So I found some caterpillars in my house plants, native as far as I gather but treated as pests. I was curious to ID to species level and decided to rear them to adulthood before releasing.
Initially I made a single observation for the lot, but as they reached adulthood I noticed it didn’t make much sense to put all adults in a single observation as they were even different sexes, so there would be no way to annotate them all correctly. In the end I decided to make the 1st observation focused on the 1st moth to emerge and a separate observation for each one who emerged after and annotated sexes for each.
Now I am unsure what to annotate on life stage as each observation has photos of larva, pupa, and adult forms. I could annotate larva as that’s the stage I found them in, but then someone may miss the adult and pupa stage photos if they are filtering by only larva stage.
What does everyone think? I am now so confused I’m even unsure if I should have split the observations or not
I have seen quite a few people that have done it like you.
I’m honestly not a big fan of having the life stages in one observation. Recently I came across a species and the only images of pupa were from someone raising them.
but looking for images of the pupa stage, you won’t find any because they are all in one observation which got lifestage of larva.
In my opinion it would be better to have seperate observations for the different points in time when the images were taken. (maybe even two larva observations if you have two stages of larval development)
This way each of them can have the right time and life stage associated with it (which also helps reduce artefacts in the phenology). And then I’d link those observations in the notes and if there is a good observation field.
But that would be my opinion and I think other people handle it differently.
In theory, an iNat observation is focused on a particular organism at a particular place and time. Of course, most photos of living organisms will include many others (of the same and different species). It’s your choice which to focus on.
You can (if you want) add additional observations for additional caterpillars/pupae/moths. You don’t have to though. Just don’t add more than one observation per organism per day.
Should I then flag the pupa and adult stages as cultivated or not if I do separate them all into life stages? And for the pupa/adults, I should put the date they switched stages, correct?
Sadly I only got a single photo of the pupa stage. Idk why I didn’t think of getting more, but yesterday there was still a single pupa yet to emerge into a moth, so here’s to hoping it still is a pupa today!
But would photos of the pupa casings after the moth emerged be useful? Should I separate an observation just for that too?
Most of these decisions (e.g. what’s useful) come down to your personal preference. If it interests you, do it. The date/time should reflect the observation, but if you want to add a note with info about the metamorphosis and length of time in a particular lifecycle that seems good info to share.
As to exactly at what point an organism taken from the wild becomes captive/cultivated, there are many discussions on the forum!
I would use every photo of every stage as a different observation. And would annotate the larvae as wild and the others as captive. Then there is an observation field: “similar observation set” where you can link all stages of one individual together. I usually write in the notes as well: “see similar observation set”, because it’s so far down the page that it might get overlooked. Hope that helps
I sometimes do things like that. I would advise to create a new observation for each point in time and if it’s interesting for you for each specimen. In those cases I usually write “time series” in the notes and “spatial series” if observed several specimens in a small area at the same day to document the area of a population.
I would not mark your example as cultivated because you just raise them to enable their identification as if you could taken them home for dissection.
The difference here is that they are being raised, not preserved at the life stage at which they were found – if one is taking home caterpillars to raise, because they are living under artificial conditions, there is no guarantee that their development will take place at the same rate as it would have if they had been left in the wild, so it may affect the phenology data, or maybe they would not even have survived if left in the wild (predation, adverse environmental conditions, etc.). So normally in such cases observations made after they were taken home should be marked as captive/cultivated.
But I guess if they were found at home, left in situ on the houseplant you found them on, and not given special care other than observing them over time, they would be wild houseguests.
ID also wouldn’t tag then as captive. To me it doesn’t feel like you didn’t introduce those animals to you are, the, are just simply there.
It would be differently to me if you would pick them from some random meadow, transport them home and then tag as wild animals at your location.
I’ll just mention that if you do mark any of these observations as wild, the location should really be the collection location, and the date/time should be the one at which you observed/collected these organisms.
So, if you find a caterpillar outdoors, bring it home to raise, and take a photo reasonably soon after collection that you use to create an observation that has the location and date/time of when you collected it, then that’s wild. Once the organisms progress through further instars, to pupae and then adult moths, it’s hard to see how any of those observations can be wild.
That doesn’t mean that observations of the later stages are not really interesting. There still is quite limited information of the larval and pupal stages of many insects, and so documenting which larvae turn into which pupae and adults is really good info to have. I would recommend that you mention the earlier/later observation in a note and link them via fields such as “Associated observation”.
[Edited to add] If anyone has remaining questions about captive vs. wild observations, the list of forum links here (compiled by @Star3) is a great place to start your reading.
I didn’t leave them 100% in situ out of fear I wouldn’t find them again among the plants, but:
They were found in a place where there wouldn’t be any predation and would have everything they need to develop
They were kept in the same area, right by the plants, in a clear plastic container closed with a thin fabric, so temps were the same as the place they were found in
They were fed with the same plants I found them in (those plants grow like crazy lol), and I added fresh food everyday
There was a single death out of 6 larvas, which I assume was some kind of failure to thrive
I wish I had posted as I soon as started this experiment so I knew to make better records with stuff like this, and not only now that it’s over. I also am unsure as how I could “mark” which larva turned into which pupa/moth… unless I kept them each in a separate container? Is there another way to know? At least for potential future experiments I mean
And thanks for the links! I tried searching myself in the forums, but I wasn’t savvy enough in here to actually find them
Given all the care you took to minimize the difference from natural conditions, I might treat these observations as “wild” and set the location accuracy circle to encompass both the capture and raising locations. You should probably put details of those precautions in a comment, or someone else may mark the observations as captive. Also, given that adults of most Lepidoptera are quite mobile I don’t think you could treat the adults as being “wild” for very long after they emerge in your container.
Really, though, I wouldn’t get too worried about wild vs. captive. Anyone who wants to use the data should likely be looking at all observations anyhow.
I was assuming that these are all the same species, in which case it would be valuable to have observations of the succession of life stages, even if you’re not sure which individual is which over time.
Of course, if you were raising multiple species of larvae, you might want to keep each separate in order to simplify the work of associating the adults with the larvae. Even then, you may see surprising results, such as the emergence of parasitoids!
I literally kept the container within a meter away from the capture location, so there wasn’t a location change at all And as for the adults, I only kept them contained for as long as I could take photos, and then just left the container open until they decided to fly away. I checked the pupas 2x a day until I found the first adult, then I checked about 3-4x a day so they wouldn’t be contained for more than a few hours post emergence.
Yup, they were all the same species! They were all found in the same plant, 4 in one day and 2 in the next day when I noticed the plant was still being eaten. Though they were different sizes, I assumed they were siblings from being found in the same location, time frame, and looking very similar. Then I was a bit confused after seeing 2 different looking moths, but I learned that they just have different wing patterns for each sex
Overall, thank you for all the info! I will update the observations later today. I’ll follow your advice and make the first observation I made for the larvas only, make a new one for the pupa stage, and keep the ones for each adult moth. I’ll annotate them as wild and put that list in my notes for the observations, if there is pushback in the future I can change it.
