I see both Evidence of Presence and Life Stage allow you to annotate Egg for animals. Is there a convention around when which option should be used?
I figure eggshells should be marked “Evidence of Presence = Egg” but not annotated with Life Stage, and I believe an older forum post covers that case too.
But what about when the eggs appear to still be alive and growing, so to speak? Or if they are dead and the juvenile clearly never emerged? It seems both could be appropriate. Is there any harm in applying both?
This is only really an issue for me when the observation is of a nesting female….usually a lizard. I annotate as evidence of presence both organism and egg with life stage as adult and sex as female. That is, I prioritize the adult over the egg in that situation, but by searching for annotations with both organism and egg I know I can always find that observation easily. Note, I only do this when the egg is visible during nesting (not possible in many observations/species.
If there is a live egg, it could also be annotated as Evidence of Presence = Organism (since it is in the egg), with life stage = Egg, but I would probably just leave it with life stage = Egg.
my opinion: generally, if your observation is meant to cover the parent, you should apply “evidence of presence = egg” while if you’re trying to cover the being within the egg you should apply “life stage = egg”.
in these examples, either will work depending on who you want to document.
most people would likely say no, but i say yes. an observation is technically meant to be applied to a single organism, meaning the annotations are meant to apply to a single organism. that’s why you can only select one life stage, one sex, either alive or dead, etc. by attributing both “egg” annotations to one observation, you’re essentially observing two different organisms with one observation, which causes confusion,
again, this is mostly my opinion, but this…
an observation is technically meant to be applied to a single organism