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Home » Forums » Web Site Problems and Suggestions

Sorting through unidentifieds by family and state?

I'd like to help with moth identification but my expertise is quite limited, primarily to Texas, and only a portion thereof. I typically wander through the "Moth" node and look for things I recognize. I realized I'm missing everything that contributors or editors have moved to lower (e.g. family or genus) levels yet still remain unidentified. Is there a way, at certain higher taxon levels which have many unidentified images (e.g. "Noctuidae" or "Tortricidae") to search/select for images from just one state? I've tried advanced search but although a moth family has a "node", it doesn't seem to have a taxon ID that I can select. A search for images of "Noctuidae" in "Texas" tries to list not only the unidentifieds at the family node, but also every Texas image--identified or otherwise--at every lower taxon level.
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Contributed by Chuck Sexton on 10 January, 2013 - 11:57pm

Give this a try
I updated the search with something very simplistic, but maybe it will help.

Advanced Search

Check the "Exclude images at species level" box and it will not display anything already at the species level (or below, like subspecies).

It should help in finding images which might be placed into species.

Thanks,
Mike.
… Mike Boone, 3 February, 2013 - 12:43pm login or register to post comments

 
Ignorant.
How do I know my user ID #? I did not know I had one.
… Peter Homann, 17 February, 2013 - 9:08am login or register to post comments

 
User IDs
Yours is 66752. You can see the user IDs if you hover over a username, like in a forum post, and look at the web address. For example, you would see "http://bugguide.net/user/view/66752". The number at the end is what you want.
… Mike Boone, 17 February, 2013 - 10:34am login or register to post comments

 
Sweeet!
Thanks Mike
… john and jane balaban, 3 February, 2013 - 1:56pm login or register to post comments

Filter
You're right, I have the same problem. Two possible modifications that might help:

1) I think right now the results are all sorted by the Date column. If you could choose your sort column then you could sort by "Guide Placement" rather than "Date". At least that would lump all of the images still at "Moth" or "Noctuidae" together.

2) If there were a checkbox for "This level only" then only images actually at "Noctuidae" or "Moth" could be returned. Even if the code wasn't really changed to make a filtered DB query, I would assume this would be easy to do since the only change on the programming side could be a compare and tossing out some of the results. Maybe the number of "Results" at the top of the table would be incorrect if we tossed some of the results during filtering, but leave that off if filter is turned on.
… John R. Maxwell, 23 January, 2013 - 11:17am login or register to post comments

You might write Mike Boone a note.
He may be able to generate a list for you of moths from Texas that are placed on the Noctuidae family page, for example. Since the advanced search knows where the images are located he may be able to filter the result to only show you those that are sitting at the family level. It can't hurt to ask him.
… john and jane balaban, 11 January, 2013 - 8:04am login or register to post comments

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