When dealing with agamospecies the issue “lumpers vs splitters” is not so important despite an invitation towards a more pragmatic treatment of some of these genera has been made. As regards, see the “Weberian reform” of Rubus. Anyway, with such genera, a high number of taxa is always to be expected.
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I am sorry to have used this term in a way it has caused some misunderstandings. To be frank, I have used the term “critical” in a sense it is sometimes used in taxonomy to highlight taxa that has a disputed taxonomy and, then, this causes a problematic identification. See few examples here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00606-012-0731-4
https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1139/b64-078
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2399692.pdf?casa_token=yOs2pKl-T5QAAAAA:N5CGqp8n7_F3-fg1zkuNB_gQanlClOeCmramJFvQ9HDlSyZZf1CRKJG_NBdXgh4bUuW2jgoJY92rAbKNA5mj3WF6GMtHKmLPdqI39A6ZN8EetbXmkA
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bogdan_Hurdu/publication/236131541_A_CRITICAL_EVALUATION_OF_THE_CARPATHIAN_ENDEMIC_PLANT_TAXA_LIST_FROM_THE_ROMANIAN_CARPATHIANS/links/00b495163e9bf7f05a000000.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40856306.pdf?casa_token=rEixqbHi03AAAAAA:FdIb-Rx5n0pQss9AW0_f2Zqjp32Pv3gpf6txYmqxmT9XNiFzFA1EmWDVUoFjnreBKURAdjqFgalfNf03T-LIeYJlS4fuFALwY_Fl2yjjX70bB7rgJw
Of course, I do not mean to addresss every “critical taxon”. It would be impossible and many critical taxa are somehow identifiable if an exhaustive photographic representation is presented (see, for example, the case of Stellaria media vs S. pallida).
The case of Taraxacum is quite emblematic since representative species of this genus are common in almost every urban area.
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The bottom line is that humans classifyspecies as concepts to understand and manage our world. It’s an important and valuable endeavor! However, it’s a human endeavor. Picking apart the genetic diversity and small scale variations in Taraxacum is a worthwhile thing to do, since it tells us more about our world. But what I don’t see as worthwhile is removing everyone’s dandelion IDs on a citizen science site because taxonomists have detected minor variations and distinct genetic strains. Why? Because 99.99% of the users of the site don’t have the means to distinguish them, and doing so actually reduces, not increases the precision of our data here.
Really, there is a good answer in my opinion: either these microspecies should be subspecies (i don’t understand why they are not) or else subgenus units need to be created above the microspecies. I am not sure why the splitters are resistant to this, but it seems many of them are. It isn’t ‘just’ an issue of the general public. I’m an ecologist who does wetland assessments,. No way i can run genetic analysis on every dandelion i find in a wetland, and it wouldn’t be worth the time for my purposes. Someday we may have ‘trichorder’ like devices that can instantly scan a leaf and identify a plant. Then we can really start looking at cryptic species, microspecies, etc. Untill then i don’t see any upside in forcing all dandelions to genus or section because of cryptic species exist. What does it tell us? nothing, but it frustrates people.
I’m a lumper though.
My preferred solution is to be creative with taxonomy and either just put the microspecies as subspecies or create subgenus units to merge them on here. But, that approach has its own challenges.
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I did not propose to remove anything, just to inform people before they could make their free choice.
I depends on the concept of subspecies you use. If a subspecies implies that ecological and/or geographical vicariancy are respected, this rank is of not or little application for ruderal dandelions. Maybe variety for me could be better fitting but I think that that of agamospecies is a very “peculiar world” and just we should not be surprised of the high amount of described and, at a certain extent, considered valid taxa. Yet, on the other hand, it is desirable that whenever there is the premise that a new species could be described, every precaution that could support the validity of the new specied would be taken (e.g. excluding whichever effect of the environment).
Relax 
, dandelions are usually described and/or identified on the basis of morphology, not genetics.
Usually me too.
In Taraxacum the rank that has been chosen for this purpose is the section. I think it could be ok for your inclination.
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if we do decide to include the microspecies I’d hope at least we could batch edit all the officinale to the subgenus rank instead of genus.
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T. officinale is included in section Taraxacum and suggesting people to stop at the rank of section is just what I would like to try to do. The same could apply to almost all the other sections of Taraxacum.
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i think the problem is the ‘suggesting’. If we just made the common name ‘common dandelion’ apply only to the subgenus and removed it from the species, it would probably stop 99% of them.
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have you tried to check if the computer-vision identifification tool suggests section Taraxacum (=common dandelions) as the likeliest identification? I am pretty sure in most cases it suggest, above the genus, T. officinale.
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It does now because that’s what all of those observations which the algorithm was trained on are classified as. If they were moved to sub genus, the next run of the model would presumably put them there.
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Yes, I know. And I would like to stress that here I am not putting in discussion the id tool (which, as far as I could see, has improved considerably).
I am not sure if it is so but I wonder if users, maybe just the unexperienced ones, could take the automatically proposed ids as pure gold.
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In a really brief sentence or two: what would you do? make a pop up any time someone adds a dandelion (which i personally would find very irritating :D )
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I do not know, I just asked starting this thread. Another goal was to test if this aspect is considred by the community an issue to be addressed or not.
In the meanwhile a possoible “pop-up system” came to my mind but I really do not know if in the case it could be even technically possible or not.
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Depends on what key you’re using. It’s true that most Salix keys start with female catkins, but a few keys (e.g. Jepson Manual for California, new Flora of the PNW, and Oregon Flora) have separate keys for vegetative plants and male vs. female flowering plants.
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For certain groups, e.g. Taraxacum (dandelions) and blackberries (part of Rubus) the taxonomy is a mess and anybody doing serious work in the group either knows that or should learn it fast. Therefore, I figure that iNaturalist using a broad “Taraxacum officinale” is not going to cause problems because any researcher using the data will know he has to take the taxonomic problem into account. I mean, he’ll know the problem is there and he has to make some decisions about it.
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When I started iNat I was identifying Noctuid moths. I had some experience, but back in the 1980’s. I was trying to identify moths from all over the world, and was getting frustrated. I decided to narrow my focus, and concentrate on Canadian species only. With a restricted range (and a couple of good resources), I’ve gained a lot of experience and improved my identification skills. So I guess my suggestion would be to start small, local, and get to know the identification markers for a few species. Then expand from there. You already have an offer of help on this thread, which is invaluable. I can’t help beyond this - I know next to nothing about plants! Good luck.
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Well, I do see that there seems to be a specialized usage of “critical” in taxonomic literature. I wasn’t familiar with that.
My understanding from reading the abstracts you linked to and the two papers I have access to is that a “critical taxon” is one that provides insight into relationships among several related taxa. For such an apparently precise usage of an otherwise common word, I’m a little surprised that I couldn’t find that definition in a dictionary or a glossary of systematics terms.
Given that most iNat users are general “nature enthusiasts” and the site’s main goal is to support them in recording and identifying what they see, I don’t think many people will have an intuitive understanding of this special usage of “critical”.
Whatever we call it, there’s still a worthwhile discussion to have about whether the ID suggestions process could be improved in order to avoid suggesting taxa that cannot reasonably be distinguished from typical images.
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Surely! Also on the basis of what you wrote on the meaning of “critical”, I would never address this case to users as a “case of a critical taxon” but, for example, as a case of a group of species which identification is problematic or almost impossibile on photographic material. Or something like that…
Maybe a short explanation could have a link to a more detailed one.
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