Nope. An observation is supposed to represent a single interaction at a single moment in time.
You could post photos of different stages in different observations, and link them with observation fields, though.
[addendum: Info on observations, including “revisiting” an organism can be found at https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#observations1
and also here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/adding-photos-to-an-observation-taken-another-day/7083 ]
Ok ok that’s true.
In this scenario, the organism won’t be wild upon release, because you will have transported it to that location and kept it alive, protected, fed, and sheltered during the preceding time. So the individual’s presence at that time and place will have been determined by you (a human) and not by the organism or other natural processes. If you were to observe it later after it had a chance to survive on its own, it would be wild.
In many cases, captive observations do receive less interest, but this isn’t a good reason to incorrectly mark an organism is wild - it’s just the way that the system works.
One potential solution is to tag other users who you think would be interested in these specific observations, even though they are captive. Then they will see them and identify/use the info as needed.
Umm yes, but as I said, I release them at the exact same spot where I collected it (does that count??)…
Ok yes, but the problem is: iNat rules aren’t very clear to me. At first I really thought these observations would count as wild.
Maybe just post the lifecycle stuff to Bugguide. Post them here as casual just in case a couple people ever seen them too. If it is a not well documented species, they will be more visible and useful over there and probably seen by more experts.
Good idea.
Oh, but as I said before, I don’t live in the US…
Some of the rules aren’t always clear to those of us who’ve been a part of the community for years! 
But that’s okay! Asking for clarity in the forum was a good choice, and now hopefully things are a bit clearer.
To extend this analogy, in this case the zoo is in the Serengeti. The original habitat and captive habitat are identical. There are a lot of parallels with this and the bison thread.
I still say say they should be marked as wild. I do not deny the bugs are captive and under human care, but the main point of the captive flag is to remove observations which would distort the natural range maps or phenology diagrams. In this case, there is no distortion.
A thought experiment: I go out and catch a bug and take it home to take fancy photos of it. It is undeniably captive when I’m photographing it, but how does it matter? (the location and time are set to where I found it in the wild). I do not see how this would negatively impact the iNat dataset. If I take the photos 1 week after collecting, is it wild? What about 1 day? What about a mobile photography studio in my car 1 hour after collecting? 5 minutes? 1 minute? If you want to be consistent, all these scenarios would be considered captive.
That’s more or less the idea I had.
Yes, but you aren’t feeding it, nor giving him shelter, etc, and you are supposed to release it back into the wild, but no matter if you collect the insect or not, the insect will still be there in the wild. It’s not exactly captivity. But if I collect a caterpillar in the wild I guarantee its survival but because in nature it had a very low survival rate and quite possibly it wasn’t going to survive, so its survival is my ‘‘fault’’.
Otherwise, I agree with your opinion, but I’m honestly very confused. First of all, I believe we should clarify iNat’s rules about the subject (as said earlier).
Post caterpillar as wild and then other stages as captive, link all and also post links to first observation so all get ids, then if it’s a new info on them, use photos as main photos of taxon. You as human moved it intentionally and decided where it will be, by the rules, that’s what captivity is.
Even if adults are released at the collection site, isn’t it still a distortion to observe them as wild upon release? Even if the species occurs at the location, the captive reared specimens may not have developed at the same speed and emerged at the same time that wild specimens would, and recording the presence of early stages is not equivalent to finding a mature specimen.
Where I live, certain large saturniid moths like Hyalophora cecropia are quite uncommon. If I was to happen upon an aggregation of early-stage caterpillars, raise them to adulthood and post a bunch of observations as I released them, it would give the false impression that the area was some kind of cecropia moth hotspot when in reality few of those caterpillars would have survived and adults are very rarely encountered.
Similarly, if I was to collect some caterpillars of a multi-brooded moth late in the season and raise them indoors or near a source of artificial light that disrupted their photoperiod, they may fail to overwinter and emerge at an unnatural time of year. Though not as dramatic, seasonality applies even in tropical regions and I imagine that artificial rearing could similarly make insects emerge at times when they otherwise wouldn’t.
Even if its not against the rules I would stick to observing at the time of collection and using pictures taken after rearing for identification purposes.
In my view, you should record the egg or larva that you collected as wild on the date you collected it at the place you collected it. Subsequent photos of the adult that emerged should be treated as an identification aid to allow verification of the egg or larva.
I just wouldn’t make another record of the adult being released back into the wild. You don’t know that it would have occurred there on that day without your assistance. You have already recorded that species at that place so it is on the map. I say leave it at that. Or find a truly wild one and photograph it for a new observation.
It doesn’t “count” in the sense that releasing at the point of initial capture much later doesn’t mean it is wild, because an observation is for a given time and place.
There are lots of scenarios including some that are difficult to figure out - I think the iNat guidelines try to strike a balance between general principles and having a long list of specific scenarios that are unwieldy for many users. It may also help to search the forum and read many of the other threads that have discussed the usage of captive (it’s a popular topic).
@kevinfaccenda states:
While that may be an important outcome of the captive flag, it isn’t the criteria iNat asks us to use for determining whether an observation is captive or not. The key distinction is this explanation at the beginning of the iNat Help entry on captivity: “Checking captive / cultivated means that the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there.” On release, the butterfly/moth would be present, even if it’s at the location of its initial capture, at the time and place of your choosing.
If it had been left alone, it may have been eaten, may have metamorphosed earlier/later, etc. - We can’t be sure. So captive/cultivated is the best choice. iNat gives some discretion to allow posting of pics taken at a later time but noted as being at the time/location of initial capture (since we know that the organism was there of it’s own accord). However, once there’s been a change in lifestage, it’s best to consider further observations as captive.
It would be! A few other species as well, but that was the main one 
I have been thinking the same thing. I occasionally catch something, chill it down in the fridge, take photos and release it. To me it’s wild. Personally, I think there is too much splitting of hairs on this subject, but as I said above, I’m more relaxed about it than others.
That’s clearly different, life stage doesn’t change and ideally you should use time of catch, but date still is the same.
Unless you clarify in the notes section they are captive.
But anyway I always collect few individuals, 5 or 6 when possible, but regularly it would be like 2 or 3 (caterpillars aren’t that abundant or easy to find anyway).
Most insects here aren’t ver seasonal. Here we have two seasons: dry season and rainy season. Yes, definitely insects are way more abundant in the rainy season, but not because they have specific ‘‘calendars’’ to emerge just at certain months, and they don’t overwinter either. In the dry season most of them get less abundant because of the less amount of resources, they have less food and therefore breed less abundantly- I don’t know if I was clear enough.
And I also have some ways to make the rearing as natural as possible, almost as if they were in the wild, so they develop pretty quickly as they would normally do in nature.
Otherwise I understand your point of view and I agree with it.
From the iNat help page, relevant text to this in bold:
"Since this tends to be kind of a gray area, here are some concrete examples:
Captive / cultivated (planted)
Wild