Background: I regularly raise butterflies and moths from wild-found eggs or larvae to adults, then release them. One of my goals is to understand their food-plant needs to support conservation. For example, I’ve been able to show that mistletoe leaves become toxic to some larvae if the mistletoe is growing on certain exotic hosts. Another goal is to add to our knowledge about pre-adult life stages, which would support more automatic IDs. I’ve occasionally logged observations of wild larvae and had identifiers ask if I raised the larvae to adults to confirm my suggested ID.
Question: When should my observations be tagged as “captive” if I find an egg, raise it through the larval and pupal stages and observe the adult eclosing? It seems unreasonable to tag all the observations as “captive” if this means they can never be RG. But equally, it is hard to see how the organism can be deemed “wild”. I’ve hesitated to upload life cycle photos without knowing how to approach this.
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I think the egg s wild at the place and date you found it. Everything after that is captive. My preference is that you could include a picture of the adult as proof of what species the egg was, but that isn’t within the iNaturalist rules. But you can link the egg observation to a casual observation of the adult to achieve the same end.
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You can use the observation field “similar observation set” to link all stages together. Yes, except the eggs all other stages are captive.
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I guess a related question is: can the captive photos feed into Computer Vision for the species?
Yes, I agree with @jhbratton above.
An observation with a photo of an egg found in the wild at its time and place of capture is wild. After that, if the egg has been brought into captivity/protected/supported by a human in some other way, it is no longer wild but captive.
This specific situation has been addressed in some past forum posts as well:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/captive-raised-caterpillar-observations/31361
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/still-wild-or-already-captive/17340
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Thanks Susanne-Kasimir - I have wanted to link observations for a while. Tried it out. Not intuitive but it worked well.
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You could also add photos of different stages to the taxon page.
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This a great thing to do! I also frequently, do this and I totally agree that it is wild.
An example would be putting down a track board (a board with white sand or clay to gather animal tracks) and then recording the observations as wild. It wouldn’t be right to mark it as captive even though the info was only gathered from your work the animals are still very much wild.
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if the egg has been brought into captivity/protected/supported by a human in some other way, it is no longer wild but captive.
If I raised the caterpillars from a wild egg in a container with their food plant and then brought them out side to photograph before releasing back into the wild this should still be wild correct? Many researches do this for Lepidoptera species across this and other sites such as Ebutterfly. (I could check their rules if anyone was interested)
Thanks! It’s only by interacting here that I’ve managed to clarify my goals and see how to achieve them. This is really valuable.
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No, they would be captive.
If you released adults and then they flew away and someone found them in a different location they would be wild.
If an organism is released somewhere in the wild, it will still be captive (as it is in that time/place because a human intended it to be) until it moves somewhere different on its own.
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How could you qualify this? For example if I released it on a host plant and it was still feeding the next day would it be wild? If I released a butterfly and it immediately flew to a flower to nectar would it be wild?
I would probably count both of those as captive as the butterfly hasn’t appreciably changed location, but this is always going to be a judgment call.
Based on the other feedback, it seems the egg is wild if I photograph it in situ on the leaf but captive when I take a better picture in my office.
no, it’s still wild when you take a better picture inside
If you use the time and location where you found it in the wild, and it has not appreciably changed its state since you collected it (e.g., egg did not hatch between finding it and bringing it to your office), it is considered wild for iNat purposes.
If you use the location of your office, it is captive at that location because it did not get there by itself.
I think it helps to look at the wild/captive distinction as referring to the occurrence data. It isn’t so much about whether the photograph shows it in situ or in an artificial environment (a pinned specimen can be wild if marked with the place and time where it was found), but whether the data represents a natural/spontaneous presence of that particular organism.
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