Annotating preserved specimens

I’ve read https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/preserved-specimens-labelled-as-dead/

My problem is about specimens (mostly animals) preserved as jewellery or decorative item etc., e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/188124135

My idea would be to annotate them as both dead (which is obviously true) and captive (doesn’t make sense for dead beings, but avoids their inclusion into GBIF etc. once somebody identifies it down to species). The comment at the observation agrees with my opinion. Is that the recommended procedure?

If yes, does this also apply for non-kitschy situations (e.g. museum specimens)?

I’ve seen people mark museum specimens as captive if location and date of collection aren’t included in the observation. That is what I’d do for those.

For an observation of a mount or a study skin that has the same date and location on the observation as the tag/label/etc, I think that would give enough data to be useful to biodiversity research, so I wouldn’t mark an observation like this as captive.

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Your scorpion example is dead, and captive (in Manchester ;~)

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The fact that it is in Manchester is special. I’m just walking the unknown/arachnid project of jpb which is full of resin-preserved scorpions, usually with no place (neither the place where they were caught nor where the jewellery was located). Until I see other opinions, I’ll continue to mark them as captive (and dead, of course).

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But there are separate DQA entries for this situation:
Location is accurate = No.
Date is accurate = No.

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Most museum or herbarium specimens have a collection date and locality. The specimens are organisms that were observed at that specific time and place. They were (in most cases) wild animals or plants that were collected, preserved, transported to a museum and later photographed. Winding up on the shelves of a museum doesn’t make them captives. Nor does the fact that the photograph was taken later in a museum setting change the date and location of the original observation.

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Museum specimens generally shouldn’t be uploaded as observations to iNaturalist unless done so by the original collector. Staff have previously expressed that they don’t want iNat used to get collection info into GBIF as this isn’t the primary purpose of iNat (and collections have better solutions available to them).

The best practice is generally to mark as “captive” if the location of the observation is in the collection itself - the organism was taken captive and moved to the location because of a human’s intention (not the organism’s own movement or a natural process). I personally wouldn’t bother to annotate as dead myself, but I don’t think it’s incorrect to do so.

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This is foolishness. I caught this scorpion in my bathroom. It was captured but it wasn’t a captive organism. It was not reared or living in captivity. I placed it in a white, plastic bowl. It did not go into the bowl of its own volition. I took the bowl outside into the sunshine, some ten meters from the point of capture, took the photograph and then released the scorpion in the yard under some leaf litter. This is a photograph of a live, wild animal, temporarily restrained for the purposes of the photograph.

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I think the location is close enough to be considered the wild one (GPS precision is just 30 m anyway). On the other hand, if you had found the animal in your shed without a camera 10 km away from home, taken it home and took the picture there, it would be either captive or you had to enter the shed’s location, which is what I would have done (and you would be stuck with the practical question whether to bring the scorpion back to where it belongs).

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That’s what I meant, I wasn’t clear.

Captured and captive don’t mean the same thing.

In the case of a collected specimen, the observation occurred at the place and time at which the collection was made. The photograph might be taken later at a place far removed from the point of observation. These snails were observed alive on the beach. I was there; I observed them; I collected them. Many years later, I photographed them. This is a photograph of dead animals that were collected live. At the time of collection, they were free living, they were not in captivity. The fact that they are now in my collection, far away from their native beach, does not make them captive animals.

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You are free to personally disagree with iNat’s guidelines for the use of the term captive/cultivated/wide and also free to read the extensive comments from staff and other users about how to use the DQA on iNat that are already present on the forum. However, all users should follow iNat’s guidelines for using the DQA according to what these terms mean when it comes to their usage on iNat itself.

The guidelines are very clear that observations meeting the OPs situation, like
butterfly mounted in a display case and not appropriately marked with date and location of original collection”,
should be marked as captive/cultivated/not wild.

The example that you provided of your scorpion matches one of the examples in the documentation for “Wild” quite well:
snake that you just picked up (yes, it’s in your hand where you intended it to be, but the place and time is where the snake intended to be)” especially as the true location is within the accuracy circle of the observation. If the date/time/location of the observation are where the observation took place, it is fine to have a photo taken later and have the observation be Wild (as the guidelines specifically note) - this corresponds to your example of the snails. Though I would suggest noting that the photographs were taken years later, as sometimes coloration and other traits that can be important for identification can change over time.

However, in the OP’s scenario, the observation was located in Manchester, England (not the site of original capture) with the date/time at the present day (when the observation was made), not the original capture of the scorpion. This directly corresponds to the guidelines for downvoting in the DQA as Not Wild.

Also, it is not necessary to describe other users’ attempts to help explain iNat’s guidelines as “foolishness”. It’s possible to express disagreement without insulting others.

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Interesting habitat. Camouflaged on a grey jersey.
Striped jersey snails ;~)

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I think you misunderstood the context of the post you quoted, which had to do with dead, preserved specimens in a museum collection, not a wild animal found inside a dwelling.

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It’s hard to see how this could refer to a dead organism

You’re right, it’s not a very nice habitat shot. In fact, it is an old mouse pad.

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Those should be used only if the encounter recorded by the observation has the wrong date or location. In this case, if the encounter is at the museum and the date and location correc tly reflect that encounter, then they are accurate and the organism should be marked as not wild.

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OK, I see the difference. In the past, I’ve responded to similar observations with this comment from the Frequently Used Responses page:

Pinned Specimens with Clearly Incorrect Location and/or Date

The same considerations shown in this response apply to the likes of camera trap observations, pressed specimens in herbaria, shells in collections, etc).

It looks like the [date and/or location] may be incorrect for this pinned specimen. The “observed date” and location on the map should match when and where the organism was originally collected. If you’re not sure, it can be marked Casual in the Data Quality Assessment section, either by marking as “not wild” (also known as captive/cultivated) or voting no to date and/or location are accurate. This helps ensure the database and range maps only represent organisms when and where they were originally documented in the wild. Thanks!

Notice how that offers two different resolutions to the problem. So (bearing in mind that we don’t want to encourage these types of observations in the first place), which is the preferable outcome?

  1. Casual observations marked as “not wild” located in museums.
  2. Verifiable observations entered with the original location and date as transcribed from their labels, which does not reflect the encounter of the iNat observer with the organism.

All this quibbling about when to downvote dates and locations vs when to downvote wild is missing this important point.

If I take a picture of my bookshelf, knowing that it is made of pine, should I identify it as “Pines”?This case isn’t about documenting wildlife trafficking in the usual sense, because we have no idea how long ago that scorpion was killed or how many times it has changed hands since. At this point, it’s really just evidence of a human-made artifact.

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