Single specimen = single observation?

General
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From what I’ve looked up on this forum, there seems to be a consensus on uploading new photos of the same specimen to the original observation.

Should it also apply to different life stages / phenology of the specimen?

Also, having one single observation date for the de-facto different observations on the same specimen may be misleading.

For instance, was it right to upload both non-flowering and flowering photos of this specimen to the single “observation”? : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/118549451

Obviously, for mobile organisms, even the single geotag can’t apply to each observational event.

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hi @eugrus - welcome to the forum! If your photos span multiple dates (like your example), they should be split up into separate observations, even if it is the same individual. :+1:

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It depends highly on context

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Thank you!

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The consensus you speak about is to show that you can (and idally should) post different specimens separately, but it also speaks about 1 day, tomorrow you should create new observations. So no, it wasn’t right to post photos 6 days apart as one, seasonal graphs will show incorrect data that way, you can use duplicate function or just upload new observation with correct date and delete photos from the old observation.

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But what would be the context where combining them would be appropriate?

I’ve had situations with plants where I wanted to capture photos of it in different life stages to help with an ID, and I’ve always just linked the prior observation in the description and/or the comments.

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Thanks! I’ve already split those!

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I can understand wanting post together observations of a plant from multiple dates when data from different life stages are needed for identification. However, the best way to do this is to post each date separately and put a note in each observation linking to the other. This keeps the data clean but allows identifiers to find all the information they need.

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