Is it okay to post dead specimens from an old insect collection of mine ? Yesterday I added a few beetles wich died recently in my swimming pool (so I have many informations to help ID them) and I kinda felt like it did not belong on Inaturalist with most observations being done directly in nature and not from pinned specimens.
I really want to add my entire collection one day (at least the well preserved specimens) but I don’t think it is appropriate, especially when I lack so much informations about some specimens, like the date of collection or even the country in a few cases. (I wish I knew about proper labelling whern I was younger)
I really want to put Latin names and labels on them eventually but I also don’t want “pollute” Inaturalist with some potentially useless observations.
Many people post old specimens to iNat. It is fine as long as you put the date of collection (it’s okay if you don’t know precisely, just put as exact as you can), and the location you collected it (if you don’t know exactly, make the inaccuracy circle big enough to encompass the area where you know you collected it).
Welcome to the forum!
You are welcome to add your collection. It is better if you can include data on the specimens, but even if you don’t, it’s OK. The most important thing is that you have a good time using iNaturalist.
Just know that observations with only partial data will not appear in default Needs ID searches, so it may be a very long time before you can get an ID.
Thanks ! I sometimes don’t even have the year of capture …
Thank you ! I have had a good time everyday for like 3 years now since i’ve been using Inaturalist :D
I didn’t know about partial data and default searches, I’ll do my best to ID myself then !
I normally just tick the “captive” box for pinned specimens. Shouldn’t be too big a deal
You should only do this if it is clear the location and/or date are not reflective of when the specimen was obtained. If these data are accurately entered, then the observation is perfectly valid and should not be downgraded.
If you don’t know the date, I think it’s best to not put a date. You can always write something in the description. This means the observation will remain at casual grade, however, but it’ll still be there.
To reiterate what @cmcheatle said, these shouldn’t marked as captive if the date and location are the date and location for when and where the organism was collected.
They shouldn’t be marked captive at all, they’re wild, it can be either date or place wrong, or both.
Good point. There are occassions where larvae are reared to adult, and it can be argued that the adult observation is captive whereas the larval observation (assuming loaction and date are where it was caught) would be wild. The basis of the argument is that the adult stage may not have been reached without the assistance or protection provided by the capture…
There are grey areas…
Yes, that’s right, for some reason “collection” has too strong association with “collected” for me.)
Ah…by that do you mean the motivation behind the collecting?
Yes, in my head it’s right what you caught, not what you raised.) But it’s just a first stereotype.
My bad! I’ll stop.
No worries, it’s understandable!
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