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.
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.
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 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.
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)
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.
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?
Tag the egg and larval stages as “captive/cultivated.” Once the adult ecloses and is released, observations of it in the wild can be tagged as “wild.” You can explain the rearing process in the observation notes. For knowing more about vegetable organic gardening visit our link.
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.