Annotating observations that include multiple individuals

General
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I’ve read several other threads on this topic, and I understand it’s a contentious issue. But the particular case I’m interested in seems to be confounded by several policies that are difficult to reconcile.

The case in hand: we are studying a plant with separate male and female individuals, which may differ slightly in phenology and distribution. They also frequently grow close together, and many folks don’t realize this is a dioecious species at all.

We would like to annotate observations so we can track males and females separately. Observations often have both sexes present, as here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69223601

According to policy, this is incorrect, as each of the plants should be its own observation.

As I understand it, only the observer can make a duplicate record to split the male and female plants. The sex annotation only includes male, female, and unknown, none of which are correct. This leaves only one correct resolution: requesting the poster split/clone their observation so I can annotate each plant separately.

That seems tedious, and maybe a bit off-putting to the original poster. It would add an extra layer to our efforts to annotate specimens, if we have to contact many observers and wait for a response before completing the task.

I understand there is reluctance to allow annotations that would admit multiple individuals are present in a single observation, but in a case like this it would be very useful to check both male and female for the observation.

On a related note, in plants there are species in which individuals can be single sex or hermaphrodite, and having a bisexual/hermaphrodite category would be useful. In this case, there are, very rarely, actual hermaphrodite Rubus chamaemorus (i.e., individuals with perfect/bisexual flowers), and it would be very interesting to find one of those.

My preference would be to allow multiple sex annotations for a single observation (and also to add a hermaphrodite category). But if that’s not permissible, what would be the recommended approach here?

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One solution or workaround would be a similar project like the one I created for Multiple Life Stages.

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I think you’ve laid out your options well. I will note that posting pictures of different individuals of a species in one observation is ok (I wouldn’t say it is incorrect per se), it can just cause some issues - one of which you’ve identified here.

There’s an existing and open discussion around annotations and potential issues here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627
I believe that this issue (and/or similar) have been discussed to some extent (it’s a long thread…)

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Yes, I’ve read some of that thread. But at 520 posts and counting, it’s a bit unwieldy to participate in that conversation! Hence the new thread.

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This exact theme was also discussed, you can annotate any specimen that you see on all photos, choose one you like the most.

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Sure, but in this case I’d like to have the observation show up in both a list of male plants and a list of female plants. If I pick one or the other, I lose half the value.

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You lose everything if you annotate nothing, without duplication it’s not possible.

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You could download the observation data and duplicate the ones you want to annotate as both in that dataset.

Or you could start a project on the species and use journal posts to educate users about what you want them to record. Some will be interested, others not.

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If you go this route, it would probably be better to make a custom observation field, similar to the ones for multiple life stages (https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?utf8=✓&q=multiple+life+stages&commit=Search) created by @ncb1221 - I don’t see any existing similar fields for multiple sexes.

That way, the time you invest can help improve the data for everyone - might save someone else the trouble of duplicating efforts. The observation fields aren’t nearly as user-friendly as annotations, but they accomplish the same thing.

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The advantage of that thread is that it is monitored by staff and suggestions there may be used in future iterations of the annotation system.

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Whatever you decide to do, I hope you will come back here and post it. I would also like to track sex in plants; if you decide, for example, to create a custom observation field, I would use yours, rather than creating yet another similar observation field.

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I went ahead and created a traditional project for observations with Multiple Sexes

Feel free to join and add any and all relevant observations. Hopefully this can help out some people in their searches.

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If only your approach was the norm…

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