If someone posts a photo of a crayfish with eggs attached, should the life stage be indicated as adult and egg? Or does a second observation have to be created for the egg stage?
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The crayfish is the adult and the eggs are the eggs. So, duplicating the observation and mentioning in each observation what is to be identified is the way to go.
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Only one annotation for life stage is possible (this is based on the principle that each observation represents an encounter with one individual).
You can duplicate for both life stages – please leave a note to clarify why you are duplicating and which life stage each observation is for.
Another option is to use observation fields, e.g., there is one for “carrying eggs”; there may be others that are relevant:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/13997
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You can add it to the Multiple Life Stages project. I created it for exactly observations like this. You can keep track of which stages are present in the observation with the observation fields.
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I usually annotate them as egg because it’s really hard to ID eggs unless the adult is right there next to them. I agree that ideally there will be two observations for the sake of showing up both when searching for pictures of “adult” and “egg” but usually there are already plenty of pictures of adult specimens but few egg pictures so I don’t usually bother to ask them to duplicate.
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I suggest using the “eggs present” field. Here are some observations of crayfish using this field: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=97394&subview=map&taxon_id=47782&field:eggs%20present. Likewise crayfish with attached young can be annotated with the “has young?” field. Here are observations of crayfish with this field: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=true&taxon_id=47782&preferred_place_id=1&field:has%20young%3F. I think this approach is better than duplicating an observation, because that can only be done by the observer. Anyone can add fields to other users observations.
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Thanks everyone for all of that useful input.
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