To demonstrate my tendency to be pedantic, a beaten up moth with few remaining scales (especially on the thorax) is old, and could be classed in the “imminent death” category. And with that, I think we should end this conversation!
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Here’s my opinion:
Marking an empty case as pupa (or a dead, dried out insect in winter as adult) will have an effect on the phenology graph, though as @kiwifergus pointed out, the effect should be negligible in most cases.
The advantage: If I am interested in how a pupa of one species looks like, I can find it with the identify tool. And an empty case still might contain valuable ID characters.
To mark an empty pupal case as ‘Adult’ is for me the worst option, then better leave it w/o annotation.
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It was already discussed, but I don’t remember the name of the topic, a person shouldn’t rely on graphics thinking they’re the same as in books, finding an old pupa means it CAN be found at the time, so it gives a knowledge, and iNat graphics do show when you can find it, not when it was alive.
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I was wondering, could we have an additional option for “tracks/nest/ and other signs”?
As far as with the alive or dead tags, if I upload a picture that was taken a couple of years ago and I know that the animal was alive then but have no idea now, what would be the appropriate tag to id it?
One last question, if an animal is in a reserve or a lake would that still be considered as wild or captive? Ex: Spotting a lion in an African reserve (technically, it could be considered captive but it’s also wild) or some fish in a mountain lake (but their’s a sign saying that they bring in fish - but you wouldn’t know if some of the fish are born in the lake therefore being wild — if that makes sense?).
Ty.
i am just another user here, and i personally think this is not necessary, as all tracks and signs should be annotated as “Alive or Dead: Cannot Be Determined” so they are easy to filter out. Your opinion on this might differ and you might wish to open a feature request here https://forum.inaturalist.org/c/feature-requests/
iNat is a data deposit for observations. An observation is an encounter with an individual organism at a certain time and place. If you saw Christopher Columbus settings its foot onto the Bahamas at the 12 October of 1492. Then please add this observation with this date and this location to iNat. At this time and place Christopher Columbus was a living male adult. So annotations for this observation would be:
Life Stage: adult
Alive or Dead: Alive
Sex: male
What the organism you saw, is doing now during the time of your data upload, is in most cases speculation. Even if we knew exactly that the organism is dead now (as in the Christopher Columbus example) this does not matter. The only thing that matters is the facts you observed. Remember:
An observation is an encounter with an individual organism at a certain time and place. And your annotations should reflect the facts at that time and place.
iNat observations are by default considered as non “captive-cultivated”. If you have evidence that the organism you observed was “captive-cultivated” (E.g. an animal on a leash, or in a cage, or a fish in an aquarium or aquaculture pond … or a plant that was planted e.g. in a pot, in a garden, in a field or plantation) then you should mark the observation as captive-cultivated. …
Your example of a fish observed in waters where fish are stocked, is certainly a borderline case. Similar to the case of honeybees, discussed somewhere else on the forum right now. One could certainly find elaborate rules, on how to mark observations in these borderline cases (e.g. depending on the probability of local reproduction), but at the end its up to you what you do in these cases.
A lion in a spacious European or American safari park should be marked “captive-cutivated”. - In contrast, National parks and nature reserves do usually preserve wild organisms, reproducing and living there. Which means a free range lion in an African reserve should not be marked “captive-cutivated”.
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That was suggested quite a few times in this thread, but I don’t think a feature request was ever made.
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The thread you linked is actually where all annotation feature requests should be made. They are all being directed to this catch-all topic.
I’m leaving this topic open for now, since the original question was about how to apply existing annotations, instead of suggesting new ones. But will close once that seems to have run its course, as the OP has already suggested.
Meanwhile please direct suggestions for new or different annotations to the linked topic, otherwise they may not get noticed by staff in this topic.
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