I’ve been going through my observations one by one and annotating them all, but I’ve come across a few things that I’m puzzled about the right options to choose.
One of these things is when there is evidence of an organism that is the destruction of something - for example, branches clearly felled by beavers, or the holes left behind by borer beetles.
I think that these are still helpful observations despite not showing the animal itself, but none of the annotation options quite cover it.
I’ve been on the fence about how to label these - by definition it’s certainly not a construction, in fact it’s the opposite, but thematically that still seems like the most fitting option. There’s also “track,” but the hover-text when you mouse over the Track option specifically calls it “a mark left in dirt or snow” which would disqualify the examples I’m talking about.
Is there a generally accepted way to annotate these? Am I thinking about it too much?
At the moment there is no appropriate annotation for these kinds of observations. See previous thread that also discuss “destruction type” observations:
Construction (within Animalia): Something created by an animal, made with or excavated from other materials. Examples of things that are Constructions: spider web, burrow, nest or hive, caddisfly larva casing, egg sac or egg case. Examples of things that are not Constructions: coral reef, mollusk shell, hermit crab shell, galls.
I could use some more clarification about the gray area here-- There are a good number of observations in this category. Beaver chews are one good example.
If a bear scratches a tree, that can’t be annotated because it’s not a construction and not a track? What about buck rubs, or logs torn apart by bears, or bite marks? I do think it’s fair to say there is currently no appropriate annotation for these, or at least there is a lack of clarification about which annotation is appropriate.
Are the “evidence of presence” annotations intended to account for all observations or are we accepting that some can’t be annotated?
The annotations were never intended to cover every possible use case; there are observation fields for that. Annotations are intended to be widely applicable to many taxa. So, for example, we have annotations like “flower buds,” “flowers,” and “fruits or seeds” because these are applicable to all flowering plants; but we do not have annotations for “pin” and “thrum” because only certain flowering plant taxa exhibit these flower types.