I decided to add a few GenBank numbers to my observations (as Observation fields) but I’ve noticed it is only possible to have one GenBank field per observation. I generally have two and sometimes up to seven sequenced genes per taxon.
Is there a general one-to-one cardinality restriction, or can it be changed? If so it needs to be one-to-many and not one-to-one. I haven’t tried playing with other observation fields.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but one potential workaround could be to make a GenBank observation field for each specific gene you have (assuming it is the same limited set that you’re sequencing). For instance, you could have fields like:
Genbank_CytC
Genbank_Rag1
etc.
You could also make fields like Genbank1, Genbank2, etc.
Not particularly elegant, but might work well enough.
yes, a given observation field and a given observation will have a 1:1 relationship. this is not to say, though, that you couldn’t make multiple observation fields (as cthawley suggested), or add multiple values in a single field (if that field will allow it, such as adding a comma-separated list of values in a open text field).
there’s been discussion of allowing multiple values to be input in a field, or multiple instances of the same field, but those requests have been rejected. for example: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/allow-multiple-taxa-as-value-of-a-single-observation-field/19075.
Thanks for the replies.
There’s no elegant solution so I’ll keep that kind of data elsewhere.
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