My understanding of the iNaturalist definition of “captive/cultivated” for a plant is whether that plant was planted where it is by a human, or did it get there on its own. I also want to know if a plant was planted, or if it got to where it is on its own, that is it started growing where it is after the forces of nature (by definition excluding humans) moved the seed (or potentially root fragment, etc.) from the mother plant to where the plant then grew. So, by that definition if a tree was planted by a human 200 years ago it is still “captive / cultivated”, and will never be “wild”. It doesn’t matter whether any human did any maintenance work around it or not. On the other hand, any offspring of those planted trees, that germinated from seeds not moved to that place by humans would be “wild” by this iNaturalist definition. I too would count them as at least “more wild” than the parent trees that were planted there by humans.
Yes. Which means that captive and cultivated are not comparable and should not be paired in captive/cultivated as is currently the practice. It creates the impression that they are comparable terms for plants and animals when they in fact employ different criteria.
They’re not different, for any living object if its current place and movements are controlled by human it is cult./captive, plants can’t walk, so it’s easier to say what is a cultivated plant,
What syntax or layout do you propose be presented instead during a new observation’s creation?
With the caveat that for animals it is meant to be a permanent, or at least somewhat lengthy duration of time. Birds being banded, insects netted to photograph/identify and immediately release etc are not considered captive, they are still considered wild.
Perhaps I’m mistaken but based on what I’ve read here I don’t think that’s actually how things work.
As I read the rules, if a barnacle is on a rock in the ocean it is wild. If the rock is picked up by a collector and placed in an aquarium the barnacle is captive. If the rock is taken from the aquarium and returned to the ocean the barnacle is wild again. A barnacle is no more able to control its movements (wild or captive) than is a dandelion but its status changes depending on its situation because it is an animal.
When you start poking at the logic of these definitions it seems clear that the standard for wild is different for plants and animals.
I don’t know if the syntax needs to change. I think the definitions of wild should be consistent among taxa and based on ecological function, not ancient history; if an organism is effectively autonomous, interacting with predators and competitors (including conspecifics) without human intervention (at least intentional intervention) then it is wild.I don’t think the existence of preexisting definitions of wildness in literature devoted to specific taxonomic groups is a persuasive argument for iNat using different standards for different taxa.
Another option I mentioned earlier would be to use some variant of wild/feral/captive instead of the current binary options.
Those are rare cases, most animls do move, plus rocks can be moved in the sea, while moving tree with soil is rare and if it happens it may be reasonable to unmark it too.
There should be a request to add more stuff, thing is that we have millions of obs now, who would sort them to feral, etc.? I hear those proposals from many people, and it would be cool, but seem unlikely to happen without someone paid to sort things out as it would take years to sort only old ones.
I don’t think @fffffffff was saying freedom of movement is the defining feature of wild (after all, wild plants don’t “move” any more than cultivated ones). I think she was saying that is the simpliest explanation from an equivalency standpoint.
I think the main problem is common language vs jargon: in iNat parlance “cultivated” has a more specialized meaning than a layperson like myself knew of. Furthermore, that difference is not immediately obvious to a new user, especially one without a background in botany, horticulture, husbandry, taxonomy, etc (the very people iNaturalist wants to help connect with nature).
Yes, exactly. As you pointed out, the language problem is further compounded by the fact that there are different usage standards for these terms on iNat depending on whether they are applied to animals or plants, which again is not something immediately obvious when you go to create your first observation (at least in the app) if you aren’t already familiar with them from a botany context and background.
Would the alternative then be definitions outside of taxonomy literature (in plain English)? If so, why would they have more weight on a naturalist site than taxonomy literature?
I don’t necessarily disagree (as I think my posting history here, on the site, and in the old Google group shows), but I think that it could be argued that there is an internal consistency: the revised help page shows the official stance on wild is within a taxon (kingdom), but not “among taxa” (across kingdoms), and that standard is consistent within plants (“did a human put that particular plant there?”) or within animals (“is it being kept where a human intends it to be?”). I may not agree with it, but I at least know the context and can apply it now.
It depends on what you enter as the time and location of the sighting. If you enter your home, or wherever the aquarium is, and the current date, it is captive.
If you enter the date and location where you picked it up, it is wild.
I recently brought home about maybe 3 dozen (all dead) mussels from a trip to a local river. When i photograph them, and add the records, the date and location will be where I picked them up. These are wild observations under iNat standards.
Same logic applies to specimens, if photographed in the museum, but recorded under when and where collected, they are wild.
The short term captivity such as banding birds, netted insects etc is covered by example 4 in the list of what is wild in the help file ‘snake that you just picked up (yes, it’s in your hand where you intended it to be, but the place and time is where the snake intended to be)’
This is a key point. Wild, captive and cultivated are NOT taxonomic characters. They are ecological/husbandry descriptions. There is no taxonomic difference between the Trillium grandiflorum that grew in my wildflower garden and those that grew in the conservation area down by the river.
Agreed. It would be easier separate the captive/cultivated terms into discrete terms rather than confusing people by lumping them together. They are defined differently.
That’s the same problem of existing observations that @fffffffff is bringing up, just from a different angle: we have many observations already that are tagged already.
If we change the choices for for wild/not wild from the current binary, how do we update the existing records? Who’s going to go through them all, because if it’s a change from 1 choice (the current “wild” designation) to many (“feral”, “wild” etc), then it’s a similar issue to a taxon split.
It seems to me that the labels are already compromised by the confusion created by the pairing of terms. The discussion on this thread includes a number of posts by informed people who found the presentation of the terms confusing. The probability that the existing data are consistent and reflective of the iNat definitions seems pretty low. If there was confidence that the existing presentation had led to high quality, dependable data this concern would be an issue but it seems unlikely.
Splitting the terms preserves the current definitions while reducing confusion, causing the smallest possible discontinuity. In theory, at least, the only thing that has changed is the presentation of the options.
We’re not discussing the confusion of terms now, we’re discussing the practical means of applying your proposed solution. It can’t just be turned on for new records and ignore the existing ones.
If it were a one to one change (like adjusting the words used, but keeping it a binary choice), then it could be an automatic change to existing observations, but you’re proposing a one to many change. Who is going to go through all the existing records and adjust them?
It uses the existing terms and definitions. The only thing that changes is the presentation.
By only changing the presentation, do you mean:
Still have a binary choice that is applied differently for animals vs plants, but change the syntax to be clearer?
Yes.
I imagine it would work much as the Annotations work, which present options for things like Phenology based on the taxon. The current Add Observations page looks like this:
There are probably a few ways to resolve this. For example, a revised page could have the Captive/Cultivated choice greyed out (or absent) until a taxon is selected, at which point the appropriate choice (Captive or Cultivated) is presented for clicking. I would suggest hyperlinking each term to the appropriate definition.
This only matters if there is confusion that is affecting data quality. I suspect there is.
Sorry if I am a little bit off-topic.
Ok for the interesting discussion on the definition of non-wild plants and animals but let’s consider the possibility to revive also the discussion on how to make users be more willing to properly flag these observations ans non-wild.
I am convinced that the issue of the thousands observations that are posted unflagged is often a matter of lack of knowledge of the community guidelines/proper use of the app, rather than of the difficulty of understanding of what captive/cultivated means.
More pop-up messages and more comments, I check everything in some places I’m interested in, I have a saved message for most problems of posting, one explining how to mark cultivated plants, people seem to not see easily those buttons, even hen you tell them how to do it, maybe getting them bigger and more visible while uploading could help (maybe another colour for letters).
Ok ok. But I think that the goal is to have the highest number of users aware by their own. For this purpose, discussiona like this one are welcome to make things easier for newbies.
Yup, that’s why I propose some changing of the uploading page.