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gavinnupp wrote:This season, I'm experimenting by illustrating my binder instead of including photo id's. Seems to really be helping with identification. We'll see how this works at invites...

Oh wow! That's actually a great idea. I remember for nationals, I forgot to put Spotted Knapweed on the leaf section of our ID guide, so I had to hand draw the leaf in, and it was really useful to get myself accustomed to the shape of the leaf.

Raven wrote:

gavinnupp wrote:This season, I'm experimenting by illustrating my binder instead of including photo id's. Seems to really be helping with identification. We'll see how this works at invites...

Oh wow! That's actually a great idea. I remember for nationals, I forgot to put Spotted Knapweed on the leaf section of our ID guide, so I had to hand draw the leaf in, and it was really useful to get myself accustomed to the shape of the leaf.

A lot of times in Fossils I would include drawings from the internet (especially skulls) because they helped a lot with more difficult identification; it's tough to see where the holes in a skull are from a picture.

It's my first year doing this event. How do you make sure you have all the right and sufficient info without overflowing the binder? Often times, I'm afraid scant info will cost me questions at competitions, but concurrently, aggregating too much info on a species might be an obstruction to time in regards to navigation.

BrS wrote:It's my first year doing this event. How do you make sure you have all the right and sufficient info without overflowing the binder? Often times, I'm afraid scant info will cost me questions at competitions, but concurrently, aggregating too much info on a species might be an obstruction to time in regards to navigation.

I'd recommend a font size of around 8 pt and using similar condensation methods as you would for notesheets (abbreviations, choppy sentences, etc.); you can probably get down to about half a page per species, which is pretty decent for navigation once you're familiar with your binder.

Also, helping with navigation, highlight key points that are probably going to pop up on the tests (e.g. origin, invasive behavior etc.)

Unome wrote:

BrS wrote:It's my first year doing this event. How do you make sure you have all the right and sufficient info without overflowing the binder? Often times, I'm afraid scant info will cost me questions at competitions, but concurrently, aggregating too much info on a species might be an obstruction to time in regards to navigation.

I'd recommend a font size of around 8 pt and using similar condensation methods as you would for notesheets (abbreviations, choppy sentences, etc.); you can probably get down to about half a page per species, which is pretty decent for navigation once you're familiar with your binder.

From my experience with my binder, the best way to navigate easily, is of course, knowing your binder super well, and have a very uniform organization for all your species, so you know what information is kept where. Use bullet points, not paragraphs (well, paragraphs don't really work with me, they might be your thing though). My binder is quite overflowing.....six inches thick.....but she's done me well and there hasn't been a time in which I can't find any information due to poor organization. The only issue with such a thick binder would be flipping the pages, but it gets easier with page protectors (page protectors are probs 2/3 of the thickness XD). At the competition, my partner and I usually don't even flip the pages, just turn it so that we can read the text.

John Richardsim wrote:

gavinnupp wrote:Taxonomy events like invasive love to give you highly compressed and distorted pictures from google images of the wrong species.

Last weekend I was trying to update one of my quizlet sets with the species added to the Michigan list this year, one of which being giant knotweed. I found one picture on some Minnesota site that was labelled as giant knotweed...it was an image from bugwood rotated 180 degrees, and when I looked up the ID number on bugwood, it was clearly labelled Japanese knotweed...

I remember once, at regionals, a test proctor used a picture with BOTH quagga and zebra mussel as an ID pic, and asked what species it was.

Anyone else having seed identification problems? I can't seem to identify the seeds of plants as well as by seeing the actual plant. I've been trying since last years state up until now...wondering if there is an easier way.

Entomology wrote:Anyone else having seed identification problems? I can't seem to identify the seeds of plants as well as by seeing the actual plant. I've been trying since last years state up until now...wondering if there is an easier way.

Add pics of the seeds of each plant? Adding size measurements can help too

windu34 wrote:

Entomology wrote:Anyone else having seed identification problems? I can't seem to identify the seeds of plants as well as by seeing the actual plant. I've been trying since last years state up until now...wondering if there is an easier way.

Add pics of the seeds of each plant? Adding size measurements can help too

I've added pictures to my factsheets, the problem is not being able to recall which plant's seeds look like the photo I'm given so theres a whole lot of binder flipping.