With some species, such as small terrestrialorchids, largemonkeysor even larger seashellgastropods, it can sometimes happen quickly that you document and photograph almost each individual in a small population/group for your research or conservation project.
Especially with very good images and SLRequipment.
Numbers of individuals are also very interesting.
Especially when the individuals within the population differgreatlyinappearance, you may even want to publish them asindividualobservationsā¦ (?)
& for some itās even irritating not to take a quick photo of the next specimen on your path as well. This can quickly result in morethan8 well images per species.
Even with very, veryrarespecies, 10individualsightings can sometimes occur.
I donātwant to discuss groups\populations of morethan30individuals here. But how do we behave with10 to 25?
However, publishing several often very different specimens of a species as individual observations within a field trip, an approximate time and a rough localization and making them available to iNat Users or even Gbif, seems to be agreatmistake, because according to our guidelines we should combinetheseobservationsintoonesingleobservation!
Areup to 10 SLR observationsofa single species per day stilltolerated?
I canāt find where the guidelines state that observations of different individuals should be combinedā¦ I was under the impression it is the opposite, i.e. one obs (eventually with multiple pictures) per individual.
Yes, I think the original proposition is incorrect about iNatās guidance on this.
The default observation ābehaviorā for iNat is that each individual organism should have itās own observation. Observations with >1 individual organism in multiple photos (ie, the same focal organism is not present in all photos) may be IDed to the most specific common taxon. So if all the individuals are the same species, then the observation can be IDed to that level. But this is less optimal. Lots of issues can result (how to annotate if multiple life stages or statuses are present? What if what the observer thinks is one species is actually multiple?).
These issues are avoided by making each individual its own observation. How many individuals to upload from any given location/population is entirely up to the observer. Whether an SLR (or any other piece of equipment) is used doesnāt seem relevant.
I usually do one observation for the population unless thereās a few that stand out as different from the rest, like what @cthawley said with the different annotations, Iāll separate males from females (such as with cardinals) and larvae from adults (such as with beetles), but Iāll also sometimes upload additional observations for individuals with deformations.
Please do not lump together photos of different individuals as one observation, even if you believe them to be the same species. Aside from violating iNatās guidelines on the definition of an āobservationā (one observer interacting with one organism), it causes trouble in two very common scenarios:
One of the several photos added are in fact a different species, so similar that the observer did not notice (Iāve mistakenly done this several times- but by posting each individual as its own observation, identifiers have been able to easily correct the one I got wrong). I have to comment āfirst photo is species A, but second photo is species Bā practically every day when I do insect IDs.
The individuals represent different sexes, ages, or forms, and annotators cannot annotate the observation because itās not for one single organism.
Even if the observer thinks the organisms are all the same sex of the same species at the same life stage, mistakes are often made, and if the organisms are lumped together as one observation, thereās no way for the community to correct the mistake without marking the whole observation as ānot evidence of a single subjectā, which sends it to the Casual pool. Even for something seemingly obvious like Cardinals, Iāve seen people mistake immature males for females- if the immature males and females are lumped together, how do you annotate that observation?
There is not any sort of ālimitā to how many observations of a species a person makes in a day. iNat data is not meant to represent species abundance; if you see 40 orchids on a walk and really like them, go ahead and post them all. Iāve done it: https://tinyurl.com/yukh63mm
Iāve heard identifiers complain about large volumes of the same species from the same place, but I donāt see a problem with it. It takes about 5 seconds to mark the whole page of observations as reviewed and move on if one doesnāt wish to identify them, and it shows a great deal of positive interaction with nature on behalf of the observer.
Thanks for all the responses!
since a noble curator kind of asked me to combine all my UW observations of the night dive of a species into one observation, I was rather curiousā¦
Did you upload them with your own ID? (Quick and easy to click Agree)
Or leave them Unknown? ( a bit more work - and Mark as Reviewed, pushes the work on to the next identifier)
I would still like to Annotate each photo.
1 has flowers
2 has fruit
4 flower buds
8 has coloured leaves
Now we have to annotate the whole obs, and pick thru for any pictures which DO fit our request. Fruit?
This is where other guidelines and some common sense step in, I suppose. Try and respect the observerās initial ID, do not abuse the DQA āsingle subjectā, etc.
I can say the gathered group in that photo could have had one organism separated out for an observation. With the group shot as a following photo.
You just keep doing you.
Thatās right. I use my phone and could not get them separated. I posted it to the bird feeder project where who is there is the point.
So when you come along to ID and donāt like it move on.
Iāve had the opposite experience: identifiers identify all sorts of species in my UW dive photos of āone organismā and ask me to create a new observation for each! I do crop the photo when appropriate so itās the same photograph, just a different crop, so CV isnāt diluted.
, large monkeys 
or even larger seashell gastropods 
, it can sometimes happen quickly that you document and photograph almost each individual in a small population/group for your research or conservation project.
we combine all on one observation!