Under “Annotations: Evidence of Presence”, would a piece of dead stony coral count as “Construction” or “Organism”? I would assume “Construction”…
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I would say organism, as it is explicitly not construction.
Construction (within Animalia): Something created by an animal, made with or excavated from other materials. Examples of things that are Constructions: spider web, burrow, nest or hive, caddisfly larva casing, egg sac or egg case. Examples of things that are not Constructions: coral reef, mollusk shell, hermit crab shell, galls.
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Agreed with “organism” but tending more towards none. Due to how corals build their skeletons, I would consider this case to be the same as mollusc shells. Tiwane has said:
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Thanks, I didn’t remember ‘coral reef’ being explicitly mentioned in the definition.
I find it a bit odd that we can record “bone” for vertebrates but not “shell” for invertebrates. Endo- or exo-, it’s still a skeleton.
Most vertebrate observations are not of bones, but most shelled mollusk observations are of the shell. So adding that annotation doesn’t really help much for mollusks.
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I’d mark it as “organism” and “dead” (if I were sure it was dead).
What about a pen with no ink? The pen is inside the cephalopod, so you don’t see it if the organism is live.
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What about it?
Should there be an annotation for pens?
See the current discussion on annotations in the process of being deliberated. New requests are not of high priority, so this will likely take a decade at iNaturalist’s current rate.
https://inaturalist.freshdesk.com/en/support/solutions/articles/151000191830-what-are-the-definitions-of-inaturalist-annotations- is really annoying, specifically on the mollusk shell thing. I have been annotating empty shells as constructions because, quite literally, they are even if they take a very long time to grow. It’s also weird that they do not mention leafmines.
We have a (newish) leafmine annotation.
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Good grief, I’ve been annotating empty mollusk shells as “Organism” for years. I confess I hadn’t given it a lot of thought… I may need to take some time and amend those.
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This is the correct way to do it as mollusk shells are attached to the organism and contain organic material.
iNat’s definition of construction is something external to the organism, which shells are not, regardless of how long they take to grow.
I’m not sure this would be particularly helpful for annotating iNat observations, although I don’t really know how many observations are of pens (I suspect not many). We also have observations of snail opercula and fish swim bladders, but I don’t think we need annotations for every observed organ.
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Thanks, that was how I was looking at it.
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