The Leopardopterist

But I feel like parts of my brain are melting at people’s ID requests so I’m totally going to be that guy. 

Recently I joined some UK ant-keeping facebook groups to get updates on mating flights and no one uses the forums anymore. Overall they’re pretty good and interesting, nice bit of community etc. but some of the ID requests…Anyone else who helpfully answers people’s questions about these things will probably know where I’m going with this (@nanonaturalist), it’s the photos.

I remember first getting into photographing bugs years ago and taking photos I thought were decent, but looking at them now? Oh dear, no, out of focus etc. So I know you need to have experience to actually tell a good photo from a bad photo but like, sometimes it feels beyond a joke? I’m not expecting a studio lit image stack but surely people can work out you need to be able to actually see the ant? 

“Hi I caught this queen earlier can anyone ID it for me?” - I took this photo as a joke but actually uuuuh this really isn’t that far off. Grainy, unfocused, apparently taken from halfway across the room for some reason. Or other old favourites like a lovingly detailed portrait of someone’s thumb next to a blurry out of focus blob that I wouldn’t even feel confident IDing as “an ant”.

None of which bothers me like the people who don’t have even the faintest clue what they’re talking about who stride in proclaiming it as this genus, species, subspecies and its mother’s maiden name for ants you can’t even ID past subgenus without a microscope (looking at you, Chthonolasius with your identical workers and nearly identical queens). Especially tiresome when you’re trying to explain how you can’t actually ID something to species from these photos and what would be needed and here’s Barry swooping in with “Oh it’s X looks just like mine”. Fuck off Barry you thought you’d found something that’s not even present in this country last week, take your shoddy advice elsewhere.

I get it, if you’ve never keyed out species with a dichotomous key you aren’t going to know what details to include and what quality of picture you need. If you’ve not spent hours staring at small insects down a microscope you won’t realise how much fine detail your photo is lacking* and you probably don’t know why that’s important. It’s not their fault and I don’t want to discourage anyone it’s just…after the fifth unusable photo of the day my brains starts to squeak.

That is obviously an early instar oak eggar, Lasiocampa quercus! I mean, did you even look at the photo?! *disdainful headshake*

But I feel like parts of my brain are melting at people’s ID requests so I’m totally going to be that guy. 

Recently I joined some UK ant-keeping facebook groups to get updates on mating flights and no one uses the forums anymore. Overall they’re pretty good and interesting, nice bit of community etc. but some of the ID requests…Anyone else who helpfully answers people’s questions about these things will probably know where I’m going with this (@nanonaturalist), it’s the photos.

I remember first getting into photographing bugs years ago and taking photos I thought were decent, but looking at them now? Oh dear, no, out of focus etc. So I know you need to have experience to actually tell a good photo from a bad photo but like, sometimes it feels beyond a joke? I’m not expecting a studio lit image stack but surely people can work out you need to be able to actually see the ant? 

“Hi I caught this queen earlier can anyone ID it for me?” - I took this photo as a joke but actually uuuuh this really isn’t that far off. Grainy, unfocused, apparently taken from halfway across the room for some reason. Or other old favourites like a lovingly detailed portrait of someone’s thumb next to a blurry out of focus blob that I wouldn’t even feel confident IDing as “an ant”.

None of which bothers me like the people who don’t have even the faintest clue what they’re talking about who stride in proclaiming it as this genus, species, subspecies and its mother’s maiden name for ants you can’t even ID past subgenus without a microscope (looking at you, Chthonolasius with your identical workers and nearly identical queens). Especially tiresome when you’re trying to explain how you can’t actually ID something to species from these photos and what would be needed and here’s Barry swooping in with “Oh it’s X looks just like mine”. Fuck off Barry you thought you’d found something that’s not even present in this country last week, take your shoddy advice elsewhere.

I get it, if you’ve never keyed out species with a dichotomous key you aren’t going to know what details to include and what quality of picture you need. If you’ve not spent hours staring at small insects down a microscope you won’t realise how much fine detail your photo is lacking* and you probably don’t know why that’s important. It’s not their fault and I don’t want to discourage anyone it’s just…after the fifth unusable photo of the day my brains starts to squeak.

Unknown sp. 

happy halloween

dune predator by Marshal Hedin on Flickr

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