When it comes to waterbug identification, there are some

Helping people be right
1
2
John Gooderham , Edward Tsyrlin , Tom Sloane
and Michael Sharman (The Code Sharman)
3
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
Not Sure?
1 The Waterbug Company Pty Ltd, 47 Pottery Rd, Lenah Valley, TAS, 7008, [email protected]
2 Melbourne Water, PO Box 4342, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, [email protected]
3 Living Dead Taxidermy, White Kangaroo Rd, Campania, TAS, 7026
In April 2008, we spent four days in an intensive workshop with Waterwatchers. We tried to get
them to identify waterbugs to species level, and made notes on when they weren't able to do this
and why. In consolation for this grueling process we put together the Agreed Level Taxonomy
program - it makes waterbug ID easy enough to do with a hand lens ...and you don't have to kill
anything as the keys are written for live animals!
When it comes to waterbug identification, there are some
mistakes we all make when starting out.
Shoe-horning
It sort of looks right ... but is it really? Shoe
horning can happen for 2 reasons:
1) Laziness in the ID guide writer. Plenty of
books and apps give a single example to
species level, but fail to mention the other 300
odd species that look awfully similar (The worst
example of this I've seen is the Museum Field
guide apps).
2) Laziness in the operator. Not everyone is
interested enough to be thorough with the
process of identification.
SOLUTION: Let people know what the other
options are! Show them the diversity of
waterbugs, use dichotomous keys (like top
right) that specify the characters they have to
consider and use training and QAQC.
Expecting too much
People often assume that everything
can be identified to species, but this
simply isn't true; especially not for
invertebrates.
SOLUTION: Agreed Level Taxonomy
(ALT) uses the lowest practical
taxonomic level where you can still
see the differences between the
animals you are looking at.
Sometimes this is Class level,
sometimes it is Genus and Species..... it all
depends on how well the groups are studied and
what you can actually see without a microscope.
Instant omniscience ?
App in hand, you've been doing science
now for at least half an hour ...why
should
anyone
trust
your
data?
Without
Playing snap
training and accreditation of some sort,
Named after the card game that results in
the data from most citizen science
violence when two similar picture cards are
projects is questionable... but worse
exposed. Often things look sort of the same
than that, can we honestly say that the
though, and you will need to know the formal
volunteers have got anything out of the
reasons why they are different. These can often
process if their levels of knowledge
be found in tools such as taxonomic keys.
haven't improved ... are we just wasting
SOLUTION: SPEEDBUG, in The Waterbug App
their time?
(the graphic to the left), provides a way around
SOLUTION: Accreditation. But you need to have goals that
this. All the superficially similar looking bugs have can be attained along the way, or people understandably
a "Not Sure?" link that drops the user into a key to lose interest. ALT has a coloured belt accreditation system;
clarify the things that formally separate the
green belts can collect data by themselves, yellow and
animals they are looking at. The principal tool for orange belts need to team up with a green belt.
identification in ALT is a dichotomous key, which
prevents snap.
Not knowing when to give up
It's got one leg left and it is
so small I can barely see
it .... but I'm determined to
identify the little blighter.
SOLUTION: Sometimes it just
isn't possible, but everyone
needs guidance about when to
try and when to just give up.....
For example, the excerpt from the ALT keys above
explains how to tell when waterboatmen are too young
to identify.
www.thewaterbug.net/ALT.html
We use all these solutions in the ALT
program, and have added extra tools such
as SPEEDBUG to The Waterbug App.
Download it and have a play...
www.thewaterbugapp.com