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Photo#667011
? - Colaspis

? - Colaspis
Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida, USA
June 30, 2012
10 pm on window screen. Size: 4 mm (eyeballed)

Moved
Moved from Colaspis.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Colapis sp.
Can dig around further.

Please do not 'eyeball' sizes; if the specimen is not accurately measured, so not put a size. For some species, even being off my a couple millimeters can throw off a diagnosis.

 
Great, many thanks!
First of all many thanks for the ID. You are already the second editor to point out that I should not specify sizes unless they are based in actual measurements. However, with all due respect, this makes no sense to me. Please notice that all measurements have an intrinsic (systematic and/or statistical) error that according to strict scientific principles should always be stated (no one does this here and even professional biologists seem to be a bit sloppy in this respect). Also I would guess that >50% of the size data on BG are guesstimates. Furthermore it is not the absolute error but the relative error that usually matters (e.g. 1 mm for a 30 mm dragonfly is a fairly small error while it is obviously a large error for a 2 mm beetle--of course some exceptions might exist). Also if I state "eyeballed" or "guessed", it clearly indicates a large relative error and it is easy to ignore this information as unreliable if one chooses to do so. Nonetheless, even a statement like "less than 1 cm" contains information and might be extremely reliable (though perhaps useless to the experts). I have started to leave the size tab blank but am not convinced that it is detrimental to add my size approximations under "remarks". To the contrary, I feel that a poor estimate with a clear description of the measurement process (e.g. "eyeballed") might be better than a number that lacks error information and/or description of the measurement procedure. Please correct me if I am wrong and I hope you see the good intention of my comment since I greatly appreciate the expertise and help of all the editors here.

 
your comment is fine and just
but if you want an accurate identification, you need to supply the specialists and editors with accurate data.

 
Fair enough :)
One mesh grid unit of my window screen has an average length of 1.63 mm (I wanted to measure this for a long time already). So a better length estimate is 5.0-5.5 mm.

How do people usually calibrate their small-beetle-on-a-leaf photos? Perhaps one could take a second photo of a calibration target w/o changing the camera focus (not sure how reliable that would be). Any suggestions would be greatly welcome. Once again many thanks!

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