I kidnapped a dying wasp that I suspected had a parasitic fungus and today I noticed the fungus had sprouted (?). Usually when I rear something, I just tag the later photos onto the original observation of the eggs or seeds or whatever (annotating the life stage as the earliest photo) and add to the…

In my opinion both observations warrant their own entry. I would just be sure to note the the relationship between the wasp and fungus and link the other observations so when someone views one entry they can quickly reference the other.

I agree with @kanescompendium , definetely post both. Also, I wouldn’t consider the fungus captive. It was probably there when the wasp was still alive, plus, you never intended it to be on the wasp. For all intents and purposes, the fungus is wild.

I think that they should each have their own observation, but disagree that the fungus should be wild (depending…). The OP noted [image] squidtk: I kidnapped a dying wasp that I suspected had a parasitic fungus so there was intent there to move and observe the fungus. The fungus has been mo…

What you could also do, duplicate the wasp observation for the fungus. Make a separate, casual, observation of the ‘captive’ fungus and add then the photo of the fruiting body as a comment or note in the other, wild observation. You can use html code to display photos in the text fields

while I think this is probably reasonable, it’s typical to see cultured fungi (which takes more effort than just moving an insect body) listed as Verifiable and with the coordinates where the germplasm or original fragment that gave rise to the culture was collected. I would probably have to leave t…

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not sure I would mark the fungus as casual.. I would argue this could be more analogous to an unintended wild “weed” in a pot with a cultivated plant. I see how you reasoned with the fungus being “supported” but it would same as the weed that would receive water…

While I sympathize with the difficulty of culturing fungi, I do think observations like these should be marked as cultivated. The fungus is clearly in a different life stage than when it was collected. The very word “culturing” is the same root (pun intended) as cultivated. To me, they are clearly c…

I can agree with that.. if they knew upon collection that a fruiting body could emerge then I can fully agree with the cultivated tag. But if the collection was for the purpose of further observation of the wasp and the fruiting body was a chance occurrence the observer wasn’t previously aware of it…

[image] kanescompendium: I believe it rests on the sureness of the observer recognizing the fungi at the time of collection I was about to mention that the replies aren’t discussing this part of the question. I wasn’t only asking if the fruiting body is now captive, I was also asking if host …

while reluctantly, I tend to agree on the status, and on the equivalence with moving wild weeds. I haven’t voted wild or even left an agreeing ID on such fungus observations myself though – it’s just a practice that I’ve seen. if those sorts of observations aren’t intended to reach Research Grade, i…

Observation of reared fungus?

General

olrett May 22, 2025, 9:09am 12

This is interesting. What if the wasp had not been moved indoors by the OP but left outside? What if the OP had just monitored the evolution outdoors, in situ? In that case it would remain ‘wild’, correct?

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Observation of reared fungus?

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