I have based these interaction options on the TDWG Interaction LSID Ontology standard. I have added "Herbivore of" and "Herbivory by" for clarity, although these will map directly onto "Parasite of" and "Parasitised by". I also added "Fruit eaten by" and "Ate fruit of", since we cannot assume in all cases that seeds are dispersed by all frugivores.

I also added "Decomposer of" and "Decomposed by" for critters feeding on dead things. This would map (somewhat loosely) onto the "Host of" and "Host for" in the TDWG Interaction LSID Ontology standard.

I have based these interaction options on the TDWG Interaction LSID Ontology standard, with the following additions.

I have added "Herbivore of" and "Herbivory by" for clarity, although these will map directly onto "Parasite of" and "Parasitised by".

I also added "Fruit eaten by" and "Ate fruit of", since we cannot assume in all cases that seeds are dispersed by all frugivores.

I have added "Seed eaten by" and "Ate seed of" to allow for interactions where seeds are clearly being eaten but it is uncertain if the seeds are being killed ("preyed upon") or about to be dispersed ("seeds dispersed by"). This will be appropriate for small birds like many finches that kill most seeds they eat but can still be important seed dispersers since they don't kill every seed.

I also added "Decomposer of" and "Decomposed by" for critters feeding on dead things. This would map (somewhat loosely) onto the "Host of" and "Host for" in the TDWG Interaction LSID Ontology standard.

I also added "Carcass scavenged by" and "Scavenged carcass of". There is some overlap with "Decomposer of" and "Decomposed by" but it's a better fit for when a dead carcass (e.g., roadkill) is eaten by big animal like a hawk or black-backed gull.

That's a good question. Some plants have a small piece of fruit attached to their seeds that ants like to eat (called an elaiosome). This is the usual reason why ants gather seeds, in which case the interaction would be "Ate fruit of". I'm not sure why else they would be carrying seeds around. I'm not aware of any seed-eating ants in NZ.

Good point. That's what the famous central american leaf cutter ants do. Ants do just about everything so I suppose some will use seeds for this purpose.

Definitely nefarious.

You could well go "Dispersed seed of" in this case, as the seed is definitely being moved. Whether it gets to a place the plant wants is beside the point (well, not for the plant, but it still counts as dispersal).

Ah, I wouldn't agree with that random website. Seeds get dispersed away from the parent. Most land in unsuitable places and die. We'd be in trouble if we could only call it dispersal when we could confirm that the seed moved to a safe place and germinated (and, if you take it to extreme, the site has to be good enough for it to be able to grow big enough to reproduce).

And all it takes is a few seeds to be dropped by those ants and the whole process could benefit the plants. They tend to make a lot of seeds afterall.

As something of an aside, it's been found that even seed predatory birds like chaffinches and goldfinches can actually be quite useful dispersers of seeds because they only crush most of the seeds they swallow. The few that make it through alive can be important for some plants.

Bark stripping by Kaka, when looking for sap, should I class this as parasitic behaviour, herbivorous behaviour or do we need a new field value?

Note that I've just created one new taxon lookup field for each interaction. See here. My intention is to move all existing observations with interactions to these new fields and remove the field "ecological interaction". Doing this has several benefits, perhaps the biggest being the ability to add more than one type of interaction to an observation. It's the way I should have done it in the first place.

Yes, I've noticed that helpful quirk in field searches. Well, usually it's helpful, but not always, as you've found.

Your point about use in projects is a good one. I think that in at least most cases the projects will be simplified by just picking the relevant interactions. For my "ecol202-backyard-birds" project, we'd get by with "Interaction: Visited flower of" and "Interaction: Ate fruit of".

Yes, I fear that until we change the way the 'helpful' list of options is generated the fields won't be much used apart from in projects that prompt for them (as people won't know what other interaction options exist). Backyard birds might also want "Preyed upon", for blackbirds, thrushes and silvereyes etc (and "Preyed upon by" for those observers with cats ;-)

@ jon_sullivan: What about recording territorial interactions, what species take on what other species who are in 'their' patch.
Eg /observations/965956