I never know how to mark honey bees. Some are living on their own in the wild for generations, others are kept by beekeepers who allow them to come and go as they please. And I can’t tell them apart. I do not submit pictures of them often, but sometimes I want to document that they are found along with other bees that definitely are not under human care locally.
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Users of iNat like me, who are not ecologists or trained naturalists, would have a hard time knowing that a plant we see in a weed plot was introduced generations ago, seeded from a nearby garden via wind or animal transport, or even planted by a person so long ago that it is not evident.
And it sounds like naturalization happens at a population level, not an individual level. I see one moment in time, I don’t know if the species is surviving naturally without depending on continued introductions. I just submitted a picture of Asian Lady Beetles mating, so I know they could be reproducing. But I don’t know if the population depends on farmers in the next county or mail order to local garden enthusiasts, both of whom could be using them for pest control.
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“Naturalized” is a misleading term that sounds to the lay person like something good when it really means “It got away from us and we are doing nothing about it because it does not “look” like it has caused any harm.” When, in actuality, the harm from the cumulative impact of many, many “naturalized” plants poses habitat loss on a massive scale, even to the degree that, where I live, there are increasing areas (observed over 30 years) where there used to be native plants and now there are only “harmless” “naturalized” plants of many species.
Furthermore, many “naturalized” plants might still be in the well documented “lag period” characteristic of many invasive species, where they hang around in an environment innocuously until some point when the population starts to take off exponentially for whatever reason (genetically better adapted to the environment in successive generations, lack of effective predators to keep burgeoning populations in check, etc.).
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I think “feral” better describes those situations, and is less of a “natural” sounding word. I think maybe “restored” might be a good term for those of us planting natives where we are pulling out invasive species or gardening native might work too. I am frustrated by the lack of options, being 15 years into an effort to repatriate biodiversity on my property. It would be good to be able in the future to look back and determine if these efforts are successful. I may not be 100% certain of my plants either, and if they are native plants marked as cultivated, I cannot get a research grade to improve my confidence that I have the right specimens. I know that is not the mission of Inaturalist, but it could be…I fear the enthusiasm for native plant gardening could create its own set of ecological issues, and it is important that we find a way to track this well-meaning human initiative.
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Then in that case - it is Naturalized (under current iNaturalist - wild) but should be tagged as Naturalised
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@ marianwhit Indeed - you have good arguments - but Naturalized is a term used extensively in the biological sciences and has been for decades
It is always up to the user to determine what data is “fit for use” for their particular study. Uncertainty and biases are always included in models. That is one reason ‘Uncertainty’ is important in all georeferenced records (wrongly called accuracy in iNaturalist) If that value is not there - the record will usually be discarded from the study.
See publication on Georeferencing: https://doi.org/10.15468/doc-gg7h-s853
I refer you to one my publications on Data Quality and Fitness for Use
Chapman, A.D. (2005). Principles of Data Quality. Report for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility 2005. 61pp. Copenhagen: GBIF. https://doi.org/10.15468/doc.jrgg-a190
Feral refers to animals - not used (or very rarely) for plants. Thjere are many definitions - but the USDA has a good set of definitions
There is work being undertaken by invasive species groups at the moment to prepare international standard definitions
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Yeah, this is the definition I’m familiar with. I wonder which definition OP is using or where it comes from.
In terms of this inaturalist tag, yes. They are an edge case, but they’d be marked as wild. Or if you feel they are too edge case, you can just not add them. Or… i don’t think anyone will care if you mark something like this as not wild. The problem comes when you do this the other way around.
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Unless you know where the bees are coming from, this is a tough call. I’m sure the ones in my backyard are all domesticated, so I don’t post pictures of them. That’s because there is a bee farm just 350 meters down the road. I’ve stopped by there to buy their honey (doesn’t get much more local than this) and have actually photographed them going in and out of their hives, probably carrying pollen they just collected around my yard. But this is a special case where I know exactly where the bees are “at home.” If I find some out on a hike, I like to document them, especially if they are far off from farms or other human settlements, and usually mark them wild since I don’t know what their story is.
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Indigenous history first? Edible and medicinal wild plants were not there first, to be discovered?
That we have found a human use for a plant, does not make all specimens everywhere cultivated.
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The importance of indigenous management all the more underlies why we need to keep this simple on iNat. Rather than trying to parse out all the grey areas, simply mark it as captive/cultivated if a person directly planted the plant (management does not count, everything is influenced by humans). If the plant came up on its own, mark wild (or leave blank). If you don’t know, make your best guess. As mentioned earlier i do think some annotations around this might be helpful, or at least fields. But for the wild toggle, it is there for a specific reason relating to how ecologists use data, and it doesn’t make sense to change it from how it is now.
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The science is clear - the term used in science is naturalized - not established.
I say it again: what is missing about plants is a category for sub-spontaneous plants (which would be kind of analogous to feral for animals). It is not cultivated, not yet naturalised (nor invasive), just some seeds escaped from a garden, but that may not stay for years. For example: some specimens of Convolvulus tricolor are growing in Danemark, out of the natural area of the species.
Yes, I agree with you about established meaning simply able to persist and reproduce. To me, naturalised implies the species has become a part of an assemblage of mainly native flora or fauna to the extent it passes for a native species. So I wouldn’t call an invasive plant that forms monocultures naturalised. A good example of naturalised in UK would be the snake’s head fritillary Fritillaria meleagris, which has long been considered a rare native plant of wet meadows and has nature reserves devoted to it, but in the last decade or so botanists have decided it is an ancient garden escape.
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It is wild according to iNat’s definition. End of story.
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Maybe for now if you are aware whether the species is naturalized or not adding it in the comment section would be helpful? I think for research purposes it would be important to know whether a certain pant species is naturalized in that particular area.
I agree. Maybe people posting it might not designate it as invasive but those of us identifying it can? If the designation was available. I have commented whether a species is invasive or not when identifying. I think it is helpful and important.
this isn’t how naturalized is defined in ecology. Invasive plants are indeed naturalized by the definition ecologists use. It isn’t the same as the plant fitting into the local ecology and acting like a native plant. We know that this happens eventually, in some cases, but i am not sure we actually have many examples of it in practice
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This is more-or-less my thought process in terms of treating “iNat countability”.
Some important notes:
-just because a species is native, does not mean it is wild.
-species persisting from planting do not become wild, they are always planted.
-restoration sites are a big grey area but technically are not wild plants.
-not all plants have obvious origins. Use your best judgement based on the circumstances and ecology of the species to make the right call.
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