The invertebrate pet trade has recently (in the past two years) grown into quite a large isopod hobby with around 50,000-100,000 people interested in rare and exotic isopod species. This is great for isopod research and conservation; however, a large number of people are only interested in how many species they can collect (Gotta catch 'em all!). I have seen an alarming amount of people using iNaturalist observations to aid in the collection of these species, as an example, the native species Venezillo arizonicus which has a small range and is threatened by habitat destruction has been collected over 20 times in the past year based on iNaturalist data. Most populations of this species are restricted to moist burrows in their desert environment, when collectors locate these burrows they usually collect the entire population (50-100 individuals). Since most invertebrates do not have conservation statutes they are not protected by law. My question is how much protection (obscuring the observations) should we implement to protect these species and how would this affect the data quality? The entire family Armadillidae except for less than 10 species are at risk, in response should we obscure the entire family except for those 10 species or only select species?

I wonder if there is at least in theory the possibility to protect isopods and their habitat by law?

@petzenbeer Around 10 species are protected by law; however, there are not enough people interested in isopoda to survey a lot of the threatened populations.

please flag individual isopod species with proposals to obscure. As discussed above obscuring at coarser nodes is to blunt a tool given the diversity of the group