Here is an observation of saltwater species found far from saltwater: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/54148906 . Is it appropriate to mark it some way so it becomes casual? If so how?

You could mark “Location is inaccurate” in the DQA, but it looks like the location is accurate, the placement of the organism itself is not. So I’m not entirely sure what to do in this case.

I noticed that the same observer documented yet another (apparently different) Texas Lightning Whelk nine days later in the same area: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/54657512 That observation has been marked “Location is inaccurate” but since all the other observations by this observer d…

Yes, good idea. Marking the organism “not wild” is what I do in cases where a seashell was found out in the wild but far from where it could possibly have lived. Assuming of course that it is not a fossil seashell that did come out of geological sediments in that locality, in which case I mark it “…

This leads to a real life discussion of “how much can a swallow carry”, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Is there any way this could have been carried to the Austin area from the coast by natural means? If someone was walking on the sea shore and it crawled onto their boots, and they later dro…

I had a similar issue with this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135614 The conclusion we arrived at was the insect had found its way onto the observer’s car in Arizona, and ended up hitching a ride all the way back to his home in SoCal. The question is how to mark this? The o…

There are a lot of grey areas in iNat. I would call that cicada observation as wild… if it ended up in someones gear, and was inadvertantly carried to that location, then there is the very real chance that it has ended up in someone elses gear as well… Every taxon will have a range in which it can e…

[image] easmeds: The question is how to mark this? The organism is wild, so we can’t call it captive. It isn’t really an introduced species either, and that wouldn’t affect Research Grade status anyway. How can we annotate observations for organisms that are obviously transplanted like this? S…

[image] mnharris: Is there any way this could have been carried to the Austin area from the coast by natural means? If someone was walking on the sea shore and it crawled onto their boots, and they later drove back to Austin, saw it on their boots (or other gear), and threw it out, it would have…

Way too much color to be fossilized. I’d agree that someone likely chucked them out. Or maybe they were in someone’s beachcombing bucket, that person took the bucket to the river for other purposes, and accidentally lost the shells? I’d say that tagging it as not wild might be a good idea. It didn’…

I don’t think there’s any need to mark it as anything! It is a wild organism that ended up where it was likely because of unintentional human action. With regard to range maps based on observations generated on iNat there needs to be scrutiny on the behalf of the observer of the map. That falls on t…

How to mark obviously out of range organisms

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Evidence possibly transported unaturally far from its source General question	20	1441	October 30, 2023
Question about the best way to mark DQA on an observation General	15	571	May 22, 2022
DQA for specimens removed from the wild General question	27	1494	April 17, 2023
How to deal with observations of fish on fish markets? General	28	3441	December 24, 2019
Marking Exotic Animals as Captive When They're Clearly Not General	17	1047	August 24, 2025

How to mark obviously out of range organisms

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