No, it is clearly wild on iNat and many species live just like that, with no intention from humans to have them there.
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Here is the most important clause to the above criteria I had posted, which might have been missed:
ââŚand has established a population outside of human care.â
It should not matter whether the introduction was intentional or not. A greenhouse, as an example of an âindoorâ facility in which A. sagrei could become âestablishedâ is still a climate controlled facility that would fall under the realm of âhuman careâ, or whatever else that would mean.
In-situ, unassisted, and self-viable populations without any sort of anthropogenic support are really what some of us are talking about here.
Weâre talking about iNaturalist where population status doesnât matter at all, and human care should be intentional to fall into captivity.
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But that is what this entire thread is about. It is really more a matter of what truly constitutes a âwildâ observation, than an answer to any of the original questions posed above. There is not one, clear-cut definition or interstation as to what âwildâ and âestablishedâ means.
An âindoor facilityâ can still in many ways be defined as âan enclosureâ, and there can be lots of other things that can occur or become established in say a reptile terrarium that are also not intentional but are not established outside of that terrarium or the space immediately around it. Snake mites (O. natricus) as one example.
But we shouldnât just move it to casual when (if) system is reworked, to do that we donât even need to add anything to website, only change rules, and it doesnât seem to be an option to go.
Things like Tachycines asynamorus only found in such closed spaces, how much of an enclosure it is? I wouldnât call a mite on a pet captive either, as you likely will try to kill it, weâre trying to get rid of cloth moths for years, theyâre still here, with even their parasitoids living here in a flat, if that was a species of moths that would be totally unusual but appeared as unexpected, I would still not call it captive, they wouldnât be my moths or my wasps.
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There is a big difference between a species which may be fossorial and lives or exists in that way naturally according to its own biology and natural history and one which exists where it does only because of some highly anthropogenic means.
Nothing really changes the fact that species like these are always going to be highly anthropogenic in nature, and are just as âcaptiveâ as the cultivated plants in a botanical gardens on which they may thrive on. They still only exist in these places as âcaptivesâ, intentional or otherwise. Thus, are the reasons why these really have little to no RG value in most cases.
It just seems sort of wasteful to have them as such in the meantime, for some future or envisioned occurrence which may or may not take place.
RG doesnât have any value, itâs just a mark of current community consensus and that other platforms may use the observation, those species are recorderd on other websites that go to GBIF too, and I doubt anyone considers them captive, they just live in an evironment that is suitable, and if it was outside of garden, they would be outside, because their spread isnât controlled by humans directly, only through builduings humands have not for those animals, but for other needs.
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I very much doubt that GBIF would be interested in records of individual, escaped or released pets, or even individually transported stowaways not yet established for that matter. That is all they are at their given point. They are really just âwaste observationsâ at their current points in time.
Taxa you talked about previously are pretty much established, they have stable populations indoors.
And I doubt GBIF is not interested on individual records, like wow, thereâre so many birds that end up in new places, why would scientific community not want to look at them because of their populationâs status? They do need those records and they do look for them. Same with mammals. insects, etc., and in age of anthropogenic climate change itâs irresponsible to not look at them.
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There is, again, a big difference between species expanding their ranges naturally through range expansions, etc. vs. those that only end up where they do via some anthropogenic trade (i.e. the pet trade, horticultural, etc.) Does not matter whether they are intentional or unintentional. Directly or indirectly.
A population which can only exist or occur in an indoor space should simply not carry the same validity as what a truly âwildâ observation means, or should mean. A gray area for sure, but I see them no differently thann a zoo animal or aviary observation, for the same intents and purposes and once they are known and established.
Indoor populations certainly are interesting and noteworthy, donât get me wrong, but there are likely just not much more to them than that, and certainly do not present the same sort of purported ecological threat I see being inferred here as would an âoutdoorâ population of the same species.
In my opinion, one of the great things about the vast citizenâs science project that is iNaturalist is that we can detect early stages in invasions by plants and animals. Various mammals (e.g. cats, dogs, goats, pigs, rabbits), birds (e.g. parrots, parakeets, finches, doves, peacocks), reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles), and fish (e.g. goldfish, walking catfish) formed well-established, breeding, wild populations that are descendants of escaped or released pets. I think it would be great to record the early stages of this process. However, when we see a Red-eared Slider, for example, we donât know if it is recently released and will just die or if it will be one of the founders of what will be a thriving population. Therefore, I think we should photo them all, mark them wild, and see what happens.
Greenhouse and nursery weeds present interesting problems. At first, it seems they should be ignored. However, I think probably not. Some examples from Oregon: Oxalis corniculatus is a pernicious greenhouse weed, but also a well established weed in the wild. Ehrharta erecta and Cardamine occulta are greenhouse or nursery weeds that have each shown up at least once in landscaped areas; will they become established here? The former is now a weed in central California. We can be fairly sure the weird tropical fern Psilotum nudum, also a greenhouse weed, wonât become established in the wild now, but that may change as the world warms. Iâd like to see these posted on iNaturalist.
Does including these escapes as RG in iNaturalist complicate life for those using the data. Yes. However, iNaturalist data has lots of complications and this isnât the worst. Users can cope with it.
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As I was trying to emphasize above, this is no different than using specimens in a museum collection. There are records based on specimens that âcomplicateâ the work of researchers (e.g., weird geographic outliers, organisms that may have been isolated escapees). But thatâs the job of researchers to interpret the available data. Itâs not the job of museum staff to decide what specimens are potentially useful or not.
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Just to illustrate the shades of gray involved in assessing the status of non-natives, this is a system that has been used in Florida to classify introductions of exotic herpetofauna based on available information (Krysko et al. 2016. IRCF Reptiles & Amphibians 23:110-143). In Florida, they track all occurrences of non-natives given the high rate of establishment by many exotic species there.
⢠Stage 0 = Potential invader begins as a resident in its native
or a donor region.
⢠Stage 1 = Potential invader is transported to a new area and
is intercepted without becoming introduced.
⢠Stage 2 = Potential invader survives transport, escapes, or is
released (i.e., becomes introduced), and is thus nonindigenous
to the new area.
⢠Stage 3 = Nonindigenous species survives and establishes
(reproduces) in the new suitable environment but remains
uncommon and localized.
⢠Stage 4 = Nonindigenous species becomes either (a) widespread
but is uncommon, or (b) dominant in abundance or
density but is geographically localized.
⢠Stage 5 = Nonindigenous species becomes both widespread
and dominant.
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We often read on the forum something along the lines of âwhen in doubt about the wildness of an organism, it is better to mark it as wild because it can aid in detecting or tracking early invasionsâ. I think this may actually be counter-productive and hinder our ability to detect early invasions. The problem is that the data is flooded with irrelevant observations (escapees, one off pet releases, etc.) which may make the detection of an actual early invasion stage more difficult. For example, if you look at the world map for Budgerigars, it is very difficult to detect where there are introduced populations because the map is filled with escapees. In most cases, I think it is through the knowledge of local naturalists and biologists that early invasions will be detected. Once this happens, observations can be marked as wild and expansions may be tracked. Whether observers will keep fighting over the wildness or not of the observation in the DQA is another storyâŚ
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Agreed. I think it would be best if we just left any sort of calls or assessments of early invasions to other, more local entities that have the best knowledge and information. At least until when we know otherwise. To say that every non-established observation could eventually lead to an established one in the future just seems like a bit of an overstatement to me.
And how are these local entities supposed to find and evaluate the observations if we mark them all captive?
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Part of the problem is that observers often donât provide any information on what they photograph. If they photo an exotic turtle or other herp in a natural-looking environment, but donât add any notes, I canât tell if they found the animal in a wild state or if itâs a pet that they simply removed from an aquarium to take a pic. There are quite a few records like that where the context is unknown and you have to try and pry that info out of the observer. If they indicate that the animal was found wandering on its own, then it can be considered as wild by iNat standards.
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If I see an observation in doubt, I tag and ask the observer the context behind the observation in question. If there is no reply, I usually assume captive.
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Intention clearly does matter. The iNat definition of wild vs captive reads as follows:
âChecking captive / cultivated means that the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there. Likewise, wild / naturalized organisms exist in particular times and places because they intended to do so (or because of intention of another wild organism).â
Humans clearly do not intend for things like greenhouse weeds or indoor anole populations to be there, therefore they are wild.
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Because they can get their own data elsewhere, independent of INat, as to what constitutes an early invasion.
I can think of tons of other sorts of greenhouse pests that can populate a greenhouse or other indoors spaces, but cannot exist as an established or viable population in an outdoors or in an otherwise ânaturalâ setting. By their very nature, stowaways arenât exactly buying their own plane tickets to reach their preferred destinations, so the definition of âwildâ gets even murkier.
âIntentâ should probebly be thrown out altogether and just look at where that population is existing as a whole.