Well, according to your text you try to differentiate yourself (and other iNat users) from people who kill and collect animals to get proper IDs. Which is fine, because there is a difference. I just tried to put it a bit into perspective because the difference is minuscule compared to all the deaths that each of us is accountable for.
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Much more than that. There is also the systematics that underlie the taxonomy. The distribution for many species was worked out mainly using preserved specimens (not photos). Our understanding of the life history, ecology, phenology, infraspecific variability, etc., etc. was worked out for virtually all species that have been studied using invasive techniques and collected specimens. We who document species with photos are able to do so in a useful manner only because there is already a comprehensive framework of information from past work that did not involve taking a pic with a cellphone. That doesnāt mean that photo records and less-invasive techniques are frivolous, Iām merely pointing out that a lot of the skepticism Iāve seen here about invasive methods seems to ignore the fact that what we know did not come to us by magic, it took a lot of work using a wide range of techniques.
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Looking along the bookshelves by my desk I see the new British Craneflies by Alan Stubbs, Beetles of Britain and Ireland edited by Andrew Duff, Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland by Michael Roberts, Fungi of Northwest Wales by Charles Aron, the Royal Entomological Society Handbook to Hemiptera Fulgoromorpha by Walter le Quesne, Key to the Identification of British Centipedes by Tony Barber and the Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica volume on Opetiidae and Platypezidae of Europe by Peter Chandler. None of these amateur naturalists would have been able to follow their fields of study and produce these books if they hadnāt been able to collect specimens. Would that be a better situation?
Britain has a long tradition of the amateur expert naturalist but are we unusual in this? I bet there are thousands of amateur experts in the rest of the world. Why should they be handicapped by having to work without reference collections? Are they supposed to all go and live in cities with a major natural history museum?
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I donāt think the issue with children collecting butterflies is that they are amateurs. A pointless project is still pointless if it is carried out by paid workers. I think the teacher setting the project should be asked what the purpose is. If it is purely for the sake of making a collection, then leaves or postage stamps or bottle tops would do just as well. If it is intended to engage the children with Lepidoptera, Iād say there are more interesting ways of introducing them to the subject. Searching for eggs then rearing the butterflies and their parasitic wasps might be more exciting. But if over the years this insect collecting project has sparked an interest in just one child who has gone on to devote their life to wildlife conservation, I reckon the sacrifice of the butterflies has been worth it.
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I wouldnāt call anyone who wrote a book on a subject an amatour (ofc if itās not a fraud), both before and after book, you donāt need to be a professor to be an expert in the field.
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I am in NO way arguing against the collection of specimens for reference. Since we have these collections, we have decent internet resources. There is no need for amateurs like me to make collections when I can access data accumulated from the past. I can make adequate identifications or observations with the resources available to me. For professionals who revise Genera or Species itās a different thing. Iāve said before on other threads, that if every observation on iNat necessitated the physical collection of a specimen, millions of organisms would have been killed. In these times, we do not need that.
And BTW, I know many people who are great Noctuid moth identifiers who live nowhere near a major city.
And with that I will stop commenting on this thread.
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No, this is your interpretation. It was in no way my intention to differentiate myself from those people.
Being an academic biologist I have the training to be one of those people.
My sole intention was to express my thankfulness towards anyone who in a moment of heart decides to let the bug live. From olā granny who didnāt smash the spider to weird orchid freak who decides to replace his herbary with a digital in-iNat collection.
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There is little need for an amateur scientist now to have a physical collection.
I am in NO way arguing against the collection of specimens for reference.
Iām tempted to leave it at that, but then you say
For professionals who revise Genera or Species itās a different thing.
My point is, what about amateurs who revise genera and species? Taxonomy isnāt only done by professionals. All the book authors I mentioned above are amateurs. They donāt work in museums or universities. They do the work unpaid for the love of the subject. That is what amateur means. But they couldnāt do the work without reference collections. When you refer to online resources, I suspect these are mostly the results of the taxonomists efforts rather than the raw materials. I doubt anyone could do a revision of a family of flies based on photos from the web.
Now I too will stop commenting on this thread. Amateurs will no doubt come up again elsewhere in a week or two.
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@mamestraconfigurata definitely refered to people who were far away from revising genera or doing any other taxonomical job, as mentioned thereāre schools gathering unneeded collections, and universities doing the same, even though most students are not going to be working in fields connected with arthropods. iNat is a big proof most people donāt have or need to kill anything these days.
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The word āamateurā at least in the USA means much more than just ānoviceā; it usually has a connotation of whether said activity provides your daily bread or whether you have an advanced degree in it. Thereās a whole legacy of this in the sports industry (for example in the Olympics, where world champions were by definition called āamateursā for decades!) And itās prevalent in science, too. There are respected taxon experts who publish regularly but definitely consider themselves amateurs because in their āreal jobā theyāre engineers, or artists, or whatever, and not a professional academic with a PhD.
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Itās a deleted message that somehow was shown back, I already rewritten it, though weāre now talking about world and not only what US has.
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One comment about specimens collecting: A lot of vertebrate specimens I collected over the years and deposited in a research museum were roadkills and (in the case of birds) window kills or cat kills. These salvage collections are what I would consider non-invasive (at least by me) and in a number of instances provided valuable voucher material for studies of distribution, genetics, and natural history. Even if you are unwilling to collect live specimens for research purposes I think we can all agree that salvage collecting is a positive thing and can be done by anyone (but make sure you have any necessary permits) as it provides use of an animal that otherwise would be just another casualty.
I bring this up only because I see a lot of roadkill photos on iNat and often wonder if the dead animal was collected and preserved for other purposes.
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I agree. But for someone like me, genital examination of a common moth would be interesting, but ultimately do no good. Unless I was conducting a research project. For iNat purposes, photos mostly do the job, even if it is only to Genus.
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Roadkill would be food for scavengers - but sadly here that often means that predatory birds become roadkill in turn.
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I disagree. These are not equivalent things. Universal discouragement of unnecessary killing I would argue is simply ethical. If there is no good reason to kill, donāt kill.
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Yeah, itās like those ancient tar pits: ongoing death traps for predators and scavengers ā¦
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I have heard sone extremists say that we should all live in cities and stay there, so that nature can exist apart from us.
Honestly, sometimes conservation laws start to look to me like cover for predatory capitalism, i.e. the hidden agenda is that you will not be allowed to possess anything that was not purchased. No collecting coral on the beach, itās damaging to the ecosystem ā but someone can get a permit to sell you coral. Canāt keep feathers you find, we donāt know if you killed the bird ā but youāre welcome to buy feathers at a crafts store. If I was into conspiracy theories, I could have a lot of fun with this.
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That would fit with a case here a few years ago where scientific researchers couldnāt get a permit to take a boat close to dolphins, but the tourist boats were permitted.
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in this system, everything is cover for what you call predatory capitalism. Except predatory is a misnomer because predators are important parts of ecosystems and it isnāt even reallycapitalism at this point rather a massive global pyramid scam. So yeah.
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