This is all true, but doesn’t this change if the data on iNat reflects that of the collection time?
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My master’s thesis relied a lot on herbivory and insects documented on herbarium sheets! It’s open access if you’re interested: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2021.664763/full
Recent studies suggest climate-related delays in the timing of leaf coloration and abscission in maple trees but lack baseline data prior to the late 20th century. To better understand how autumn foliar phenology and late-season damage risks have changed for this genus over the past century, we evaluated 2,972 digitized herbaria specimens of red and sugar maple collected between 1826 and 2016 for the presence of leaves, autumn leaf coloration, and pathogen or herbivore damage. We found that the onset (first appearance) of colored leaves has shifted 0.26 days later each year, leading to a delay of more than a month in autumn phenology since 1880. We find that these shifts are related to precipitation regimes in both the fall and summer seasons and that more severe droughts are associated with higher probabilities of colored leaves. Moreover, we found that the probability of both herbivory and pathogen damage has increased significantly over the study period. In particular, we find a strong association between increasing summer drought conditions and increased probability of herbivory. Furthermore, the presence of foliar damage increased the probability of leaf coloration on herbaria specimens. However, the end-of-season abscission date (last appearance of leaves) was strongly associated with herbivory and climate in a contrary direction: Increasing yearly drought, higher fall temperatures, and the presence of herbivory were associated with earlier abscission. In fact, the last leaf dates for specimens with herbivory were nearly 2 weeks earlier than specimens without herbivore damage. Our study documents significant changes in maple senescence over the last 150 years and suggests that incorporating herbivory into models may improve our ability to predict forest responses to climate shifts.
We annotated phenology and herbivory and pathogen damage from digitized herbarium sheets:
So all that to say, YES! Very valuable. But I’m not sure that iNaturalist is the right home for it. I would recommend digitizing your collection and making available through GBIF. Part of the concern is that researchers use citizen science and human observation data differently than collections data, and your collections would end up on GBIF as human observations which isn’t quite right.
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Is there a specific reason that Symbiota can’t handle this? While I don’t use Symbiota myself, I know that Symbiota does allow publishing to GBIF (well-supported), and that entomology/arthropod collections use Symbiota to publish to GBIF. Symbiota is really flexible and has good collaboration tools. Have you tried asking your local Symbiota admin/curator or checking with their support team? They also have a discussions section on Github.
Certainly, if you have a related entomology collection, you could give them insect specimens that you find in plants that could be accessioned there.
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I’ve been humbled. I really don’t know what’s possible. This was a dumb question to ask.
I was going to reply disagreeing with @fffffffff, but after reading all of the replies, I do get it, even if it seems unintuitive.
YOU did not observe it at the original collection date and location, the specimen’s collector did. From that point of view, the original collection is not yours to upload, and iNat does not want to be responsible for your claim of copyright if you uploaded it as such. You’re observing it in the present, at location where it’s currently housed (the herbarium), and where it is deemed captive as it was placed there deliberately by a person.
Don’t ask me how this ties in with data export to online aggregators like GBIF, and how they deal with copyright, I don’t know.
There is nothing stopping you from adding annotations to the observation with the collector name, and number (if they used one), collection date, locality, coordinates, etc. They just can’t be the actual observation data points.
I also work at a Herbarium, and all our data is exported to the Atlas of Living Australia and GBIF, but I do also come across stuff in specimens that is not captured in the specimen data or notes, and I’ve often wondered how to best deal with that.
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Why upload herbarium specimens at all, then? If I take a photo of one of my specimens at a different time but upload it under the original collection time then what does this add? Why allow it at all?
Hang on, the bugs the OP comes across working on the herbarium were NOT INTENDED TO BE THERE. They’re by-catch, hitherto gone unnoticed.
Edit: It’s like me going over my photos and discovering that there is an insect on the underside of the flower that I photographed which I hadn’t noticed while I was out in the field. I am allowed to post that insect as a separate observation, same time and place as the original observation of the flower which was my intended original subject.
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This is not always the case – some herbarium collectors intentionally documented plants with certain types of diseases or evidence of plant activity.
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The OP specifically focused on organisms not noted in the original notes.
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I don’t, because I don’t see the point. But I’m talking straight herbarium specimens, not bugs or diseases on them.
I do, however, often make iNaturalist observations of plants I am about to make formal herbarium collections of.
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Absolutely, you can post “photographic bycatch” as your observation in the scenario you give, because you made the original observation (ie, took the photo).
That’s not the case with the herbarium specimen described by OP, which was made by someone else in a different time and place, potentially >100 years ago.
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It’s because you made original photo and was there, you have all the rights ro use original date, but if some aphids were collected with plant specimen a hundred years ago and you stumble upon them, you see them not in the wild conditions, but today at where this collection is, insects died a century ago and were moved from original place.
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Ok, I do get the logic of the place and time of collection being different from the place and time of observation.
Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be an awful shame to lose that information? I feel for the OP; they are willing to put in extra work, salvaging information what has not been recorded for potentially >100 years. iNat may not be the appropriate place, as you say, still, there must be a place where that information can be saved for posterity? Imagine if there were a bug that has in the meantime ceased to exist…
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