Microscope obervations

[Nrobbins]

For Bioblitz, I took a photo of the collecting locality. And then I have my microscope images identifying bacteria and algae. Will I be able to post each locality and its images together? Will this be intuitive or do you have any insights about quirks?

[jdjohnson]

The best way to make observations like this is to create the observation from the site photo so you have the correct location, then add your microscope images as extra photos on the same observation. You can create separate observations with the indoor location where your microscope is, but make sure you mark those as “captive” since the location is not the place where they were found.

[robotpie]

Or if you want to, you can note down the latitude and longitude coordinates of your collecting locality, and then paste them to your observations of microscopic animals. I don’t think they should be marked captive since you have collected them from an outside source.

[Bornstupd]

For ideas on formatting take a look at observations in this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/microscopy

Every one uses the collection location of whatever sample is being looked at under the microscope. The indoor location of where the sample is viewed is largely irrelevant.

A photo of the collection site can be combined with the photos of the sample in the same observation. I generally just place a pin by hand where my samples were collected for each observation. (you can also save the location, and reselect it each time for each observation without fussing around)

[cyathus]

I often use a microscope to take pictures of minute details of plants and animals for my iNat observations. In such cases I always take a photo of the habitat beforehand so that I have precise GPS coordinates in EXIF. Then I upload the habitat photo from which the coordinates of the observations are taken by iNat and, after that, I add all the photos made through the microscope. Sometimes I retain the habitat photo, sometimes I delete it because the coordinates are already imported and the photo of the habitat itself is not always that necessary.

You might also use the Edit → Duplicate option if you have multiple observations from the same habitat.

[cthawley]

Yes, there’s no need to mark these as captive as long as the microscope pics were taken within a reasonable time after capture (a few days maybe) and the time and location of the observation are those of the sample being taken. If the time and location are where the microscope is later, the observation should be captive.

For habitat pics, please make sure to include the organism (or where it specifically was more realistically, since it almost certainly won’t be visibly IDable) in the shot, not just a generic shot.

[jdjohnson]

Just to clarify, I only meant that the “Captive” flag should be used if the observation is using the location of the microscope instead of the location where the sample was collected.