It could be very useful to add a feature on the taxon edit page (or any other place) that allowed to specify how the sex on that species work; like monoicous (bisexual), dioicus (unisexual), asexual, variable (for some higher taxa and probably some specific cases) and unspecified (for the ones that have not been specified at the time).
Then the “Sex” annotation could be linked to it; just as the “Life Stage” Annotation on insects is linked to a higher taxa; and so the annotation “Sex” could appear or not in the Annotation Box depending on the option marked on the specific taxon. I think that this should not be made all over iNat directly, but been slowly added, and probably starting to add this to the higher taxa, the ones that common curators cannot change, like marking Plants (Kingdom Plantae) as variable; Vertebrates (Subphylum Vertebrata) as dioicus (unisexual) etc.
I would like to specifically request additional annotations for Vespinae. I recommend “queen/worker/male” sexes for this subfamily because the 3 sexes are usually easy to differentiate, and because the colony dynamic is based so heavily upon the queen/worker/male ratio. Sorting that data for Vespinae would be very useful in a way that sorting female/male data is not.
I hope it’s not an issue for me to bump an old thread (seems to me like it should be better than making a new one, because then it shows a history of this being something people want that can be easily referenced) but I also noticed Physella acuta has “male” and “female” as sex options, when it is a simultaneous hermaphrodite so they don’t really apply.
We have progressed to iNat only offering the Sex Annotation, after an ID is added. I had an Unknown to ID - a rock, so no evidence of Life. Is it a male rock or a female rock?!
Ideally - for plants, the sex annotation should only be offered for the ‘relatively few’ that it actually applies to. Try explaining that to a newbienon-scientist?
Arguably, that is only true if one has a binary view of sex. There are lizards, for instance, with three kinds of males; one could make case for these to be separate “genders” because they have different social roles. In some older writing (was it Henry Bates? I can’t remember for sure.), worker ants were stated to be “of no sex” because they had no functioning reproductive organs. Are we really going to insist on the increasingly controversial “chromosomal sex” as the sole determinant? (Have you been karyotyped?)
Not chromosomal, gonadal. Chromosomal sex isn’t even a thing for many animals with gonadal sex. You know a crocodilian’s sex is determined by tempature. No one would say these animals don’t have sexes though. Gonads are the only universal thing that determines sex.
Worker insects are capable of laying eggs. By the way, what makes them workers rather than queens is their diet. They are basically given toxins that impair their fertility, but these do not reliably sterilise them. There’s no way this makes them another sex. According to that logic, when people spay and neuter their pets, it makes them a different sex.
Just a reminder to please focus the discussion on the key topic which is the feature request itself for sex annotations. Discussing specific scenarios can certainly be a part of this, but a discussion of trans issues is really outside the scope (humans intentionally do not have sex annotations enabled). Thanks.
Speaking as a biologist, there are no universal laws for how sexes work among disparate groups of animals (let alone other organisms like plants or fungi). Each caste in a social wasp colony is naturally occurring and morphologically distinct, and each has a unique set of reproductive capabilities. As much as the word “sex” means anything outside of mammals, the castes of social wasps are analogous.
But regardless of definitions, each caste has a unique abundance, ecological function, and phenology, so the ability to sort them on iNaturalist using an existing term ID would be really useful.
As queens and workers are the same sex, it’s incorrect to label them as different sexes. Rather, they could be distinguished with another annotation.
Though what if someone adds a Queen or Worker annotation to an insect annotated as Male? By the way, this reminds me of how Egg is available as both a Life Stage and Evidence of Presence. I imagine that quite a few annotations get annotated as both, even though Egg as Evidence of Presence only makes sense with the Life Stage as Adult or Teneral, and the Sex as Female.
And female eusocial insects do not hatch with the traits that distinguish them as queens or workers. Those develop according to their diet.
The definition of eusociality requires that castes are predetermined [prior to adulthood]. [If the colony is not tampered with], queen eggs always grow into queens, worker eggs always grow into workers, and male eggs always grow into males. [Adults of one caste cannot become another]. I think you’re mixing up sociality and eusociality. “Sociality” is a much broader term. [This paragraph was later edited for clarification because I misspoke (noted by brackets). Subsequent posts pointed out that discussing the castes of queen and worker eggs is nebulous at best]
It’s true that many social wasps (like Polistinae) are not eusocial, and their queen and worker castes are determined primarily by hormones and hierarchy after birth (and they have few - if any - morphological differences). It would not make sense to add separate “worker” and “queen” sex annotations for Polistinae.
However, this change request only concerns the subfamily Vespinae, which are eusocial.
I recommend doing more research into the diversity of biological sexes across the animal kingdom if you want to continue this discussion. It’s a really fascinating topic, and there’s a lot of complexity they don’t have time to cover in introductory courses!
I have made this observation field for a seed sourcing project, where it’s necessary to know this kind of information, and in which “male” and “female” don’t actually work/apply.
Which I feel covers the overwhelming majority of cases for plants.
Some species here, for example Fuchsia excorticata, are gynodioecious, so they have hermaphroditic (bisexual) plants, and female plants. So while some individuals can be marked as “female”, for others, there’s nothing native to iNat that they can be marked as.
Even in common wasps, workers are capable of laying eggs. And they belong to Vespinae.
Newly-hatched queen and worker larvae in eusocial insects, including vespines, do not have different traits. The only sense in which the caste is predetermined is that the queen has decided it by laying her egg in a queen cell or worker cell. There is no such thing as a queen or a worker egg, biologically speaking. Transferring queen eggs to worker cells results in workers, and transferring worker eggs to queen cells results in queens.
Eusociality does not require castes to be biologically predetermined from birth. It only requires that the castes exist. Sociality doesn’t require castes. Polistinae wasps are eusocial.
The biological traits of the castes always only appear after birth. In all eusocial animals.
I know it’s not satisfying, but this ultimately comes down to semantics.
Are castes biological sexes? Yes and no.
Does eusociality require rigid caste boundaries? Yes and no.
Is it correct to claim that castes are predetermined from birth by the colony? Yes and no.
If you ask different biologists, you’re going to get different answers. Arguing back and forth over definitions will get us nowhere.
However, I will continue to argue (from a place of pragmatism) that castes are close enough to sexes that adding a “worker” option for Vespinae is a good idea. Again, I’m an entomologist who specializes in Vespidae, so I’m one of the scientists actually using this data.
As a reminder, on iNat, in the observation label, there is the option to have a description for each field on the annotations. Even if the “sex” is “worker,” the description could provide a good enough explanation so that it is not problematic from a scientific point of view.
This was mentioned in the OP, but (according to Search) never again in the whole thread. Given where the conversation has gone, I think that now is the time to bring it up again. Sex is not binary, despite some people’s need for it to be so.
In some cases, intersex has become less infrequent; for example, fish populations exposed to xenoestrogenic and xenoandrogenic pollutants.
One reason I don’t support implementing castes as Sex annotations is because it would mean female eusocial animals would not be shown when searching for female animals.
By the way, I think that Teneral should maybe be merged into Adult for Life stage annotations too. They are biologically adults, and there is a similar problem. The two species with the most observations annotated as female are Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) and Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera). The latter is eusocial.
I know that you only want this for Vespinae, but that is hypocritical, as it is no different from other eusocial animals. What you call “eusociality” actually does not occur at all in the animal kingdom, and I’m confused as to why you think Vespinae is like this given that you’re an expert on it.