Cultivated status for bugs?

General
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A bit of a weird question, but since I’ve been brushing through my earlier observations to make sure I didn’t leave any cultivated ones by accident, I got to thinking. If a 100% wild moth/butterfly lays eggs on my potted plants and I then take the hatched larva and raise them, does that make them into a cultivated individual?
I ask because I have somewhat recently shared a garden looper who I fed until it pupated and hatched because I felt too guilty killing it… but I don’t know if a) I’m doing a ‘bad’ thing, or b) if this makes the specimen cultivated.

If it matters, I let the little guy loose after taking a few photos.

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There’s a closed thread: Captive/cultivated or wild on rearing larvae etc

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A wild specimen is anything that appeared in a specific place on its own, and it (and its ancestors) were not brought there (intentionally or unintentionally) by humans.

Whether the caterpillar grows up on its own on your potted plant, or is raised by you in a cage, doesn’t change the basic principle: it and its ancestors arrived to your garden/house on their own, not because you brought them there.

Now if you would take a caterpillar from a completely different location, raise it at home and let the adult loose in your garden, then it would not be completely wild anymore, since it didn’t appear in your garden on its own.

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Yes it changes from wild when found in your yard.
When you take it from your yard to raise to adulthood it is captive.
When you release it and it moves off on its own it is then considered wild, once again.

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My understanding is that if it was unintentionally brought there by humans, it still counts as wild–ie bugs in a canister of catnip I purchased, or a bird that took a ride on a ship.

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That’s not what the topic is about, though.

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I’m not 100% clear on the amount of care given to the individuals, but it’s possible they should be considered to be cultivated/not wild. If you created an environment that protected the individual from predation for instance, or otherwise substantially aided it in surviving, it would be not wild. This is analogous to helping an adventitious plant survive with watering where it otherwise wouldn’t, fencing to protect from deer browse, etc.

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I was replying to the line about ‘unintentionally brought there by humans’ in the post I replied to

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I’ve never seen it listed anywhere “officially”, but the rule of thumb seems to be that if they’re in the same life stage you found them in an you mark the location where you collected them from, then they’re wild, but once they undergo metamorphosis, they’re best labeled as cultivated. So if you just took the larvae inside to keep them and posted some pics after taking them inside, they’re still wild, but if you’ve reared them to adults in captivity the adults are captive.

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I accidentally got mealworm eggs into a compost years ago (turns out they can stay for many months without hatching until they get moisture) and some months later uploaded an observation of the mealworm larvae happily living in the compost. It was marked as captive I think by a curator, so I’m not so sure everyone agrees on this part :/

Would you consider “cultivated” a plant that grew on its own in a pot if the owner of the pot starts watering it? (Honestly wondering, as those kinds of edge cases are not covered by the FAQ)

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I would say this plant is a volunteer and wild until the watering. Then it becomes cultivated because from that point forward its growth and survival is being changed, by a human, intentionally.

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It’s all based on intent: human deliberately moved the organism vs. hitchhiker, human deliberately watered a plant in a pot vs. it grew as an unwanted weed, human released an exotic animal on purpose vs. it escaped, etc. If you consciously cultivate the plant, it’s cultivated, but a plant growing as an unintended consequence of watering another nearby plant is wild.

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Ah, maybe I have misunderstood? I thought the watering was after the plant was noticed? If the plant just pops up, regardless of the mechanism, it is a volunteer and so wild.

It does not matter if you believe it only did so because you watered a nearby plant. Furthermore, you would have no way of knowing if it would have popped up anyway!

For example in our old home there was a sort of scoop we used to dig out a below ground drain and also below an enormous water tank. Then we left it haphazardly with dirt residue, and then suddenly one day there was a plant, without it having been watered at all. That was a volunteer, and wild.

If however, I had after noticing the plant then watered it, intentionally, the plant would then have been cultivated.

(It didn’t last long, this plant. Terrible place to have put itself.)

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Yes. I would consider a volunteer plant that is later watered/fertilized/caged to prevent predation/etc. to be cultivated. I would also consider the same for caterpillars protected from predators so that they can pupate or a stray animal that a human then feeds/waters/gets vet care for.

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What about the mosquito larvae in a bird bath?

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I have a plant that appeared in a unused pot, and I only water it to keep the soil alive. I don’t protect it from predation, I don’t fertilize or take any extra care. It’ll be gone when I need the pot, also I wait to see if I can better identify it. Cultivated or wild?

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captive

I disagree on the unintentionally part. Some plants and animals hitch a ride on other animals (including humans) and propagate from there. What about the organisms farmed by ants?

Wild, unless you feed them intentionally or move them and keep rearing them.

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Organisms being farmed by ants, bugs latching onto a bird and travelling far away, seeds getting stuck in animals’ furs and being spread - these are all natural ‘wild’ processes. Even humans have been part of this natural process for ages, before we had bikes and cars and trains and airplanes that could bring us (and our ‘guests’) wherever we want within unnaturally short periods of time.

However, I feel humans have greatly transcended their original place in nature and now we are, somehow, too disconnected from nature to be considered a part of it - or at least a part of the slow natural processes.

Sure, some seeds or a tick that got stuck on you while you were walking the dog nearby, then got unstuck in your garden and propagate there are completely wild to me. Even a random plant that popped up in your garden and stays alive because you water it, is wild to me. And so is a caterpillar that you found in your garden, even though you took it inside and are actively caring for it. Whether you interact with it or not does not change anything to its wild origins. Now if you start a breeding program, carefully selecting the best seeds or the strongest butterflies, the offspring should be considered cultivated, as you’re actively changing the course of evolution.

However, some seeds that got stuck inside your shoes while you were travelling in California, then get planted unintentionally in your garden in New York - those plants are definitely not wild. They would have never gotten from California to New York within a day by any natural process. They were introduced by you, even if it was unintentionally. Same goes for a caterpillar that chooses your tent in Italy to pupate on, then emerges as adult moth in the UK. That moth is not a wild UK species and would have never reached the UK by any natural process, but could only get there because you brought it there by car or airplane.

I guess what I’m trying to say comes down to this: If you move an organism (intentionally or unintentionally) to a new place that it could have reached by any other natural process anyway, it should be considered wild. If it could not, it should be considered introduced (not wild) to the new spot.

A single introduced organism could probably not propagate, as there are no other individuals of the same species present. However, if more individuals are introduced and they start propagating, they could become an invasive species, which is dangerous for the local native biodiversity - which is why it’s best not to move organisms from one place to another.

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People may have many definitions of what wild/not wild/cultivated mean to them. But iNat lays out its operational definitions, which focus on whether or not an organism is found in a location because of human intention or not (with care/cultivation being a type of intention):
https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000169932-what-does-captive-cultivated-mean-

This:

is a fine position to take as a personal opinion, but it’s not how we are supposed to define cultivated/captive/wild on iNat.

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Thank you, but unless I misunderstand what is written in that link, I don’t see any conflict with what I’ve written.

What some people here are suggesting, is that whenever you intentionally interact with an organism, it’s suddenly not wild anymore (like watering a plant or moving a caterpillar from the garden to inside your house), and whenever you unintentionally interact with an organism, it always remains wild (like moving a caterpillar 1500 kilometres on your tent, or moving a seed 2000 km in your shoe). But that’s not what that list says.

Some points from the list of ‘wild’ things:

  • weed or other unintended plant growing in a garden - nothing about watering it or not
  • snake that you just picked up (yes, it’s in your hand where you intended it to be, but the place and time is where the snake intended to be) - even though by picking it up and putting it down, you’ve interacted with it, much like moving a caterpillar several meters from where it originally intended to be
  • living organisms dispersed by the wind, water, and other forces apart from humans - meaning that if they were dispersed by humans for long distances, like the wind and water do, intentionally or unintentionally, they are not wild

And a point from the list of ‘captive’ thing:

  • plants that grew from seeds that were planted in the ground or scattered - again, nothing about that being done intentionally or unintentionally

The list, like me, does not focus as much on human actions being intentional or unintentional, as it focuses on origin and location, so, did the organism originally get to that place on its own, or by human intervention?