New Annotation: Evidence of Presence

I understand it! I just try to add all I can if I do at all.

I have an observation of a mosquito, where the evidence is a bite on my arm. Does that count as ā€œTrackā€? If not, it would be cool to add one for ā€œFoodā€ which would also cover things like owl pellets, leaf mines and torn-apart prey.

all humans should be annotated as mosquito food :-)

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When I annotated my own small collection of non-organism observations, eggshell and nest were common among them.
Personally I would favour ā€œhomeā€ for nest as it is easily translatable and removes the need for dozens of home types in the list.

While we wait for ā€œeggshellā€ to be covered, through the excellent process being conducted in this thread, does anyone have a suggested annotation? Mine are usually a single broken shell on the ground. Occasionally an unbroken oneā€¦presumably that is organism, life stage=egg? And, if cold, dead?

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I would say marking any eggs / egg fragments as ā€œOrganismā€, ā€œLife Stage: Eggā€ and ā€œDead or Alive: Cannot Be Determinedā€ should be sufficient while we wait for more annotation options.

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Thanks, will do.

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Technically, isnā€™t a molt made of dead cells that were once alive? Like the dead skin we constantly shed?

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But organism itself is not dead, so they should stay separated, plus itā€™s an interesting observation different than just dead body.

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I think that covers every dead cellular organism or part of organism, including dead skin cells:)

Regarding Alive or Dead - remember that an observation records an encounter with an organism or recent evidence of an organism in a time and place. If you came across a snake molt on July 6th at 4:05 pm, I would argue that you donā€™t know whether the actual snake that left the molt is alive or dead on July 6th at 4:05 pm, so the correct value would be Cannot be determined..

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So that is the same as eggshells, life or death Cannot be determined.
And nests or other homes.

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Depending if shells are from hatched egg or eaten, with the scond itā€™s safe to say itā€™s dead.

How is ā€˜cannot be determinedā€™ useful? As opposed to no annotation?

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Unless the eaten egg is considered evidence of an ovipositing female in which case the subject organism could be alive. But Iā€™m obviously overthinking all this. ;-)

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That is how I always see a birdā€™s egg, actuallyā€¦as evidence of breeding, and sometimes of hatching if a broken shell is fresh and clean, and sometimes as evidence of likely predation or nest stealing by another bird

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I find it useful primarily because it removes sightings from the pool of unannotated sightings

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I have a recent observation of a turtle shell (no turtle included :slightly_smiling_face:), and Iā€™m wondering if this fits within any of these values. I thought Molt might have worked, but I wouldnā€™t consider the shell as having been ā€œdiscardedā€. Iā€™m no turlte expert; are their shells considered Bone?

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You can choose between bone and organism (as itā€™s part of it), it has more than just bone, but choosing bone will make this observation searchable.

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A turtle shell, minus the turtle, is the same as finding bones of any vertebrate animal. It signifies a dead turtle. The shell is bone (modified ribs mostly).

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Could add Wing for Lepidopterans.

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