Title pretty much says it all. There is a local fish store near my school that I frequently drop by to get photos for my photography class. They have some pretty rare species (one that comes to mind is Mikrogeophagus maculicauda, which was only described in 2022 and doesn’t even have a wikipedia page) that haven’t been put on iNat before and are pretty darn rare even in the aquarium trade.
Is it helpful at all to post high quality shots of these species for the sake of providing taxon photos, or am I no better than the people who go to the zoo and just take photos of the animals in their enclosures?
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This is completely fine, and is helpful for providing reference images when other users end up uploading observations of them in the wild
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Question, not meant to sound argumentative: how can one be sure their identifications are accurate?
I ask because I have seen multiple discussions about how mongers of plants and animals and even museum collections contain innumerable misidentified specimens.
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Identify the same way as any other observation - identifiers should use their own expertise based on the evidence provided in the observation.
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I’ve done just that with cultivated plants. E.g. a picture I took at an orchid show was for a while the only picture of that species on iNat, thus providing a taxon photo where previously there was none. By now, that species has gained at least two wild observations in its native range but neither of them show the flowers in as much detail as I was able to capture at the show so I would like to think my photo is still helpful.
While there is a reasonable assumption that labels are based on expert knowledge, there is no guarantee they are correct. I consider the label another suggestion for an ID, but not conclusive proof of ID. E.g. plant labels in botanical garden/arboretum settings may be wrong if plant tags were moved by accident or by less knowledgeable gardeners during maintenance. Ideally these will be caught and corrected on iNat. Captive/cultivated observations blend into the obscurity of casual but for some groups like orchids there are expert identifiers who will look through captive/cultivated as well based on taxon subscriptions.
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Thank you. I do not have taxon photo experience (nor fish!), I am just curious, and again, do not wish to sound argumentative. I am just trying to understand all the discussion threads cumulatively.
PD: @onefishyboi I think you are splendid for thinking of such a thing at all.
PPD:@annkatrinrose thank you, this was very helpful to my understanding.
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This is a fair point, I do have several reference texts to fall back on as some of these IDs between species comes down to counting dorsal rays and such. That can obviously be hard with 2-3 inch fish though. Admittedly I’d mainly be going off of the word of our wholesaler and my boss, though both are pretty darn reputable in the industry and he’s even a columnist in several aquarium magazines. And like other users are saying, there are numerous specialists in these fish that can help ID if they suspect my initial ID was incorrect.
Yes it’s extremely common for there to be a mismatch between the sign and the plant because either the sign or the plant moved. Luckily most of the time these tend to be so wildly wrong (not even in the same family etc) that it is pretty obvious. But I want to emphasize that plant tags/signs in those settings can also be wrong because, well, they’re wrong–maybe the garden got the plant and its name years ago from a source who didn’t have it identified correctly to begin with, or the taxonomic understanding of the group has changed over time without the garden being aware. Personally though I wouldn’t let that stop me from putting the name on an iNaturalist observation. If it was correct to the best of someone’s knowledge at the time the plant was planted, hopefully any mistakes will surface as people view it on iNat.
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Is there anything special I should do with the observations that I wouldn’t do otherwise? I’m assuming I’d immediately mark them as casual but I was under the impression you can’t add casual observation photos to a taxa?
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You definitely can. I have done it before.
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Thank you for bringing this up. I’m much less familiar with aquarium plants than I am the fish. Not to mention how many captive bred varieties there are of many plants (e.g. Rotala). Would it be helpful to do the same with plant taxa? We definitely have some rarer species in our store that I’d be happy to photograph if it looks like they are equally rare on iNat.
Just ID to your expertise (don’t rely on label/hearsay that you can’t confirm yourself, those as the observer you have a little more leeway here to take a guess). And yes, mark as captive.
One caveat I would add is that, for many organisms that are kept in captivity, the captive specimens diverge from wild types. People select for different traits (color, big fins/horns, size, whatever). So it would be most helpful to post observations with pics of representative individuals rather than any that are markedly different from those found in the wild.
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Sounds good, thanks