Identifier Profile: @rlucine

This is the twenty-sixth entry in an ongoing monthly (or kind of monthly!) series profiling the amazing identifiers of iNaturalist. She had a lot of really interesting responses to my questions so I’ll be quoting her extensively here.

Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota, @rlucine (who goes by Lucie) remembers first becoming interested in nature during her “mushroom phase” at about the age of four. “As an adult, I am discovering that I was always extremely neurodivergent,” she says.

I also remember going birding with my mom when I was in grade school, and I liked observing wildlife at aquariums and on beaches in Japan (particularly Nakatajima Sand Dunes in Hamamatsu) whenever my family went to visit my grandma. 

Lucie first heard about iNaturalist while on a date in 2021, and started using it in earnest in 2023, when she found out her girlfriend was also on iNat. 

I decided to document everything in my local neighborhood, and also upload whatever old observations I saw in Japan. I currently love to photograph bugs, spiders, mollusks, and wildflowers; and in Japan I try to document as many limpets as possible.

A year ago I got cranky on the train when the computer vision on iNaturalist didn't suggest what a limpet I photographed was, and it was obviously a very striking color, so I went on the internet to do research. It turned out to be Cellana nigrolineata, and that prompted me to look into limpets more and try to identify them for other cranky people in Japan too. However, I'm not only currently interested in nature - I'm also a queer experimental fiction author, a big fan of Pokemon, and a huge nerd about commercial aviation.

I find myself drawn to limpets because of their unique body plan and behavior. It's funny to me how they only move like 1 meter per day at a very slow rate, and I've enjoyed finding them attached to rocks by surprise. In general things like marine fouling and weeds interest me since they are parts of nature that people don't value as much. Like, compare weeds to rose gardens, or compare marine fouling (barnacles, limpets, oysters, etc) to what might be kept in an aquarium.

I feel like often people ignore or even despise what is “common” or “unwanted” in nature and attempt to remove it, such as by weeding parks. Removing marine fouling is also necessary to some industries such as shipping since encrustation of organisms increases the drag of the ship's keel in the water. But as a person who's often found myself “unwanted” by society, I have a lot of empathy for the vermin/weeds/unwanted creatures which persist anyway.

She’s now added over 4,300 identifications to iNaturalist and focuses her identifying

across multiple classes and families in the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean, particularly in Asia. Subclass Patellogastropoda (true limpets) are my main focus, however I've also done research into the families Siphonariidae (false or pulmonate limpets), Fissurellidae (keyhole limpets), Hipponicidae (hoof snails), Calyptraeidae (slipper snails), the genus Septaria of Neritidae (nerite snails), and the order Lingulida (lingulate brachiopods), all of which are often confused because they are all "limpetized" to some extent.

Lucie’s task is made difficult for a few reasons: 

Visual characteristics and the number of ribs [on the shell] are historically unreliable in many cases, there are cryptic species, and erosion can also delete identifying characteristics from a shell and leave us with only the shape of the margin to determine a genus. Unfortunately a great deal of research also requires tons of money to read, which is not accessible to me (I just work as a housekeeper in my local Co-op, and don't have that kind of cash - I'm not sponsored or anything, despite that my friends keep calling me a grad student for how invested I am in limpetry).

So she finds as many free resources as she can (“many of which mutually contradict each other on topics such as shell morphology and distribution and contribute to a general sense of chaos”), such as WoRMS, malacopics.nl, BHL (Biodiversity Heritage Library), the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Jstage, ResearchGate, SeaLifeBase, BISMaL, Bishogai, biolib.cz, Conchology, Femorale, and Molluscs of Tasmania. Her identifications are best guesses based a “synthesis of distribution and morphology across as many sources as possible…[and] I add comments in order for whoever shows up next to have information to either agree or disagree with me”

Despite the many difficulties involved when researching and identifying limpets, and fixing misidentified observations on iNaturalist, Lucie tells me 

Taxonomy and shell identification are often frustratingly subjective, but the sense of understanding and organization that follows from identifying the natural world gives me a great sense of connection. I de-stress from my work week by identifying limpets on the computer, and I hope that the information I link to users makes them more excited to post photos of limpets, so that I can see more of them :)

Speaking of which, she’s anticipating her next trip to Japan:

I'm looking forward to visiting unusual non-tourist locations in Japan to determine the range of several species such as Cellana testudinaria and Siphonaria laciniosa, which may or may not be found as far north in the Pacific as Kyushu? I also intend to search for Siphonaria rucuana, Siphonaria subatra, and Siphonaria acmaeoides, which we don't have many photographs of on iNaturalist. The genus Nipponacmea and members of the Lottia kogamogai species complex also interest me, but we do have several photos of them. iNaturalist is very helpful because I get to see limpets every day without actually being on the beach in Asia.

Found a limpet? Lucie has some tips for making an identifiable observation:

• If possible, capture a photograph of the top-down, underside, and side profile of the shell so we can accurately discern the shape. However, the top of the shell tends to be most important.
• Please zoom in close and focus, as shell and rib microstructure is often necessary to discern or corroborate a species ID, particularly for Nipponacmea.
• Eroded shells and shells covered in algae or mineral deposits are often impossible to ID to species level, but sometimes it can be. Cellana species in Hawaii can be inferred based on what is growing on them, for example, as the three main species inhabit different areas of the shore.
• If you are in Hawaii, please try to observe the color of the limpet's foot (without hurting the animal, of course - unless you plan to eat it too).
• Photographs of numerous limpets next to each other often include more than one species, and often, more than one family. Siphonaria japonica and Siphonaria sirius mingle among Patelloida saccharina and Lottia dorsuosa, for example. It's best to include one limpet per picture/observation. Some very good information has been rendered unusable due to people uploading two species of limpet in the same photo, or combining tons of different limpet photos into the same observation.
• Tiny limpet shells can be found intact among large-grain sand on the beach, and these species are often incredibly interesting and understudied, such as Patelloida signata or (in my wildest dreams) Lepetidae or Pectinodonta species.
• Please do not hurt the limpets in order to take photos of them. I am opposed to live capture and it makes me very sad when people kill limpets just to post identifiable research information on iNaturalist. Even if a view of the muscle scar of the shell is needed for an ID, please do not excise a live organism from its shell; just search for another one that is already dead.

Here are some notable observations and taxa that Lucie sent:

• This beautiful limpet from Shandong has stymied myself and @zouyifan, and we think it may be an undescribed species! This is the one I think I'm most excited about.
• I think this one is Patelloida lentiginosa, a species first reported in India in 2020 by Vakani, Nakano, and Kundu. This paper basically showed me that all of the shells we thought were Cellana radiata, including the example images we used on iNaturalist, were wrong...
• If I had to pick a favorite limpet, it would be the Philippines' black-and-white striped form of Patelloida saccharina, or Patelloida striata. 
• Recently I identified Siphonaria tongensis on iNatualist here after some weird and exhaustive research detailed in comment.
• And I also may have identified Lottia tranquebarica in Tamil Nadu, India for the first time documented on the internet since the original description.

Posted on October 15, 2024 09:56 PM by tiwane