Would slime molds observed in a moist fruiting chamber be considered captive/cultivated?

I’ve been wanting to study and learn more about plasmodial slime molds, so I’ve setting up moist fruiting chambers as described in the book “Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds” to have more opportunities to observe them. The short of it is that I collect bark from various trees/habitats (taking care to not actually harm the trees) and soak it in water for 8-24 hours then put it in a petri dish with moist paper towels. Then I occasionally check the bark carefully using a hand lens and dissecting microscope to see if I can find any noticeable fruiting structures. I do record the lat/lon of where I collect the bark. In this case, would an iNat observation of a slime mold from one of these moist fruiting chambers be considered captive/cultivated?

I know there are similar situations, particularly where someone will cultivate soil fungus or endophytic marine fungi to agar and they don’t mark these as captive, but I figured I’d get additional opinions.

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I think if you are recording it against the location and time of collection it should not be captive/cultivated. It may be taking you several days to process the evidence, but it is still evidence that the organism was present in that place and at that time of it’s own accord.

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Problem is your actions stimulate change of the organism, as it grows it’s already not in the state it was before. I don’t know what is the correct way in this instance, imo it’s okay to post it as wild if it takes less than a day to process it.

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I would think it is fine because the organism is there whether you encourage fruiting or not. Probably worth annotating the observations that you did this somehow in case anyone is interested in studying when and where slime moulds fruit under natural conditions so they could filter out your observations though.

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Not at all. The only thing is that you would need add correct date and location (that is, where and when you collected the substrate). This is a protocol how myxomycetes cultivated in moist chambers are being annotated in herbarium specimens.

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@soySmelliot Welcome to the Forum!

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I’m certainly no expert in this kind of observation, but I assume it would be worthwhile adding a comment explaining the situation (in case the sample somehow got contaminated after collection, for example, although like I said I don’t know this kind of culture well enough to say whether that sort of thing is likely to happen in a way which would cause confusion).

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