There are, as of writing, 12,341 observations of molluscs annotated as having evidence of constructions. The vast majority use the annotation incorrectly, where users think that shells count as constructions.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but the lack of a “shell” annotation for molluscs is becoming increasingly frustrating. I keep having to rewrite explanations as to why “construction” is not appropriate for shells which have no alternative annotation (other than annotating as “dead”, which doesn’t fully address the issue). Meanwhile, there is an ever-growing number of observations that use the construction annotation incorrectly. What are other users’ thoughts and experiences with this?
I understand the frustration, but I think for staff to change this you’d need a practical reason. How would a shell annotation help organize observations? Are there a lot of observations that would be annotated “yes” or “no” where it would be helpful to distinguish between them? I suppose “yes” for some slugs and “no” for some bivalves could be useful, but they seem infrequent enough that I’m not sure (and we have a project for the latter already). Otherwise you can usually assume an observation has a shell or not based on the taxonomy, regardless of how it’s annotated.
Perhaps it’s not all that essential to point out that there’s a shell in the picture if there is almost always a shell in the picture. But as you can see the annotation is misused and now it’s virtually impossible to find an actual construction by a mollusc. Correct annotations are drowned out by misusing the construction for shells. So while a shell annotation may be redundant, it can redirect efforts away from where they do harm towards where they at least aren’t wrong.
Good point, but what true mollusk constructions are there? I can only think of octopus dens, and in that case it’s easy to search by taxonomy+annotation as those cephalopods don’t have shells. Maybe the annotation option could remain for cephalopods, but not other groups. Some bivalves make burrows with visible openings, but that could also be considered a track?
Good question, I had wondered that myself. Perhaps holes made by oyster drills could be a construction (or maybe that’s a track?). Perhaps there’s situations where a burrowing bivalve’s burrow could be exposed. I admit I’m reaching, but be that as it may, such observations are currently hard to surface via annotations (I tried, unsuccessfully).
I’m one of those who did this incorrectly in the beginning. I’ve got an issues with annotations on my first load of Restio obs also also. But fess up, I’ve got far too little time, too many electricity issues and too few days of uninterrupted data/cell signals to go back and change them individually. I would prefer them to be correct though. Is there a way to bulk correct the whole lot, which would involve just removing an annotation for all of them at the same time?
If so, maybe with a little effort the top 20% of users with incorrect annotations can be contacted and convinced to fix it and that might solve 80% of the problem, Pareto wise.
And I might be a bit on the low knowledge side here, but why not just remove construction as an annotation option for molluscs altogether?
Tracks are specifically defined in the mouseover text as an impression made in the ground or snow by an organism. So while I think drag marks in the the sand from a live mollusk moving over the sand would count as tracks in this sense, I wouldn’t count burrows or drill holes as tracks
I found a couple of these searching in Explore, but I don’t know anything else about them. Are they actively constructed or essentially the same as the piles of walnut shell bits the squirrels are leaving on my deck right now because they like sitting in the same few places to process the nuts?
Or are they more like ant hills, which are often just debris piles from excavating an actual subterranean nest (not built with a purpose of their own) and almost always get annotated as “construction”?
Anthills directly surround and include the tunnel(s) that are being constructed, so that makes sense to me. And deliberately taking shells or other detritus elsewhere and piling them up also seems like a reasonable use of “construction” to me, even if the purpose of the pile is just to get them away from an organism’s burrow
