I recently found some photos of protists I had taken during a university bio class lab, where we had to identify protists for an assignment. I was interested in uploading them, mainly because I wanted to see if I could still accurate identify protist groups after having taken the class so long ago, but I had some questions around the ethics of uploading specimens that you yourself did not collect. I have been looking on the forums and online but haven’t really been able to find a definitive answer. Some background: The samples were given to us as just straight up pond water samples that the lab TAs had collected, and they probably knew that they likely had protists in them, but the samples were not collected or sorted for any one specific group/taxa. We as students were the ones to observe and identify them into groups under microscopes, and were told to take photos.
If they were collected from the wild and not intentionally cultivated, I think they could be uploaded as research grade as long as you know where they were collected. Or you could mark location as inaccurate and keep them for your lifelist, but they wouldn’t be RG then.
You can upload the observations with the location where you, as the observer interacted with them. This would presumably be the lab, and the organisms would be captive at that point, so they should be marked as such.
If it’s your interaction with the organism, I think it’s OK. I’ve posted a few observations that were sent to our lab, but that I spent time culturing/identifing.
I had some questions around the ethics of uploading specimens that you yourself did not collect
I’m fairly active here and have never heard of any issue regarding who collected the specimen. If the photos were taken by you, there’s no issue with intellectual property law (copyright etc.), and I’ve never seen anyone complain here about others poaching on their finds or anything like that (it’s supposed to be a collaboration anyway, not a competition).
I believe it’s common practice to upload photos of organisms that are being handled by someone else, certainly of organisms that were pointed out by someone else, and even of organisms that are legally the property of a total stranger (as in many “captive/cultivated” observations, such as farm animals, planted trees and flowers, etc.).
If there’s any doubt though, it doesn’t hurt to add a note crediting the person who found specimen. I sometimes do this as a voluntary courtesy.
My only concern would be that your location would be inaccurate- do you know which pond they were collected from and when? They would not be cultivated unless they underwent an incubation procedure- examining in the lab is not cultivation.
The obs would be ‘Not Wild’ if the location is the lab.
again, it is less about who than the location. Your examples are when the observer is ‘there’ to observe.
It’s fine. Just mark them as ‘casual grade’, ‘captive’ etc.
I think the question of whether they were “cultivated” isn’t really relevant. They were undoubtedly “captive” when you first interacted with them (ie someone else had taken them from the wild), so they’re fine to upload but should just be marked as captive. The relevant DQA on iNat is “Captive/Cultivated: yes or no”, so if they were captive, whether or not they were also cultivated doesn’t really matter for that vote- it’s still a “yes”.
Cultivated on iNat means ‘not Wild plants’
‘not Wild animals’ are Captive
The other kingdoms are Casual if ‘not Wild’
iNat has its own jargon which makes for confusion.
ethics-wise I would say you’re doing a good thing. please ensure the associated data is accurate as best you can.
unless there is some reason to think the photos themselves could be claimed as copyright by the university, you should be in the clear.
But OP was asking about the ethics of taking ownership of and sharing such photos at all, not about whether they need to be marked as captive/cultivated or not. We’re all so used to “captive/cultivated” debates that most people here don’t seem to have read carefully enough to understand the question.
That’s a good point - copyright law sometimes gives an employer the rights to that its employees made as part of their job. But I don’t think that would apply to most students, and in any case I think we would have heard of it if that was something that universities were trying seriously to claim in these kinds of scenarios.
I teach a lab where we do this, collect water from nearby ponds, and the students exam and classify the microorganisms they find. We do tell out students where we collected the water samples. I always spend a little extra time after this lab taking photos for myself to post on iNaturalist, so I would definitely encourage you to post your photos.
So to sum up (I think):
- As long as you own the photos, it’s okay for you to upload them.
- If you know where (and when?) the samples were collected, you could mark that as the location and the organisms could count as “wild”.
- If you use the lab as the location, the organisms should be labeled “not wild”.
Your question was answered by @beetle_mch -
If you know the collection location, I see no issue with uploading them as wild samples from that location.
Not my question. The question from the original poster of the thread. But I agree that’s one of the most useful answers!