A friend has an insect collection tent at his home under guidance from the University of Kentucky. The most recent collection period was a couple weeks last fall; the collection bottle was then DNA-processed by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, resulting in a spreadsheet containing Class Insecta: 62 organisms identified at Order level (of 5 orders); 1263 organisms identified at the Family level (of 60 families); 991 organisms identified at Genus level (of 227 genera); 1753 organisms identified at Species level (of 501 species); and one Globular Springtail (order Symphypleona). There are no photos or audio, just the list of organisms identified by their DNA.
Are these data appropriate for iNaturalist, given that they aren’t likely to be given RG because of the absence of media?
If appropriate for iNat, is there a bulk upload process I can use? Would it be best to upload only one representative for each of the categories (e.g., only one each of the 501 species), or each individual?
I’d say iNat isn’t set up ideally to deal with such data, but I don’t think it would hurt to upload some. What comes to mind as an analog is the abundance of mushroom observations uploaded where the ID is 100% based on DNA barcode. While those do technically have a photo of the mushroom along with the barcode sequence, frequently nothing in the photo is being relied upon for the ID at all. The photo might just show an unidentifiable red Russula, and the ID provided is based on the sequence match. If that’s acceptable, I have a hard time seeing how uploading a photo of an unidentifiable insect slurry with a DNA sequence to support a species level ID wouldn’t be. And if you’re skipping the photo altogether, then there’s not even any concern that media uploaded would negatively impact the CV training.
I would recommend uploading directly to GBIF, although I’m not sure exactly how that works and what their policies might be. At the very least, these should be uploaded to GenBank.
I would suggest that these observations are not a great fit for iNat for two reasons:
It sounds like they would essentially just be casual observations forever, as they wouldn’t have media. Finding some other way to house the data and get it into GBIF (which wouldn’t happen on iNat) would be better. Maybe the University project is already doing this in some way?
iNat is really about recording one’s interactions with/experience of nature. There isn’t much of that here for two reasons:
a) It doesn’t sound like the individual organisms were observed in any meaningful way. In the case of fungi IDed by genetics, there is still an encounter with an individual organism which doesn’t seem to have occurred here.
b) It sounds like you (OP) are proposing uploading them yourself (and your friend who made the collection is not). iNat allows uploads of observations by others on a very limited basis, but, if my interpretation of the original post is correct, you are proposing uploading potentially hundreds of observations from someone else that you didn’t have a personal experience of. This really isn’t a fit for iNat’s purpose, so again, I’d suggest looking at other avenues.
I will research GBIF via the researcher with whom my friend is working at UK, to avoid duplication of effort and potential toe-treading.
I agree with the point that iNat is for direct observation of organisms, and that should be the baseline. To my knowledge, the collection bottle containing several thousand insects was never opened except at the DNA lab at Guelph University. I was asking for my friend because he doesn’t want to data to sit there doing nothing; but it’s likely being stored/used anyway, just not in iNat.
Finally, I have never (nor would I) post someone else’s data; I regret my original post left room for that interpretation. I was going to get everything set up on a spreadsheet and walk him through the upload process on his account, but that’s moot now.
At this point, I’ll drop the inquiry for iNat and pursue GBIF. Thank you all for your insight!
While iNaturalist is not set up for such types of observations, there are precedents for using test results for observations. For instance, I myself have uploaded a photo of a positive COVID test result as an observation for COVID-19 and I have also seen photos of other pathogenic disease test results as observations for those pathogenic observations. A while back, I was doing a project in my biology lab that involved 16S sequencing of bacteria, and I had hoped to upload photos of the colony in the petri dish along with the 16S results as an observation. Alas, the PCR did not work :(
Nonetheless, I would say that if the organism/colony is macroscopically visible, a photo of it should ideally accompany any lab test results.
I just learned that there are indeed photos, but that some may be of insect fragments. I’ll take a look to see if anything looks good. My friend is keen on documenting things that may not have been reported locally or in the state, and I am guessing there are many things in this dataset that fit that criterion.
Since the DNA sequences are being generated by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, I’m assuming they have plans for how the data will be used and disseminated–through BOLD I’d suppose. They can’t just be doing this for the fun of it and discarding the data. Perhaps it’s part of this project: https://biodiversitygenomics.net/projects/gmp/
The main reason we use iNaturalist for so many mushroom observations with attached DNA is that it is a very convenient place to have reference photos (and microscopy, and see range maps, etc) - IE there’s other things we use it for beyond just the DNA sequence. Observation fields get used a lot to record habitat notes - believe it or not, it’s been a great resource for croud-sourcing informations of some of this fungi, and iNat data has definitely been used in the descriptions for species.
That said, since these are single location, part of a broader project, don’t have individual photos or audio or any identifying data attached… It doesn’t seem like there’s much reason to even bother to upload them to iNat.
Personally, I’d upload the information directly to Genbank (and any other relevant genetic repositories there are, I’m not sure what exists for insects.) That’s assuming the sequencing group isn’t doing the genbank uploads themselves.
The most obvious places to post this data would be GenBank or BOLD, as that’s what those databases exist for. iNat would not be a good fit unless your friend has photos of the organisms, and unless your friend is associated with a museum or university, posting the data to GBIF won’t be easy.