Location for observations inside moving vehicle?

General
1

Earlier today I happened to spot an insect I thought looked interesting and took a couple of pictures of it and uploaded it as an observation (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/399108349). The issue is, it was on a moving subway train and I had no idea where it had initially gotten in from. The location for the observation is accurate in that it is where the organism was when I took the photo, but probably is not near where it entered, and is not its natural habitat.

Does anyone know if there is an official (or generally accepted) stance on what to do in a situation like that? I imagine it could apply to any observation taken in a car, bus, train, plane, etc. I could mark the location as inaccurate but that feels odd too.

2

You could post in a wide area where you found it, etc. an area surrounding the whole track that goes from station before observation to station after observation

3

And yeah a general location is ok.

4

I think using the location where you oberved it is fine, as long as we are assuming it got on the subway on it’s own. We don’t really have to worry about natural habitat, where it came from, or whether it hitched a ride. We just observe organisms where we see them. If it gets off at the next stop and someone observes it near the station, that won’t be natural habitat either, but is also fine.

On the other hand if a person deliberately put it on the subway, then the location would still be accurate, but it should be marked “not wild.”

5

I think that’s probably the right approach, yeah. It is at the end of the day the objective location of the observation, and while it would be entertaining to watch, I don’t imagine purposeful bug placement on subway cars is a common hobby.

6

I observed a tick while on the way home from shopping (I had to pull off to observe it) and set the location to where I pulled off, as near as I could figure out. All I’m sure of is that I was on the road between this exit and that exit, so I put a big accuracy circle. Do you know where you were within 385 meters? Were you underground, which would make GPS useless if you had GPS?

7

Thankfully we were pulling into a station at the time so I had that as a reference to confirm, but I had a decent signal regardless.