Captive/Not Wild and Inaccurate Location Flags

[Matt Goff]

I hadn't realized things flagged captive were not showing up on my default identify page, so I decided to go through and have a look at things that were marked captive in my normal area of review.

I found a couple of things that raised questions for me.

On the one hand were observations like this one: 

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1237104

The fish had clearly been captured, but it was a wild fish and the location looks reasonable. Someone had marked it as Captive/not Wild, so I flagged it as wild, and the tie seemed to go to the 'Wild' in that case, so the observation has gone back into the Needs ID pool.

On the other hand were a number of examples like this:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1133231

This is a wild crab that was brought from the harbor to the high school for a class to look at and probably returned to the harbor after class. The location for this observation is the high school rather than the harbor.

I have tended to flag these as inaccurate locations, but not as captive/not wild. When something like this is flagged as 'Captive/not wild', should I flag it as Wild (and then flag as having an inaccurate location)?

I'm curious what others think about these situations.

Thanks,

Matt

[Charlie Hohn]

I look at plants more than animals, but generally the rule is if it got where it is without human help (within reason) it is considered 'wild'. For instance, here is how i would classify the following:

a fish caught and photographed where it was caught: wild, even though it is being held at the time

A fish caught and then photographed and tagged at home: captive because it isn't where it would naturally go on its own.

A pet cat roaming a wildlife preserve killing birds: captive, because it is still a pet.

A feral cat roaming a nature preserve or an urban environment: wild. (and yes you may not be able to tell these last two apart! it's tricky).

Cows roaming in a large open rangeland - captive, even though free range

A houseplant: captive/cultivated

A planted tree that is native to where it is planted: captive/cultivated. Who knows if it would have naturally come up in that spot or not.

A planted tree of an invasive species: captive

Seedlings that came up on their own in a lawn - wild. The lawn isn't a natural environment but still the plant got there on its own (admittedly it would be nice to be able to tag them somehow as different from native populations)

A tomato plant that pops up on the garden on its own from some fruit that dropped last year: wild

A spider found in a Vermont house iin winter that would not be alive outside - still wild unless kept as a pet.

Bison reintroduced to the prairie but kept in a fenced pasture - ????????? this one is tricky it came up recently.

A wild hog that may have escaped from a farm but is now totally wild and breeding with other wild hogs - ??????????????

The main thing i consider is range maps and spatial ecology. This is my bias but it's a big part of why we flag things this way.  If there are ponderosa pines growing on a mountain naturally, we want to see that they are there. If there are ponderosa pines far from where they are native spreading from a plantation and becoming invasive, we want to see that. Someone planted a ponderosa pine? It's not useless information but we don't want it showing up on the maps of distribution of species (or else the little pin should look different and it should be possible to turn it off). Things can survive way way outside their range when planted and cared for. Our neighbor has a magnolia tree and we are in northern Vermont. It survives because he cares for it. It doesn't make sense for Vermont to show up in the range of magnolia.

Hope this makes sense?

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============================
Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Star Donovan]

On Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 7:31:31 AM UTC-5, Charlie Hohn wrote:
> A feral cat roaming a nature preserve or an urban environment: wild. (and yes you may not be able to tell these last two apart! it's tricky).

[...]

> A wild hog that may have escaped from a farm but is now totally wild and breeding with other wild hogs - ??????????????
>

I'm curious, Charlie: why the question marks on your hog example? Wouldn't it be similar to the feral cat example at that point?

[Matt Goff]

Thanks Charlie - 

One question - 

>  A fish caught and then photographed and tagged at home: captive because it isn't where it would naturally go on its own.

I guess I wonder why this wouldn't be a 'location inaccurate' flag instead of captive? This seems like a bit of a gray area to me, especially for things that are caught/collected to photograph with better equipment at home. It looks like sometimes people flag things as captive if it appears the organisms were photographed this way, even if the location is from where they were collected.

I guess in the end maybe it doesn't matter too much, since either flag will take the observation out of the Needs ID pool. If captive/cultivated starts becoming treated differently, it might become a more significant distinction, however.

Another gray area is the situation where a caterpillar is raised to see what emerges. In this case, the issue seems to me the date of emergence could be early (or late) depending on how it is kept. However, this strikes me as a very different sort of 'captive' than a houseplant or pet, since it is indicative of a species naturally occurring in an area (even if the date of an adult observation being misleading for individuals not raised). 

Thanks,

Matt

[Charlie Hohn]

For the feral cat and hog, i was thinking how i was if the cat was born in the 'wild' but the hog in captivity. But that's kind of the point, with animals you usually won't ever know which is the case. Or for that matter it can often be hard to tell if a plant was plante or not. I guess we just do the best we can.

And good point that maybe location flag would be better when an organism is moved by humans. I have done something similar when i collect a plant specimen to identity (for work, with permission) and then bring it back to the lab and forget to ark the collection location. Those are just a mistake with wrong location. Some people don't think about it when using the app.

[Whitney Mattila]

I think a lot of us (or maybe just me) go into autopilot when there's an influx of posts from new users and/or 'students under duress'. I try to remember to note that I'm marking something as captive, but it gets tempting to just mark and move on.