This is a little into the weeds, but I would argue that a carcass isn’t evidence that a live animal was necessarily there - the carcass could have been dragged there by a predator or moved by other means. We don’t have unequivocal proof that the live animal was present. There’s also a better annotation (which is “Dead”) which we are 100% sure of.
I think a better parallel would be a track where we can see the size of the animal leaving it. We can annotate it as “Track”, andif it is a large enough track, an experienced observer could be unequivocally sure that an adult left it. Should a user not be allowed to annotate that as adult?
As far as expecting to see pictures of larvae vs. galls, I would say that the annotation is for the observation itself not the pictures. And if the observation is annotated as “gall” already, then these could be filtered out.
In the case of galls, there’s perhaps not much value in also annotating as larva (since gall is available), but what about cases like leaf mines where annotating as “Leaf mine” isn’t an option? Annotating as larva (if unequivocally determinable) could be valuable since it does provide extra info that can’t be assessed otherwise through filters.
Also, just a note that I don’t have strong personal feelings about this. But telling others not to annotate observations of galls/leafminers with “larva” in this situation seems inconsistent with how observations are approached/handled in other ways on iNat.
Some fair points: I also don’t feel strongly about it. Leaf mines are a problem as there is no more suitable option than ‘track’ which isn’t really defined that way: on the other hand, annotating an empty mine as ‘larva’ messes up the phenology a bit. In the case of galls, just ‘gall’ should be enough but I won’t get uppity about it :). People using the data will be able to understand what different people have done in these cases.
But annotations are determined by community votes. How should people assess which annotations apply if not by studying the evidence? It seems entirely reasonable to expect that filtering on a particular annotation should find observations which include the necessary confirming evidence. An observation isn’t separable from its evidence in any pragmatic sense. If an observation includes pictures, its annotations should be in agreement with them.
To poke staff with a stick, so they add it? Why adding galls and not adding leafmines, esp when leafmines are created by flying insects only, and galls can be of fungi and mites, leafmines are easier to add.
Annotations apply to a limited subset of states (and behaviours) that you might find. I totally agree that if there’s not an Annotation that exactly matches what you see, then don’t add it.
Do instead add an observation field value. For example, a lot of the less frequently encountered Evidence of Organism states are captured by the well-used “Animal Sign and Song” field (https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/24):
Value
Obs
Tracks
9238
Scat
3914
Remains
1057
Call/Song
1046
Evidence of Feeding
1926
Evidence of Egg Laying
253
Smell
10
Scratching/Scent Post
180
Nest
758
Burrow/Den
326
Web
32
Fur/Feathers
472
Shell/Exoskeleton
549
Shed skin
35
Window print
12
“Evidence of feeding” works well for galls and leaf mines, where the organism isn’t visible and may have gone.
Some of these values, like Tracks, automatically map onto the Evidence of Organism Annotation.
Similarly, when there are several states visible in a photo, observation fields can often help. For example, the “sex” observation field contains “unknown”, “male”, female", “hermaphrodite”, and “mixed”. For your photo of a male and female cardinal, you could use “mixed”.
As someone who actively pulls annotation data on galls. . . please please please do not add annotations that aren’t explicitly supported by the photos in the observation unless you have very strong additional evidence to support doing so (which should be added in the observation text). Eg, if you dissected the gall in the field and saw a larva but lost it before you got a pic or something. Because I can’t correct the data myself, any time I see a user add “larva” based on their inference about what might be inside the gall I have to ask them individually to remove it so the actual larva data remains usable.
My protocol for this varies. As I see it there are 3 options:
Mark it as whichever you want (whichever option you think is least observed, or most interesting, or whatever). I use this option if I don’t feel like making separate observations but just want to add annotations to everything.
Leave it blank. I use this one most often, since I don’t want to add useless annotations.
Make an observation for each one (e.g. one for the mother wolf spider, and another with the same photos for her babies) and annotate them separately. I think this is the “best” option as far as data collection and official iNat protocols, but admittedly it takes more time and might not fit with your workflow. I do this if I have a particularly interesting observation and want to document an interaction, or just feel like making as many valid observations as possible.
Remains frustrating that when I ask for ‘photos of baby spiders’ I get. All. The Photos. Of that spider (oh, and incidentally including a few of babies …)
You can´t. That´s why if in doubt just leave it blank.
I more often then not do, even in some cases where I and the current literature are pretty sure that two species cannot be separated, but quite a bunch of observers beg to disagree and I will not force what I think onto them to avoid these discussions…