The focus on a single individual makes sense to me for some animals but like… what about plants? If theres a population of identical species, what makes an individual plant - they may be clonal. Pando is a single quaking aspen with multiple stems.
Fungi are just fruit of one larger organism, it is common to take photos of multiples of fruit bodies to get all stages of development - this helps massively with identification. But non-mycologists may not realize this.
What about colony-forming insects? You take a picture of a wasp nest and a few different pictures of different drones from multiple angles - should this be DQAd based on the new standard?
It just seems to be too specific of a rule and not accounting for common situations in nature
Please, @loarie , use this great new feature only to address a chronic, annoying problem that renders observations useless – observations where one photo is a palm tree, another is a bird, the third a shrub, etc. Observations that show different individuals of one species at the same time and place still show what species was where when. These observations are not problems.
Including two photos that separately show one male and one female (for example), may make the observation a little harder to annotate properly but since most people don’t annotate observations anyway, solving this “problem” is not worthwhile. Also, we can – I sometimes do – arbitrarily choose one annotation to use, or just choose not to annotate sex at all.
The direction you’re heading with this would result in the equivalent of a memorable photo series where the observer posted the same photo of one flock of turkeys NINE times because there were nine individuals in it. What a waste of my identifying time (and of server space).
Be clear. Be simple. Find a concise way to write, “The same species not present in all photos.” !!
Otherwise tools like that leverage annotations like life stage phenology or sex etc will be muddled by these observations (eg will return caterpillars during times of year when only adults are present or photos of juveniles in response to queries for adults etc)
Gosh this seems like such a miniscule benefit at such a monumental cost. Wouldn’t a much better approach be to have these annotation-leveraging tools simply ignore multiply-annotated observations (by which I mean multiple annotations per annotation-category)?
Several different organisms of the same species
This feels informed by charismatic mega/meso-fauna. I mostly care about plants and insects. People commonly upload observations of groups of these organisms with no objective “focal” organism. This is because they occur in colonies/populations. Often it’s a HUGE boon to identifiers that people upload images of colonies rather than a single hyper-cropped individual because (1) characteristics on the colony-level contribute distinguishing marks for identification, and (2) more zoomed-out images are more likely to show identifying marks only visible at different angles. There are even keys out there that require making repeated measurements from several individuals in a given colony.
As currently implemented, scores of plant and insect observations will be marked casual simply for being good observations of organisms that occur in colonies/swarms.
Some of the issues here regarding mis/over-interpreting the DQA could later be solved by “peer review” of marked observations, with peer(s) offering countervote(s) where the original mark is deemed incorrect.
However, doing so would require an accessible way to access the set of observations with the marking. Any plans for that ahead?
Wouldn’t a much better approach be to have these annotation-leveraging tools simply ignore multiply-annotated observations (by which I mean multiple annotations per annotation-category)?
This would be a problem for plants such as Ludwigia, which almost always bud, flower, and fruit at the same time. See this observation for a typical example, and see the phenology chart below to get an idea of how many observations wouldn’t show up if the tools ignored multiply-annotated observations.
(this is a screenshot of Ludwigia phenology in Mississippi)
IGNORE – I MISSED THE CONTEXT. No, it would not, in my opinion. Plants can be in multiple states at once. If you want to know about flowering times, search for that. If you want to know about fruiting times, look for that. Etc. Omitting observations would mean omitting lots of accurately annotated, useful observations.
We’ll have a draft of help text soon to share. But staff agrees with the sentiment here that this DQA should be constrained to different species not different individuals. Thanks for your feedback on that.
Further, these observations are often from infrequent or vanished users. When I see them, my response has been:
Follow the IDs already given if possible. If the named taxon is there, ID that.
Exceptions made for
a. IDs not by the observer if the intent of the photos seems clear or the ID might be deceptive (e.g. organism ID’d only occurs at margins or out-of-focus)
b. Less weight given to CV-based IDs.
Within the currently named taxon, ID based on a mix of factors (not necessarily this order). I think of this similar to the “principal of the first reviser” in zoological nomenclature:
a. clearest ID
b. most common species in the photo(s)
c. most notable species (e.g. if there’s an organism with thousands of observations and one with mere dozens).
d. personal whim at the moment (probably not the best practice, but I’ll admit it)
Note that the photos show multiple organisms and species and try to ID them as best I can. Ask them to remove photos that don’t show the species. Sometimes ask them to duplicate the observation for the additional species.
If the observer is still active, respond to their later added clarification of intent.
I think that excessive DQAing of these observations puts priority on useful data for future CV iterations over actual observer experience and intent.
This single subject DQA should not be applied to these ambiguous subject cases. We’ll make this clearer in forthcoming help documentation.
Even though the observer left it somewhat ambiguous what their intent was - you were able to establish in the comments and IDs that the single subject of the first is Giant Atlantic Cockle Dinocardium robustum and the single subject of the second is Quagga Mussel Dreissena bugensis - nice work.
Oh - I meant only for the annotation-leveraging tools for which photos showing multiple states was a problem. The original context of this discussion. Yeah, obviously no reason to ignore multiply-annotated observations for the phenology graphs.
Wow, a post one day old and already TLDR. Let me add: a mushroom is not an individual organism any more than a pear is an individual organism. If I show fruiting bodies at different stages, but they all spring from the same mycelial mat, they are, in fact, one individual.
The current problem seems very minor to me, but maybe I’m missing something. Sometimes, a couple of the pictures pulled up by annotation search tools don’t show the requested annotation. A very easy workaround is to move one’s eyeballs a few degrees. But if the annotation-leveraging tools ignored multiply-annotated observations, then for many plants the majority of accurately annotated photos would not be retrievable by the annotation tools. Ludwigia, Rhexia, Heterotheca, Phytolacca, Nekemias, Hypericum, Chamaecrista, Asclepias variegata, Erechtites, the Erigeron that used to be Conyza, Prunus caroliniana, Croton, Phyllanthus, Desmanthus, Oenothera, Triodanis, Galium, and that’s just naming a few. Since these plants characteristically bud, flower, and fruit simultaneously, ignoring photos from multiply annotated observations would be a serious issue.
What do I do if the observation has multiple photos depicting different species?
If you see an observation that has two or more photos depicting different species in each, it’s best to vote “No” to the “Evidence related to a single subject” Data Quality Assessment condition and make a comment politely asking the user to separate the photos into different observations. You can also add a disagreeing identification at the ancestor shared by all the species.
If the observer does split or remove the unrelated photos, please remove your “No” vote and any disagreeing ancestor identifications.
Please only vote “No” to the “Evidence related to a single subject” Data Quality Assessment condition if there are multiple photos or sounds not related to the same species (e.g. the first photo is a frog and the second photo is a flower). This usually happens when people new to the platform don’t realize that they are adding multiple photos to the same observation rather than creating separate observations.
Please do not vote “No” to the “Evidence related to a single subject” Data Quality Assessment condition in these scenarios:
When there are multiple species in a photo and it’s unclear what the subject is (e.g. a photo with both a duck and a pigeon in it)
When there are photos related to the subject that don’t show the subject (e.g. a picture of a bat sonogram, or a picture of the habitat the subject is in, or a picture of a drawing of the subject).
When there are different organisms of the same species in separate photos (e.g. photo 1 shows a female adult lion and photo 2 shows an adult male lion and photo 3 shows a lion cub).
When there are different photos of the same individual at different points in their life history (e.g. photo 1 is an egg, photo 2 is a caterpillar, and photo 3 is an adult butterfly).
Yes: if your intent is to focus on photos depicting different species, don’t then confuse the issue by talking about “photos depicting different organisms” in the first sentence. Say “photos depicting different species” to keep everyone’s understanding consistent.
I think it would also be useful to adjust the name of the DQA field itself. As other users have pointed out, the phrasing leaves more scope for interpretation than is probably desirable. A help/FAQ item is important for providing more detailled guidance, but there is no guarantee that users will actually read this, so the name should be as self-explanatory as possible.
My suggestion would be something like “same species is present in all media”, unless anyone can think of a better wording.
instead of the above, i would write: “In an observation with multiple photos or sounds, the species that is the subject of the observation should be depicted across all of the photos and sounds. If you come across an observation where the subject species is not included in each of the photos and sounds,…”
after the above, i would add for clarity: “-- one observation for each species.”
i’m not entirely sure why this point needs to be here (because it’s not a case of different species), but if you really want to keep it, then i then i would add for clarity: “(In such a case, the Date is Accurate DQA condition should be downvoted because the life stages would be have been recorded on different dates. Additionally, please leave a comment asking the observer to split these into separate observations – one for each date.”)
…
this point confuses me a bit:
are you officially sanctioning the inclusion of habitat shots without the subject organism in them? (all the previous guidance from staff I’ve seen is that any habitat shot should include the subject organism in the shot – or at least indirect evidence, such as a track, a nest, a log felled by a beaver, etc.)
i’m not sure you need “a picture of” in front of “a bat sonogram” and “a drawing of the subject”. but also, since neither of these would be a different species situation, i’m not sure why you’ve included these here. maybe it would make more sense to include these if the section header was: “When should I use the Evidence is related to a singel subject DQA item?”
or maybe this point is about indirect evidence still being okay as evidence of the species? (my own take on sonograms and drawings of an organism is that they are still direct evidence, but they involve a higher level of interpretation than a regular audio recording or a photo.)
I disagree. There can be instances where this is done “properly”, but it can be tricky.
I can remember at least one instance where a larva L. arthemis was originally reported at species level, and the ID was moved to the genus level because it’s difficult to ID Limenitis larvae. At a later date, the observer added a photo of the adult that had emerged to prove that the original ID was correct. The observation had the date that the larva was originally observed, and the Life Stage annotation was correctly set to “larva”. To my mind, there’s nothing “wrong” with the observation in this scenario.
Someone may argue that a better way to report this would be to create a separate observation for the adult, and cross reference the observations. But if the larva was raised in captivity (the only way to ensure that you will actually see the adult when it ecloses), you could argue that the observation of the adult would be of a “captive” individual (no guarantee that the emergence date would make sense vs what the emergence date would have been in the wild). So the adult observation is of limited use (and possibly does more harm than good if it isn’t marked as captive). The only function of the adult observation is to confirm the ID of the larval observation. So why force the observer to create a separate observation, and complicate life for everyone involved? Why not keep it simple and just add the photo of the adult to the original observation?
So I would hesitate to stipulate that any observation with more than one life stage of an individual should have the Date is Accurate DQA condition downvoted. It can be done properly. Admittedly, it can be tricky, but that has always been the case.
We are frequently tripped up with museum specimens of reared butterflies where the person doing the databasing doesn’t read the label carefully (ie. the label indicates the date when the larva was found, and that ends up being databased as the date the adult was observed).
