pfau_tarleton's Journal

Something that I do occasionally is look through my own observations and pick a species that I'm confident identifying. Then I "View All" observations of that species and, well, view all of them in grid view and identify those that aren't research grade. You have to be careful to ensure that there aren't similar species that you're unaware of outside your own geographic area of familiarity (you can restrict the area if you wish). You can also filter by "Needs ID", but I prefer to view all of them to ensure there aren't any misidentifications.

In less than 10 minutes, I verified all 160 observations of swift feather-legged flies and made them research grade (not counting one's that were not already identified by at least one person).

Now, someone needs to move out to Genus and tackle the one's that have only been identified to that level:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?locale=en&place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=129353

I'm not sure what to make of the European Trichopoda. I read that T. pennipes was introduced to Europe to control a pest, but several of them have totally black abdomens (in contrast to orange which is seen invariably on BG in the U.S.:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?locale=en&nelat=56.02807957743282&nelng=40.66596815362573&place_id=any&subview=grid&swlat=19.236846926760606&swlng=-27.888719346374273&taxon_id=129353

http://bugguide.net/node/view/13284/bgimage?from=120

I got a start on tackling verification of IDs for this genus, but got stuck:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1&subview=grid&taxon_id=54467

There's this handy guide, but it appears to be more challenging than what the guide shows:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/14200

Especially out in California, where the twenty-spots look like the kidney-spots to me.

@silversea_starsong, can you help clarify the distinguishing features?

This one is for @sambiology (and others with a Zelus handicap).

Feel free to share the link to this journal post:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D5J7yHZxF1yTIiqbBd8_Pyl3GA24x4dAYYvBtJ-Ihq4/edit?usp=sharing