The terms ‘flower’ and ‘fruit’ are only applicable for Angiosperms (= Flowering Plants). Gymnosperms, such as Conifers, produce seed, but do not have flowers or fruits
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But it’s definitely possible to add more than just sex annotation to them.
you mean something like ‘vegetative’ vs. ‘reproductive’?
Well, I’d say it should be something like male cone (pollen release), young female cone, older/mature female cone, first two would show when exactly trees are in reproductive state and fertilization and third is what would help divide differet cycles, otherwise it would be possible to mark cones present year around for adult trees and it’s not ideal.
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…although the cones of a Ginkgo are visually indistinguishable from fruit – drupes, to be exact – and bear no resemblance to pine cones. To me, this seems like an example of forcing a square peg into a round hole: “Sure, it looks like a drupe, functions like a fruit, but since we have classified Ginkgo as a conifer, we therefore must classify it as a cone.”
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@tiwane what a colossal thread!
It’s just been brought to my attention that the Lifestage annotation for Phylum Mollusca has only “adult” and “juvenile” but not “egg”. It needs “egg” too, for observations like this one: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68520835 (and plenty of other iNat obs we have of mollusc eggs).
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Mollusca doesn’t, but Cephalopoda and Gastropoda do. @susanhewitt is there any group in Mollusca that don’t need an egg Life Stage value?
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I am not sure about all of the classes. I guess I am not a good person to ask.
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There’re some poorly known classes, those studied all thought to have eggs but as for many groups an egg is mostly just a fertilized ovum some eggs hatch very quickly in a larva (e.g. hours).
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Thanks @tiwane and everyone. Having egg on Cephalopoda and Gastropoda works. The ID on that observation is down to species level now (inside Gastropoda) so egg is available. Having egg available for all Mollusca would let users add the egg annotation when they upload mystery mollusc egg photos. That’s totally your call though.
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Seems pretty straightforward so I added Mollusca to egg and removed Cephalopoda and Gastropoda.
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It would be quite a feat to have an observation of Scaphopod eggs, wouldn’t it?
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Request: In annotations, add Life Stage = Egg for Animal Kingdom
Context: Eggs, especially gastropod and insect eggs, can be difficult to identify even within the correct Class.
Why this request/change would be helpful:
- Being able to annotate to egg at the Animal level will help these observations get found and identified.
- Annotation will not get deleted in the course of discovering the species.
Current Problems:
- An observer might often know something is an egg, even if they have no idea what species it is from. But they can’t annotate to egg until the species is ID’d farther than Animal.
- If a second user disagrees and the Community ID goes back to Animals (Kingdom), and the Annotation for Life Stage: Egg is deleted. example:
How could this feature request mess anything up:
- Technically people could annotate things as eggs that are not eggs… But other users can disagree and fix this oversight. It doesn’t seem like something that would happen often(?)
Thanks for considering this!
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The teneral “lifestage” was somewhat recently added to Cicadas, but its use applies to all of Auchenorrhyncha (hoppers) and is readily identifiable in small individuals with even the poorest quality photographs. I know that there is conversation about whether “teneral” should be included as a life stage annotation as a whole since it technically isn’t a life stage per se. While my request is mainly regarding the oddity of only Cicadas having the teneral life stage option, I also propose a minor change to address those arguments—renaming the “teneral” life stage to “teneral adult” since nymph instars can be teneral as well. While “teneral” seems to imply that it’s a teneral adult (since the annotation wouldn’t be useful if it was used throughout the organism’s different stages) it seems some users have expressed confusion or an issue with the current state of the annotation.
Since it’s not my area of interest, I’m not sure if this applies to the remainder of Hemiptera, though I would assume it does (and I am not sure about other groups that lack it).
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Great points! I always comment to the effect of teneral on observations, more along the lines of “this is why it looks different to other observations of this species”. And I think there is a field for teneral, although I haven’t used that much lately, relying solely on a comment as enough to add value to the observation. Teneral in cicadas would be a great lifestage addition though, in that it depicts the accurate time of eclosure, whereas observations of pupal cases generally doesn’t show that by virtue of being so persistant…
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exactly! I find myself often leaving comments—which isn’t a problem in itself as sometimes it’s easier for me to leave a comment than add an annotation when going through many observations. however, it would help users understand the differences within a species if there could be a broadly applied teneral annotation which would keep everything in one place.
@nomolosx yes, it probably can be applied to any winged insects: beetles, orthoptera, flies, earwigs, etc. they all have teneral observations on iNat.
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great to know!
Yeah, anything with an exoskeleton that it sheds as it grows, or perhaps even me at the start of summer when I go from longs to shorts :)
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