Is there a recommended protocol for posting voucher specimens? I am working with a group to collect herbarium specimens. My posts of specimens mention the activity in comments, but I wonder if there is anything more I should include when posting.
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They’re encouraged, as long as
A) The date and location entered represent where and when the specimen was collected in the wild
B) The person posting them is the one who found it in the wild (posting someone else’s specimens that you didn’t encounter in the wild is considered a “captive” observation)
C) The specimen is in the same life stage as it was when collected (collecting a caterpillar, rearing it to adulthood, and posting the adult as a voucher specimen is generally considered a “captive” observation)
As long as those guidelines are followed, voucher specimens are great to have as observations. I’ve posted lots of my insect collection as observations on iNat over the past few years, and it’s been a great way to get the data out there.
(Side note: if the specimen was alive when collected, it can be annotated as “Alive”, even though the the specimen is deceased in the photos. This is a source of confusion sometimes, as annotators can easily mistake Alive/Dead as being what condition the photo shows, when it’s supposed to reflect what condition the organism was in when it was found.)
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My recommendation is to not post the voucher specimen after being pressed, but use the observation to record things that do not preserve in a voucher. That would be things like a picture that shows habitat, colors that may fade over time, the shape of structures that may be crushed when pressed etc. This then becomes information that enhances the value of a voucher, and is information that is worth including on a label (I will include as a URL of the observation). This year I also started including the observation field “Voucher Number” to include my collector number directly on the observation so there is better 2 way association between the specimen and the observation. I’ve seen some really good collectors do this, and I think it’s a really effective way to use iNaturalist to make vouchers more usable.
It’s worth noting that this is in line with how collectors sometimes include pictures in their vouchers to illustrate aspects of the plants that simple will not preserve.
As an example there’s this observation of snow drops where I wanted a wide shot to show that this population is relatively large and not near obviously cultivated beds as an indication that it is naturalized and not just escaping cultivation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/265468132
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I recall that voucher specimens that are already curated/catalogued in a museum should probably not be posted to iNat since they replicate records that are already in databases like ARCTOS and VertNet. But for new voucher specimens I don’t see an issue and it’s a good way to archive photos of specimens prior to or just after preservation when colors and other features might be more accurate.
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I’ve used iNaturalist observations to record my voucher specimens in two ways:
Before I started using iNaturalist, I collected lots of dragonfly (Anisoptera) exuviae to document species distributions in my state. Currently, those exuviae are part of the temporary collection at the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (where I worked before I retired). We are running out of space there, so the aquatic ecologist there and I decided I would photograph the exuviae of the common species and upload photos to iNat where I was the collector. Then the aquatic ecologist will either find a museum interested in taking them or we will discard the specimens. I add the database number to the observation when I upload the photos, as in this example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/263089871
Secondly, a couple of years ago, I got interested in learning bryophytes. To identify mosses, liverworts, and hornworts to species, one often has to collect specimens and look at them under a microscope. If I was going to collect specimens, I wanted those specimens to serve some greater purpose than just my education, plus bryophytes from my state are somewhat under-represented in herbaria, so I got landowner permission to collect from some large conservation agencies and organizations and am about to deliver about 600 specimens to an herbarium. I photograph the bryophytes in the field (and occasionally under a microscope) and upload them to iNat, with my collection number, like this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/247137436
ETA: I also added the iNat observation number to the bryophyte specimen card.
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You might want to create a project for the observations, similar to Carnegie Museum Herbarium. There are also lots of observation fields you can use, like “Herbarium voucher collected”, “Voucher Number(s)”, “Herbarium Catalog Number”, etc.
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This publication might be of interest to you:
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aps3.1193
here an example of a herbaroim specimen I docuemnted via iNat:
https://inaturalist.org/observations/43888010
and then deposited at our Museum, where it alos got digitised and publlished to GBIF: https://archimg.mnhn.lu/Collections/Herbarium_jpg/MNHNL132694-01.jpg
GBIF also does “lsutering” for such records: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/2611049627/cluster
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Great question!
I would recommend taking detailed photos if possible with measurements as you collect the item. For example, if you’re collecting grass, show the spikelets next to a ruler; use macro photography if possible, etc. I also recommend broad photos of the specimen in the field.
The reason I recommend this is that herbarium vouchers can link back to the iNaturalist record. When an herbarium record is scanned, those details are lost to the person looking at a scanned image - so being able to see the details of the the degree of fuzziness along the backside of a leaf when the plant was in the field, or its habitat, etc. can be really valuable to somebody who is only able to interact with a scanned image (unless of course they are at the herbarium or have the item on loan, in which case they can study the specimen with a loupe or microscope).
Here’s an example of a collector who does herbarium vouchers + posts on iNaturalist:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/205938687
She has custom annotation fields in iNaturalist for each specimen that is vouchered, and a project for records that are vouchered:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ut-stengl-herbarium-specimens
The data / annotations have been carefully thought out here and are useful to me as an amateur botanists - so I imagine an approach like this would be welcome to professionals who work in the field as well.
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I agree and think this is the approach that iNaturalist prefers. I do this a lot myself. iNaturalist isn’t really for large-scale replication of museum/herbarium collections, particularly those that already are or will be digitized and ingested by GBIF separately. It’s mainly for one’s own encounters with the organisms in their original “natural” context. Tying the two together enhances the value of both!
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I recently started to post my collection specimens that I collected over 40+ years ago. I will be donating my collection to my local university to add to their huge collections. While digitizing my collection I have found that many places that I collected at years ago have been turned into a parking lot or residential neighborhood! So from a data standpoint, using these voucher records could help past and present range maps.
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On the one hand, it’s best if you post here photos of the plant in the field or when recently collected, to maximize the uniquely useful aspects of posting photos. You can add photos of the pressed plant to the same observation if you want. I recommend adding a line in the specimen label saying, iNaturalist observation #xxxxxxxx. Posting specimens on iNaturalist may not be necessary because many herbaria post their specimens on-line sooner or later.
However, you can post observations that show only pressed and dried specimens if you want to. This can be very useful if they’re for some project you’re doing. Just make sure the time and date indicate where it was collected, not when and where you photo’d it.
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as a frequent collector of plants and parasitic fungi, I actually mostly use iNaturalist observations of the live organisms in situ as a way to get the coordinates that I then use for a specimen label, with the precision in meters already helpfully recorded in the observation. I agree with the points above that having photos of color, habit, or population that don’t preserve well is very helpful; but as a very bad record-keeper, iNaturalist is even more important to me as the front-line “notebook” of things that I saw. every now and then I even forget that I collected something, and come across a lost specimen of mine that needs a new replacement collection number; inevitably I’m able to go back to my iNaturalist observations and find photos and coordinates of that organism to fill out the other details.
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@petegrannis it’s not clear to me whether these are plants you are collecting now to be deposited in an herbarium, or are they extant herbarium specimens from an institution? If the former, then I recommend this method:
If the latter, IDigBio is a better repository for old institutional herbarium and museum specimens.
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@tiwane Thanks for the question. I am posting plant specimens as they are being collected, either prior to or immediately after digging them up / prior to pressing. I appreciate the guidance re: extant specimens as this may be of interest to others on my team.
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