What can I do if I am having difficulty uploading data to WhoseEgg?

If you are having difficultly uploading a spreadsheet to WhoseEgg, first go through the following check list to ensure that all steps have been taken correctly:

If all of the above are met, try one of these suggestions below:

How can I proceed if I have data from a different region than the training data?

The random forests used by WhoseEgg to make predictions have been validated for eggs collected in the figure below. In particular, the data collected in 2014 and 2015 were used to train the random forests, and the data collected in 2016 were used to validate the models. The models trained using data from 2014 and 2015 showed great performance on the data from 2016 in locations that were sampled in 2014 and/or 2015 but were less successful in locations not previously sampled. However, the sample size in 2016 was smaller than the original dataset. See Goode et al. (2021) for more details. These results suggest that the models in WhoseEgg may not perform well on data collected in different geographic regions and additional validations are needed. Note that the final models used in WhoseEgg were trained using all three years of data (2014-2016) to improve the performance for future predictions.

If there is interest in using WhoseEgg to make predictions on data collected in different geographic regions, we recommend the following as possible options:


What can I do if I believe I collected fish eggs containing species not included in the training data?

Random forests are only able to make predictions for response variable levels included in the training data. See the table below for a list of the family, genus, and species levels included the WhoseEgg training data. If you believe that your data contains a level not present in the training data, we caution the use of WhoseEgg. If you would still like to apply WhoseEgg to your data, we recommend the following as possible options:

Family Genus Common Name Number of Eggs in Training Data
Catostomidae Carpiodes Carpsuckers sp. 1
Catostomidae Carpiodes Quillback 1
Catostomidae Carpiodes River Carpsucker 8
Catostomidae Ictiobus Bigmouth Buffalo 7
Catostomidae Ictiobus Black Buffalo 1
Catostomidae Ictiobus Buffalo sp. 10
Catostomidae Ictiobus Smallmouth Buffalo 2
Clupeidae Alosa Skipjack Shad 1
Clupeidae Dorosoma Gizzard Shad 2
Cyprinidae Cyprinella Spotfin Shiner 6
Cyprinidae Luxilus Common Shiner 1
Cyprinidae Macrhybopsis Silver Chub 36
Cyprinidae Macrhybopsis Speckled Chub 28
Cyprinidae Notropis Channel Shiner 32
Cyprinidae Notropis Emerald Shiner 201
Cyprinidae Notropis River Shiner 16
Cyprinidae Notropis Sand Shiner 1
Cyprinidae Notropis Shiner sp. 69
Cyprinidae Pimephales Fathead Minnow 5
Hiodontidae Hiodon Goldeye 7
Invasive Carp Invasive Carp Invasive Carp 782
Moronidae Morone Striped Bass 17
Moronidae Morone White Bass 1
Percidae Etheostoma Banded Darter 1
Percidae Percina Common Logperch 1
Percidae Sander Walleye 2
Sciaenidae Aplodinotus Freshwater Drum 733

Will WhoseEgg be updated to contain data from different geographic regions and with more species?

The creators of WhoseEgg are interested in updating the models to contain data from different geographic regions and with more species, but there are not plans to do so at this time.


What can I do if I am interested in using WhoseEgg to predict fish species other than invasive carp?

The validation of the random forests used by WhoseEgg focused on the classification of invasive carp. If you would like to use WhoseEgg to identify other fish species, please take into account the following considerations:


Why don’t my extra variables show up in the processed data tab?

While it is okay to upload extra variables to WhoseEgg, these variables will not be used by the random forests to make predictions. As a result, they are excluded from the processed data tab, which only contains the variables that will be used to make predictions. However, these variables will be included in the spreadsheet with predictions available for download. See the preview of the table with data for download on the ‘Downloads’ page.


The text is too small for me to read. What can be done about this?

Try zooming in using control (Windows) or command (Mac) and the + key (or a similar technique available via your computer).