#help wanted

I thought you would enjoy this HELP WANTED ad.

Do you have an academic or professional background with a specific species or taxa? Would you like to contribute to the accuracy of the repository? If yes, please use the contact form to reach out!

I'm beginning to include photos of wild animals in the repository (mostly pollinators, right now) and want to make sure they're accurately identified. A lot of people have suggested just throwing my pictures on iNat for identification, but I don't like the precision of crowdsourcing IDs - and it feels like taking advantage of the labor of people who don't know it is for the site. Plus, what happens if someone contests the ID and I can't reach the people who provided it?

What I've decided on is asking for volunteer assistance, and indicating on each species page who provided the ID and what their expertise/familiarity with the animal is. That way site users have a trustworthy citation for the ID - and I have a way to follow up with the someone knowledgeable if there's questions. This will look something like: "Identification by L. Ipsum, latinate expert."

So if this is you - if you've got professional or research chops for a specific species or group of animals - please reach out! I won't necessarily have photos I need identified immediately, but your info will go into a database that I'll reference when the time arrives.

that one kid