The Uncertainty of Insect and Plant Apps by Danielle Alkire

"Look Mom!" All photos by D. Alkire

In my garden, I can expect to have a child excitedly describing a “weird bug” they just found (if they are not already holding it up to my face) daily.

I love to indulge their curiosity, and it is great to have a tool in my pocket that can quickly point me in the right direction with random insect, flower, or mushroom identification.  Sometimes the identification is immediate! There are several phone apps out there for this purpose.  I have the most experience with Seek and iNaturalist.

I like that iNaturalist allows me to help scientists with collecting data, and I like that using Seek with my iNaturalist account makes it fun and accessible.  Seek even has monthly challenges, so I can keep going outside and practice being observant in nature!

 

I'm almost done with the equinox
 challenge, so close!

Whenever I find something I want to identify, I simply open Seek, point my phone camera at it, and wait for it to attempt to make an identification (it is also possible to have it identify organisms from phone pictures you previously took.)  When the program has an identification ready, you push the button and you can quickly get more information about what you see and choose if you want to share the observation with iNaturalist.   

I was curious about the huge bumps
 I kept finding in the thistles in my back
yard. I observed an actual thistle
 gall fly in my yard a couple of years later!

Have you ever seen one of these while out and about?

There are times when the program can’t quite figure out the species you are looking at, and I have had a few rare instances where it is hilariously wrong.   As someone who doesn’t know most insect or plant names off the top of my head, the information given is usually a really helpful starting point for more research, even if it isn’t perfect. 

This is a tree.

No plant or insect identification app is perfect even if they are improving, see: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2367068-apps-that-identify-plants-can-be-as-little-as-4-per-cent-accurate/. 

There have been multiple studies conducted and I certainly don’t want to give the impression that they should be the first and only answer you turn to!  See:  https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10460 and one more: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/plant-identification-theres-an-app-for-that-actually-several  I would not go foraging armed only with Seek to tell me if a mushroom is edible.  Being able to tell my kid that the lovely purple flower we found on a hike is likely a palm leaf mistflower is excellent for my phone, though!  I was heartened to read that although in some cases the identifications can be very inaccurate, in one study, across five popular applications, 85% of images were identified correctly in the top five suggestions, and 69% were correct with the first suggestion.  Not bad!

I have 1,389 observations registered as of today, and I’m sure I’ll have more by the end of the week.  I like the quick breakdown of how many observations I’ve made and individual species I’ve seen.  I’ve seen 545 separate species since I started using iNaturalist in 2015 (this scratches a similar itch to when I played Pokemon go!)  I also like how once you have registered your observation to iNaturalist, the community helps to ensure the identification is correct. 

I guess western honey bees like my yard!

If you want to try Seek out for yourself, see  https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app.  

CSU Extension is another https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/insects/,  and https://coloradoplants.jeffco.us/plantAbout, if you don’t want to download an app.