Captive spider rearing -- instar photo series

[myxfit]

I’ve been rearing a few species of local spiders from hatchlings through maturity, with the intention of documenting their growth as they molt and grow. I’ve been taking a set of photos at each instar for each individual.

I’ve been debating how best to share this sort of thing on inat. Any observations would be marked as captive, of course.

I was initially thinking I could upload all instar photos for an individual as one observation, once they are mature, so all the photos are together and can be easily referenced together.

But then I was just thinking tonight that it might be better to upload each set of photos at a given instar as a separate observation, and then associate all of the observations together with a tag denoting the individual. something like #myxfit_castianeira_amoena_1. And then you could still see all photos of that individual by clicking on the tag

I just thought I’d see what others thought would be the best approach, before I start uploading.

So far I’ve finished a series for Castianeira amoena, and I have Phidippus mystaceus, P. texanus, P. cardinalis, P. clarus and Castianeira descripta in progress.

[susanne-kasimir]

One observation is one encounter of one individual. So you should upload each instar as a separate observation and then (what I think is the best) link them all together with the observation field: “similar observation set”. There is an explanation but in short they all get the observation number of the first observation (which you could mark as wild, if it is the photo of when and where you found them) and then you can click: show observations with this value and you see all of them together.

[pfau_tarleton]

This is how I do it…which I think is the typical approach. You’d definitely not want to have the same individual observed on different dates within the same observation (with a single date).

https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/pfau_tarleton/29431-link-multiple-observations-of-same-individual-over-time

And here’s a specific example using a spider:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Same%20specimen%20over%20time=192921705

And if you rear multiple individuals from a single mother, you can document that like this:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/188761126

[myxfit]

Oh, awesome! Thanks for the info! I didn’t realize this was a thing that was already being done by others as well. Cool!! I’ll definitely take a closer look at your examples, and see if I can structure mine similarly.

Thanks!

[phma]

I would use “same individual over time” (the content is the observation number (end of the URL) of the first observation) for the different instars of one spider, and I guess “similar observation” to link the nth instar of one spider to the nth instar of another spider. Here’s one of my obs with the “same individual” field: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/300344766 .