I’m not sure how opening the windows would cause a spider to die, but I acknowledge it is a difficult distinction to make. Humans have manipulated so much of the environment, it’s difficult to say what would and wouldn’t survive in our absence.
I guess, to your specific response about the aquarium, if I have an aquarium in the middle of a desert that algae grows in and it is marked as wild, then that location shows up as a suitable habitat and part of the range of the organism. That does seem like that would be an accurate representation.
The aquarium is a transportable, humanly-maintained micro-habitat. If the person moves, that habitat no longer exists there. And then does the new location they moved to then become incorporated into the new range of that species? In the aquarium situation, if the container doesn’t exist, the habitat doesn’t exist, so it shouldn’t be considered a location for the organism’s range, in my opinion.
If the aquarium is dumped out and the organism establishes itself in an existing habitat, then that should be recorded, but not every aquarium.
Stray is stray with chip or not, escaped dog is wild, but the point of roaming cattle is that humans expect them to move around and there’s no single spot where they are expecting to find them months later.
But house mice showed up in the house of their own accord, they existed in the location previously and, while they are taking advantage of the improved habitat, they were already living in that habitat.
Not true for the aquarium situation. Without the vessel of water, that algae is not going to exist there.
It would be difficult to get rid of house mice, because they’re in a self-sustaining habitat. If the aquarium is emptied, the alga’s habitat no longer exists.
Here in Wisconsin, it would be very easy to get rid of House Mice. Stop heating the house and the winter temperatures will kill them. Yet, there are enough heated homes around the species persists in the area. How is aquarium algae any different? It got in the tank on its own accord, and is taking advantage of a human maintained environment.
“Stray is stray with chip or not, escaped dog is wild”
But what if that animal was then recovered or collected either by whomever originally saw it, or by someone else that went out to look for it? Then its current state changes and that specimen no longer exists “in the wild”. This is why everything of importance in nature happens as a species, not the individual organism.
I view uninvited snails in the aquarium, algae in the aquarium, House Mice in the house, spiders in the house, to be equivalent of weeds in the garden. They’re there because humans made the habitat, but they got there themselves. I mark them all wild.
Plants that are no longer under the control of the person who planted them and have escaped the area that person has the right to cultivate are on the path to being naturalized/invasive species. Take kudzu, for example.
Yes, new observations of it will be captive, what’s the problem? Your example was brought in this forum like 5 years ago and nothing changed, iNat system works this way, so only current state of the organism matters. I don’t think it has anything to do about “importance in nature”, cause we’re discussing rules of the website, not laws of the nature.
@raymie, the House Mouse (Mus musculus) was an interesting choice of organisms. I looked into their range; they are thought to have originated in India with their spread (range expansion) occurring as human “development” has taken place.
This got me thinking that maybe rather than a “wild vs captive/cultivated” designation, it should be “commensal vs non-commensal” (human-related, of course). In a “Last of Us” type scenario, the range of the House Mouse would likely change drastically, as would @fffffffff’s spider. In many of the areas they now exist, these two species’ ability to survive is dependent on human existence. A cockroach on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic is not captive or cultivated but it is commensal; if the ship isn’t there, the cockroach isn’t there. I acknowledge fully that there there are many grey areas in the commensal vs. non-commensal designation, though, too. And I’m really not trying to “stir the pot”, just trying to bring another potential way of viewing/addressing the issue.
And in @raymie’s aquarium example, the earth has really become the aquarium and iNat is simply documenting where organisms are occurring with and without human assistance, not really displaying the ranges of species (as others have pointed out in this thread). As an individual who does mostly plant IDs, I have tried to remove Observations that were “out of their normal (which I’m seeing is more and more subjective) range,” but I’m beginning to think that is not necessary due to scale of human manipulation of the environment. So, I guess I don’t see why, if you could have a RG commensal occurrence of a bed bug in Antarctica, why you couldn’t also have a RG commensal occurrence of a tropical orchid there. iNat seems to be better at assuring the accuracy of an identification, not that it’s in the place it “should” be.
Because there can be tens of thousands of species which cannot exist/survive in a given area as a species, only as the individual specimen. This tells us nothing of the species’ biogeographic range & distribution.
Why even have explore maps then when the idea behind whether something becomes “RG” or not is just for identification purposes? At most, location would only then need to be stated in the notes of each individual observation.
You know iNat is not a scientific site, right? It’s for connecting people with nature, it has no goals to what you describe, observations don’t have to be within a range of any kind, they should be where person saw the organism.
So in other-words, trying to use iNat to predict future outcomes of invasive or introduced species is of equally little use? We only know what we know now, using the same reasoning.
On iNaturalist, connecting people with nature is goal #1, but providing good data for scientific studies is a close second.
I think that once again we’re having this argument because some people hope that iNaturalist provides a final report, carefully vetted and interpreted data that provide a full picture of what’s going on with the species in question. iNaturalist doesn’t do that. It provides a great mound of raw data about what’s where when, data that must be winnowed and examined for the reliable message to appear. It’s a mine full of treasure, not a factory shipping finished product.
No, it can be and is very useful, but it’s expected from researchers to check and filter data they use, you need a group of specimens to start real introduction, so one-off escapees don’t fit it anyway.