the university, young people practically don't read books - they draw information from muddy social networks... Of course, there are also normal young people, but there are not enough of them and they need to be educated.

Oh, we started for health, and then switched back to politics. I don't see the impact of iNat on our system, I just understand that this site is more harmful than useful for a person without knowledge of the group and without the desire to educate himself, because it will lead to a lot of false and unverified information. But let alone ruin it ... Yes, we ourselves that you want to ruin ))))

By the way, I was allowed to post it.
You will not find photos from the Kaluga Region here. But here are the results. Better than in the "high-tech" Moscow region.

Unfortunately, we didn't find anything at all here (except for just a few pictures)... From a file of 16 meters, I wanted to get a little more than just a cover...

Without any doubt, iNaturalist, this is one of the keys to infiltrating and influencing long-suffering Russia - in the West, many simply dream of destroying it by hook or crook... Alas, history teaches us nothing (look at what happened to Ukraine) - at least in school, they don't want to serve in the army, patriotic education is lame, science is at the top of the university, young people practically don't read books - they draw information from muddy social networks... Of course, there are also normal young people, but there are not enough of them and they need to be educated.

Fortunately, many Russians think otherwise: recently, observations from Russia have increased almost exponentially.

Dear Penziak, what has become of us?