Streamlining the review process for leaf mine observations
A prolific poster of leaf mine observations wrote to me today to make sure he wasn't overwhelming me with an excessive number of observations, and I thought it might be useful to share my reply with everyone.
It is true that I'm still two months (and about 3800 observations) behind in reviewing observations in this project after my summer travels, but I certainly wouldn't want to rein in anyone's enthusiasm for leafminers! If you do your best to ID each observation, it isn't really too much work for me when I just get to click "agree" on most of them. And when you have no clue, the AI/CV is getting better and better--when I was new to iNat I used to get grumpy about people suggesting ridiculous IDs based on what the computer suggested, but the real problem is people who go around agreeing with ridiculous IDs when they actually have no clue. At this point, if you select the computer's top suggestion when you don't know what a leaf mine is, I think you'll be right more often than not, and if the ID is wrong, it's not any more work for me to add the right ID than it is if you just put the default "Pterygota."
And just to make sure you're aware, the first edition of my leafminer guide is available for $5, and that should help a lot with identifications when you know what the host plant is: https://bugtracks.wordpress.com/2021/06/25/leafminers-for-all/
I'll add that if you want the most current and complete information about North American leafminers, I recently started sending out monthly installments of the third edition, as I announced on my blog earlier this month: https://bugtracks.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/announcements-3/. The second and third editions include a spreadsheet of 1000+ mystery mines that need further investigation, for those of you who are interested in collecting and rearing leafminers to try and solve some of these mysteries.
Thanks everyone for your interest in leaf mines, whether you only occasionally photograph them or post dozens of observations a day!
Charley
Comments
I made it a goal, this summer, to try to notice and observe more damage on plants. I'd fallen in love with galls a few years ago but I thought I might tackle leaf mines, chewing on leaves, fungal/rust, etc. I just discovered this project after you provided an ID for one of my leaf-mine observations and I checked out your profile page. I'm excited to gain more knowledge and awareness of leaf-miners. Thanks for heading up this project.
Thanks for all you do to educate us on the fascinating world of leafminers and for all the many many many IDs!
Totally agree with @scoutingforplants’ comment. Make sure you save some time for yourself, @ceiseman.
Thank you Charley, for all of this work!
I've definitely started paying more attention to leaf miners and it's good to know that one can be reasonably confident about the iNaturalist ID - and I'll add, the AI is getting better because of YOUR work on this group of organisms! If only we could get more experts to help train the AI!
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