In my opinion, a checkbox is suitable for representing discrete binary data, but is not appropriate for representing a complex situation such as the one at hand:
Native (= indigenous); Spontaneous (≠ cultivated); Neo-native; Potential neo-native; Non-native (= allochthonous, foreign, xenophyte); Casual (= accidental); Naturalized; Archaeonaturalized; Stenonaturalized; Eurynaturalized; Introduced (intentionally or accidentally); Cultivated (≠ spontaneous); Subspontaneous; Weed; Invasive (Confirmed, Potential, or Species to monitor)
Would a rating system be more appropriate? Maybe better but still not perfect…
PS2: It is hightly subjective to decide on hybrid cases between wild and cultivated. Does a wild plant collected from nature and placed in a pot become cultivated? After how long is a clonal organism (such as bamboo or pineapple) that has been introduced and persists without human intervention, considered to be wild?
As some one who has had this debate before. iNaturalists mechanisms for wild/captive aren’t related to whether a species is native or non-native. Ostensibly any hybrid occurring naturally with a native counterpart wouldn’t be considered ‘invasive’. Though, that is technically an anthropomorphic centered philosophical debate. When something is here, it’s here. Delineating between something wild/captive is defined pretty clearly here. This is the topic I was involved in this thread regarding wild/captive.
Upon ‘escaping’ the location they were originally planted in, they are considered wild. Users should not be marking exotic organisms that are clearly not in a garden or flowerbed, have some sort of indication they were planted, as captive.
An escaped butterfly is free as it escaped from captivity. Maybe a long living big animal that escaped can eventually become wild, but a single escaped insect thousands of kilometers from its natural habitat by definition can never be wild
While yes, it would be free. The correct term is introduced. Which is covered next to the name of the organism on the observation. Wild/captive is there to determine whether it is in an enclosure where it is intended to be, or otherwise. A non-native species will never be considered “native”, only ever “introduced.”
then I’m not sure asking them to determine whether their observation is
is going to be productive.
The captive/cultivated designator is an over-simplification, yes, but it seems good enough as is for 99% of observations. iNaturalist is also dependent on local identifiers, and many of these are going to be way more familiar with say, wild plants then horticultural ones. And sure, creating data for GBIF is a secondary goal, but I don’t think it’s worth completely ignoring.
A single escaped tropical butterfly in Europe cannot get the status ‘introduced’ yet. We can only say that about a population that manages to survive on its own in the new habitat. ‘Introduced’ simply means ‘non-native’ and, like you already wrote: “iNaturalists mechanisms for wild/captive aren’t related to whether a species is native or non-native.”
A single escaped butterfly is not captive, but free. It’s not wild, as it’s not yet part of a population that manages to survive on its own. Since it’s not wild and there’s no population yet, we cannot label the species native or introduced to the new location. Those labels do not yet apply to a single escaped individual.
A single escaped tropical butterfly in Europe cannot get the status ‘introduced’ yet. We can only say that about a population that manages to survive on its own in the new habitat.
Are you saying that it is not the definition of introduced, or that you haven’t seen the introduced status on said butterfly?
You can add or edit the introduced tag yourself.
Definitionally, whether there is a population or not, introduced applies. The definition of introduced on iNaturalist is “Introduced: the taxon arrived in the region via anthropogenic means.”.
Exactly: “Introduced: the taxon arrived in the region via anthropogenic means.”
The label ‘introduced’ can only apply to a species, not to one single individual of that species.
‘Introduced’ automatically implies the species is established in the new location, which means there is a viable population that is procreating on its own. A single escaped butterfly without any mates cannot procreate and when this individual dies, the taxon disappears again from the new location.
Exactly: “Introduced: the taxon arrived in the region via anthropogenic means.”
The label ‘introduced’ can only apply to a species, not to one single individual of that species.
‘Introduced’ automatically implies the species is established in the new location, which means there is a viable population that is procreating on its own.
So you’re arguing semantics? Like, do you want me to chase the definition of “Taxon”, then we can define “Population”, then we’ll have to define “Group”, after that we’ll have to define “Assemblage”. Etc.
But what you’ll find throughout these definitions, is that none of them are exclusionary to an individual. A group can contain one individual. Additionally, introduced does not imply established. That isn’t in the definition of “Introduced”. It is intentionally broad. You’ve been given the definition of “Introduced” as far as iNaturalist is concerned, it doesn’t imply anything else.
A single escaped butterfly without any mates cannot procreate and when this individual dies, the taxon disappears again from the new location.
I’m not sure what procreating has to do with an non-native individual being introduced. I think you are getting confused between introduced and invasive. Introduced taxa don’t have to be invasive, they just have to be present. Whether they are no longer present in the future is an entirely different discussion. An observation on iNaturalist is loosely described as “An individual at that exact place and time.”
The “introduced” tag can be applied to a location, so it’s not as if you’re marking an entire taxon as introduced. Just to the location they are non-native in and introduce to.
Strictly speaking, the large majority of taxa don’t reproduce sexually at all, and many of the ones that do can also reproduce asexually. So for a significant number of taxa, one individual is all it takes to form a viable founding population. In addition, there are also many taxa for which the term “individual” is highly ambiguous.
Somehow, the criteria for establishment means have to cover all these cases, so it’s not surprising that iNaturalist has chosen to use fairly broad definitions. In particular, they don’t make a distinction between introduced (non-native and naturalised) and adventive (non-native, but not naturalised).
I do have some sympathy with your concerns about observations of clearly adventive organisms becoming RG. If you live on an island (as I do), this issue comes up with quite tedious regularity.
Very often, garden centres are a major source of the problem. As an identifier (mainly of insects) I have come across several observations of exotic species located in the car parks of garden centres. Usually, these finds are greeted with great excitement as “firsts” for a given country/region - but in reality they are (or should be) of relatively minor scientific interest or value. And the same goes for the many examples of exotic insects that arrive in food packaging, or that are temporarily transported across borders via cars, or found only as control agents in the vicinity of heated green-houses, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, iNaturalist (and often also the wider scientific community) lumps all these cases together as “new” species to add to local checklists before looking for any evidence that they have become naturalised. Presumably, the main argument for inclusion is simply that such species might become naturalised at some point in the future, so forewarned is forearmed. (And who wants to be the killjoy that spoils all the fun).
Another aspect of this that bothers me in a different way (this time as an observer) is the mildly puzzling way in which the iNaturalist community treats certain edge cases. One common example of this is the exotic waterfowl found in many public parks. Some of these birds have been living (and presumably breeding) in these locations for decades, and in many cases don’t have their wings clipped. There’s a thread on the forum about this topic, which concludes that these animals should be treated as “wild”, largely on the basis that they could escape, even though they never actually do. (Quite why this line of reasoning doesn’t equally apply to e.g. domesticated cats is less obvious).
Of course, iNaturalist being what it is [], every observation I have made of cases like this are marked as “captive/casual” (and the same goes for several observations of obviously escaped pets and plants). I suppose that’s just an example of democracy in action for you - the results are sometimes dubious, but at least it can always be claimed that the process was “fair” [].
iNaturalist records what is where when, the data coming from diverse people with often limited skills or knowledge about nature. The data are used by people with diverse interests. Nature is wonderfully diverse but iNaturalist has to categorize observations in simple (sometimes simple-minded) ways so that people can apply the categories more or less consistently and data users can know more or less what the categories mean. iNaturalist has simplified (sometimes arbitrarily simplified) the meaning of “wild” vs. “captive/cultivated” because that’s what it has to do to sort the data.
For iNaturalist purposes, the distinction between “wild” and “captive/cultivated” is simple, though sometimes hard to apply. Individual “captive/cultivated” organisms are where they are because some person intentionally put them there. “Wild” organisms were not deliberately put where they are by humans. That’s it. There are edge cases (e.g. birds photo’d in the hand during banding, birds being released after rehabilitation, escaped animals that will probably be recaptured, plants growing in a garden from seed produced by plants planted in the garden, etc.) but many things discussed above are NOT edge cases.
The wild/captive distinction is NOT about whether the organism is native to the area.
It is NOT about whether a reproducing population of the species is established in the area. (Even what we organisms we botanists would call “waifs” are wild for iNaturalist purposes.) In other words, it is NOT about whether the introduced taxon is naturalized in the area.
It is NOT about whether the individual organism’s parents were wild or captive/cultivated. (Arbitrarily but usefully, seeds dispersed from a cultivated plant are “captive/cultivated” but seedlings growing from those seeds are “wild.”)
It is NOT about whether the individual organism interacts with wild organisms.
Yes, reality is more complex than iNaturalist’s wild vs. captive/cultivated categories. Another major component of iNaturalist data – the species – are also simplified, sometimes arbitrary categories that are nonetheless wonderfully useful. Biological reality is often too complex for our simple, human categories. However, we need categories (such as words!). We can have lots of fun discussing the complexities, but at a practical level, we just have to get on with the process of applying the simplified concepts as defined by the organization within which we are working.
iNaturalist data mostly reports what is where when. It is often used to understand how the organisms presence reflects environmental or historical factors.
I have been using another observations website (like iNat, but based in the Netherlands) for a long time, even before I knew about iNat’s existence. On this website, there is a special box that we tick for (obviously) escaped individuals. So, you can still upload a tropical butterfly that’s flying just outside of the butterfly house that it just escaped from, but by ticking the ‘escape’ box, the individual will not be counted for that area’s species list, nor will it appear on distribution maps. As such, species lists and distribution maps more accurately show which species (whether native populations, introduced populations or wild strays) actually occur in that area.
Yes, iNat should be easy to use and understand, but I think it really wouldn’t make things more complicated if there was a similar ‘escape’ box to tick, with similar consequences for the observation’s status (going to casual).
As much as I like the idea and feature as implemented on that other observations website, this would mean a radical change of policy – unlikely to happen. (At the moment, escapees on iNat = ‘wild’ = eligible for research-grade; following your proposal, escapees would be deemed non-eligible and “going to casual”).
And would it be worth it? I fear that such a big change would not help much with the most heated wild/captive issues (e.g. those “feral/free-living” individuals/populations of “usually domestic” species e.g. cats and cows, the ones fussy experts want to rid their distribution maps of).
So adding an annotation for " not established" like in reptiles and amphibians to more species could be a solution to this. At least then they can be filtered out from maps, even if they become RG. Or just marking them as cultivated when it is obvious that it is still the same generation of butterfly that escaped since they don’t have the plants their young feed on.
Hard agree. While likely more complicated, I do wish there was a separate “research grade” pool for captive/cultivated. I don’t care if it’s actually called " Research grade", or something like “Verified”. It’d just be nice.
Dumping them in the same pool as observations lacking vital information such as time and date, location, etc, is not a great system. It also gets complicated when users mark thigns as captive/cultivated out of ignorance and send something wild out of the research grade pool.
To offer a different perspective, I don’t think captive/cultivated observations should be in the Needs ID queue. While I agree that some sort of RG-equivalent label would be very nice for captivated/cultivated observations that have an agreeing community ID, I do not think they should be visible on the default explore or identify page.
iNaturalist staff has been consistent and explicit about the fact that this site is primarily about observations of wild organisms. In addition to the quotes and links already shared by others, here is the About page (my emphasis):
Vision: iNaturalist’s vision is a world where everyone can understand and sustain biodiversity through the practice of observing wild organisms and sharing information about them.
Adding captive/cultivated observations to the default Explore/Identify queue (which very many people see when using the site) I believe sends the wrong message about the core vision of iNaturalist.
Perhaps if plants (the main captive/cultivated group) were like birds (i.e. often getting 2+ confirming IDs within days or hours) then maybe I could see a case for it, but as it stands now there are a huge number of plant observations relative to the number of plant identifiers, and I think adding cultivated plants to the default pages would just encourage even more cultivated plant observations.
There are identifiers who do ID cultivated plants (and they are very easy to search for, it’s just one click on the explore/identify filters tab). I don’t want to speak for others, but perhaps cultivated plants don’t get IDed as frequently because the majority of plant IDers aren’t interested in IDing them.
There is also the consideration that garden plants are much more likely to be hybrids or cultivars, which the iNat CV (and taxonomy) is ill-equipped to handle (e.g. hybrids are not trained on, and RG observations are prioritized over casual in the training model). For us humans, Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, but for the iNat CV, Rose is a camellia is a hibiscus is a rose powdery mildew… If one’s interest is identifying garden plants, I’d argue one is better served using any common search engine image search over iNat—it will likely give you the name of the cultivar (and a shopping link!), which is probably what most people want, not being told that their rose is indeed a rose, a dicot, a flowering plant…
the reason for adding a label of “restorative” for cultivated native plants and adding them to the id queue is for situations like tropical milkweed / butterfly milkweed. tropical being a non-native plant at my location that is sometimes errantly sold as a native and installed in gardens only later to be found to be non-native.
], every observation I have made of cases like this are marked as “captive/casual” (and the same goes for several observations of obviously escaped pets and plants). I suppose that’s just an example of democracy in action for you - the results are sometimes dubious, but at least it can always be claimed that the process was “fair” [