Sprouting is a young plant. No longer a seed.
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Thought it would be something like that. I was just having a moment of āthere are seeds visible -ā
But yes, sprouts arenāt fruiting, this is true. Some of them bud before they even have true leaves though, which startled me. Seedlings with buds!
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Everyone knows that conifers bear cones. Surely taxonomy will let us use an annotation of some sort. One day?
Apologies, I have been using Seek for a few years, but am new here and unfamiliar withā¦ everything. I have two features that I would like to see that seem closely related to this topic.
- Diseased, infected, etc. with additional description of severity i.e. life threatening.
Example I:
(Image1 removed due to limitations of new user.)
Image1. Healthy Monarch larva.
Image2. Monarch larva infected with parasitic (Tachinid Flies?) larva. Life threatening (destroy).
Example 2:
Image3. Healthy monarch egg.
Image4. Mottled monarch egg infected with parasitic (trichogramma?) wasp. Life threatening/dead (destroy).
- Color coded toxicity severity in plants and risk of contracting a pathogen from in insects. This would be greatly beneficial to carry forward to identification apps for those in the field (hikers, foragers, farmers, gardeners, children etc.) with limited time to research each observation encountered.
observation fields will do in the meantime; Iāve been applying ādiseased/infected: yesā to fungus-smutted inflorescences
separately, I have a question: do teeth (NOT in a skull) count as bones? for the purposes of the annotation anyway, theyāre not literally bones
I would certainly annotate teeth as bones.
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Alright good, I shall leave my annotation there until further notice then. I was mildly concerned as to whether it might be an owl pellet situation, which are apparently not scat
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Need to include damage as evidence of presence
Including āDamageā as a new annotation under iNaturalistās āEvidence of Presenceā would greatly enhance the documentation of species that are cryptic, nocturnal, or rarely observed directly. Damage, such as leaf chewing damage, chewed bones, boreholes, claw marks, or bark scoring, can serve as reliable, species-specific evidence, especially for caterpillars, hidden insects like borers, or elusive mammals such as rare big cats.
Unlike existing categories, damage is neither a āConstructionā (which implies purposeful building) nor a āTrackā (impressions left by movement), but an incidental result of behaviour such as feeding or territory marking. It also differs from āLeafmine,ā which refers to a specific feeding pattern within leaf layers by certain insect groups. A broader āDamageā annotation would fill this gap, supporting more accurate identification, early pest detection, and improved biodiversity monitoring across a wider range of species.
This has been discussed in this thread but I donāt feel a satisfactory answer was reached.
Examples of reports where āDamageā as an annotation would be appropriate:
Eucalyptus Longhorn Beetle report: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/260873608
Eastern Black Bear: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/285632888
Pileated Woodpecker: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/283928260
Red Rover Case Bearer Moth: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/269865178
American Beaver: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/280913908
Yellow Bellied Glider: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/280468361
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Damage sounds anthropocentric.
Evidence of feeding - for most of your examples?
Marking territory for leopard claw marks on trees.
The bear example annotations are odd. Must have been alive when clawing the tree, and claw marks is not a construction.
āFeeding damageā is the term I commonly use in applied entomology for insect chewing marks, and I thought that āDamageā would be broad enough to cover this as well as claw marks, teeth marks, digging / excavation and bore holes etc. However, I agree, if the option is available: āScratchesā and āChewing marksā could be separate annotations instead of āDamageā that would be valuable? It can be difficult to know intention, claw marks may not always be for territory, and could be for fun or for finding food. Also scratches can be with hooves, eg. wild pig digging marks in the ground.
I am not sure about the bear one, I just quickly found the most relevant examples, maybe because the tree is dead?. Yeah, not having an appropriate category for claw marks is causing confusion I think haha.
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I disagree that
iNat doesnāt include āpurposeful buildingā in its requirement for annotating as āConstructionā and some of these examples (specifically boring by beetles) are specifically mentioned in the documentation as things that should be annotated as āconstructionā, see:
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/91456-new-evidence-of-presence-values-added
āāConstructionā is meant for observations of anything an animal has constructed or excavated out of other materials, such as nests, burrows, hives, spider webs, beetle galleries, egg sacs, and the like. Rather than make separate values for all of those things and assign them to specific taxa, we decided to make a more general annotation for ease of translation and maintenance. Itās not meant for coral reefs, galls, or mollusc shells, which are either part of the animalās body or are instigated but not built by the animal. Note that an observation can have multiple Evidence of Presence annotation values, so a bird in a nest could be annotated as both āOrganismā and āConstructionā.ā
That said, some type of āDamageā might be a useful annotation, though I think something even broader might be more useful. āDamageā is a bit of a loaded term - it implies loss, harm, degradation, etc. I wouldnāt describe chewed bones as damage (the living thing that once had the bone is no longer there to experience damage). Marks might also be on non-living material (rocks, salt) or dead trees, etc. and I donāt think ādamageā is the most appropriate there. āDamageā could also cause some confusion with existing annotations - for instance, a woodpecker nest burrowed out of a living tree is definitely ādamageā but also a construction. Same with a leafmine. Translating ādamageā might also be challenging as this term varies a lot in what it implies in different languages (at least those Iām familiar with). It feels like what this is asking for is some type of catchall category for a physical sign that isnāt encompassed by other annotations.
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Good points. Do you have any alternative suggestions? āAffectedā maybe?
Any necessary elaboration or context can then go in the notes.
Applied entomology explains why you see damage. iNat focuses more on the creature, and the ādamageā as evidence of said creature.
Cape leopard needs claw marks / territorial marking
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I view anything the animal made, including claw marks or feeding damage, as a āconstruction.ā I usually donāt annotate it, though, unless the organism and its tracks are absent
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My feature request was rejected so Iām copying the text here to request a ānot enough evidence to assess/determineā for various fields to avoid cases (including ones Iāve seen myself) of people annotating, for example āno flowers or fruitsā on a close up image of a single leaf.
Details below:
Need a new field for Annotations āNot enough evidence to be determinedā
Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: Website and mobile
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: N/A
Description of need: When making annotations for plants and animals, I often find that either the parts that need to be photographed are missing, or there isnāt enough effort (number of photos and survey of canopy in the case of trees) to assess, for example, whether there are flowers or fruits on a tree, or sex of an organism.
I think we need an option for ānot enough evidence to be assessed/determinedā as there are often inaccurate annotations (especially for plants), e.g. āno flowers or fruitsā but thereās only a single blurry photo of a few leaves.
Feature request details: Itās pretty straightforward, just an option at the bottom of each existing field that allows for annotation as ānot enough evidence to be assessed/determinedā for each field.
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The annotation applies the observation, not to the organism. Therefore, a close up image of a single leaf indeed contains āno flowers or fruits.ā
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Thank you for the clarification, itās helpful to understand that iNaturalistās definition of āConstructionā can include beetle galleries and similar features. However, I believe thereās still a meaningful gap for a general category to capture incidental signs of presenceāparticularly those that donāt fit neatly into āOrganismā, āTrackā, āLeaf mineā, or āConstructionā.
Neutral term suggestions such as āSignā or āMarkā to describe physical evidence of an organismās presence would be great.
I feel that this wouldnāt seek to replace or compete with existing annotations like āConstructionā, āLeaf mineā, āGallā, or āTrackā.
Itās more that the term āDamageā was what I am familiar with, however I am very happy for other suggestions that fill the same gap. @cthawley Proposed āMarkā, and I also suggested āSignā which would be great and could work well.
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From what I can tell, this isnāt really true when it comes to research applications. Itās easy to imagine how most observations donāt necessarily attempt to document or sample a representative part of the canopy, so annotating all of those on the basis of whatās visible will have a negative impact on the phenology charts at least from my understanding of it.
As an identifier, we can only use the info available in the pictures, or notes from the observer.
there was fruit visible, but too high to photograph
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