Identification of most animals is fairly straightforward if a good field guide is available. Unfortunately, most groups, especially in the ocean, lack field guides. One of our goals is to bring together information to develop an online guide to Florida’s coastal marine life. Some groups of organisms are fairly easy to identify; others are more difficult. Below is a broad overview of taxa into three levels of difficulty. Those in the first level are relatively easy to work with, so should be the focus for beginners. Those at the second level are more challenging, and those at the third level are only accessible to professionals. This is an oversimplification, however, as in each group there may be some species that are very easy to identify (think brown pelican) and others that are much more difficult (think winter form of female warbler).
Here we introduce the online community natural history platform iNaturalist.