5.4 Species verification

Species verification is completed as part of a quality control step within WildTrax to ensure accurate application of image tags. This step is only carried out when all image sets within a project have a status of

The main objectives for species verification are:

• To make sure manually applied species tags are correct
• To make sure context-tagged species tags are correct
• To make sure auto-tagged species tags are correct (if appropriate)
• To conduct additional analyses on verified images

5.4.1 Key steps

Checking the correctness of species tags is at the heart of species verification. Each image is double-checked to make sure that the assigned species, sex, age, number of individuals and other associated tags are correct. In general, all wild mammals are double-checked. Domestic and bird species are verified at the discretion of the project admin who assigns species to taggers. Access your assigned species through the tab of the project page.

Checks to complete during species verification: Correct species ID tag(s) Correct use of Age/Sex/Number of Individuals tags. If errors are found, you can edit the tag either by: Clicking on the image and selecting the button in the top right-hand corner of the screen to open the tagging form; or Clicking on the tag below the image to be edited to open the tagging form. In both cases, edit the tag in the tagging form and click “Save All and Close”.

Once all images on a page have been checked, click on the “Verify Species” button at the bottom of the screen. The next page of images to verify will automatically appear. When all images on a page are verified, the images and page navigation boxes will be filled in with green to indicate they are complete.

If an image was given a “Review” tag during the first round of tagging, that image will have an orange border around it in the side panel to emphasize that this image’s species tag needs to be reviewed with extra care.

Once all species within a deployment have been reviewed, the status of that deployment on the deployment tab will change to Species Verified.

A note on the ‘Unknown’ and ‘Needs Review’ tags: Images labeled as ‘Unknown’ and ‘Needs Review’ are either unidentifiable species and shapes that triggered the camera or identifications that taggers are not 100% sure of, respectively. Images are double-checked to determine species ID. Images tagged with ‘Needs Review’ that cannot be identified but still possess identifying features should remain as “Needs Review”. However, if the species in the image cannot be identified and there are no identifiable features relabel as “Unknown” and remove the “Needs Review” tag.