How should someone annotate an observation that’s a bore hole, say from an emerald ash borer?
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Evidence of Presence: Construction?
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More like destruction.
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There should be a destruction annotation, or ‘damage’ at the very least. I’ve been looking at a lot of beaver observations lately and was very surprised to find that I couldn’t search for chewed trees directly, and marking ‘construction’ would obviously lump them in with dams and lodges.
Other examples would be something like wild pigs tearing up the ground, those aren’t really ‘tracks’, I’ve seen suspected rooting areas with the ground very torn up, but no obvious footprint remaining in tact, or bears scratching up trees, and so on.
Sure, there are observation fields, but it seems like they are barely used, and in the case of beavers, it seems there are at least 2 overlapping fields to keep track of the same thing: Beaver Evidence - Chewing, and Beaver Chewed Wood
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Beaver%20evidence=chewing
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There is this annotation thread with nearly 800 replies:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/
Annotations are a tricky thing. When you design annotations, you’re trying to be all things to all people, meaning, you’re trying to please all experts in all taxa.
But iNatters are a spectrum. From people who want every edge case covered by endless annotations, to people with thousands of IDs and ZERO annotations, which is common.
It’s getting better all the time.
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I would count a beetle tunnel as construction. It is a negative space, making a space, but still ‘construction’ in beetle terms.
Construction is one of the newer annotations so won’t show up yet on older obs … unless / until someone works thru them.
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Destruction through our eyes
Construction through the critters eyes
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Murder through the eyes of the ash.
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Yes, it can be annotated as a construction. The official definition of Construction (visible if you hover your mouse over it) is: “Something created by an animal, made with or excavated from other materials.” Like a mammal’s burrow, insect bore holes are excavated from another material.
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