Dead/Alive Annotation & Its Purpose

[NancyinSunnyvale]

When I said “the fewer such observations the better” I was referring back to mreith’s comment:

@mreith

For specimen in collections, where time and place of the observation uploaded to iNat are not the time and place of collection, but time and place of the encounter of the dead specimen in the collection (e.g. in the Museum), things are obviously different.

I of course share your belief in the value of specimens in museums. I also strongly support the inclusion of legacy records on online databases such as BAMONA [https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/] and Odonatacentral.org.

But iNat is limited to one’s own observations. If I visit the British Museum and see a specimen collected in 1910 in the Galapagos, surely all I can record on iNat is my encounter with the specimen in 2020 in London.