I’ve got images of four different mice, all of which were trapped on the same day in the same general area (we are sure that they are, in fact, separate mice!). Do these go in one single observation, or four?
Four :)
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If you want, you can add a link in each comments / observation notes for the other three mice.
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Another handy trick to link them quickly:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-the-field-similar-observation-set-for-linking-observations-of-lepidoptera-when-raising-on/1018
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Theoretically, four different observations, which you can link as others have shown. If you prefer, you can post them all as one observation, saying that they are four different individuals. If you’re certain (and correct) that they’re all the same species, it doesn’t really matter.
However, I recently posted photos of what I thought were a few different plants of a single species, and an identifier corrected me. They were two different ones. Oops. I separated them.
I’m not sure if this will help or hinder, but the ‘official’ answer to this question as stated in the User Guide etc written by the site is that each observation must be for one and only one individual.
Under those rules if you held onto all 4 and photographed them together, to indicate your had seen 4, you would still need to do 4 separate records, adding the same photo 4 different times, and indicating in each that it was for one of the specific individual in the picture.
That being said, as seen in this thread and elsewhere on the forum, that rule is not one that is universally supported, not certainly not universally obeyed.
Please make four seaprate observations, that would follow the definition of an observation on iNaturalist.
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There is certainly nothing wrong with photographing a group of like individuals, pointing out one of them as the subject, or even just treating the “centre of frame” individual to be subject.
My reasoning here, is that when I go through an environment, it is not my goal to make an observation of every single living organism I see. My bush walks would be very short indeed! And with the exception of what I put in the petri for closeups, seldom does a photo contain only one individual organism (regardless of species). But it is important in terms of the iNat observation that it be “an individual organism, in a place, at a time”. That can be elaborated upon in the description, such as “this individual is part of a flock of maybe 10,000 that arrived yesterday having flown from Alaska”, ie alluding to numbers, different times, and different places, but the observation itself is of the individual at a time and place.
[edit: but if they are already seperate photos, then yes they should be four seperate observations!]
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