Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: All
Description of need:
In some situations, all species of a higher-level taxon are endemic to a certain place but introduced throughout the rest of the world. For example, Euphorbia sect. Goniostema is endemic to Madagascar but introduced everywhere else. Given that not all cultivated species are represented for a place on iNaturalist, it would be simpler to just say that sect. Goniostema is introduced for an entire continent instead of specifying that each species is introduced. That way, if new species of sect. Goniostema are added to the place in the future, the introduced status will be automatically applied to them.
Currently, higher-level taxa can technically be added and their establishment means adjusted. However, they don’t seem to stay there and their establishment means is not transferred to their descendants (almost feels like a bug).
*Clarification: This is possible:
It almost feels like a bug rather than an intended feature. The reason I put this as a feature request is that it may be intentional. Displaying only species means you don’t get a species count overly inflated with higher-level taxa.
Feature request details:
On the checklist page for a place, higher-level taxa would be addable and viewable similar to personal lists. These higher-level taxa could have their establishment means changed (this may already be possible as mentioned above). The establishment means change would apply to all of the descendent taxa within that place (this definitely doesn’t occur currently).
*Edit: I mistakenly put “occurrence status” instead of “establishment means” initially.
When I recently went through the Establishment Means for a long list of Places for Calyptocarpus vialis, I seem to recall that on each species-place edit page, there was a checkbox for something like, “Apply this to all included/subordinate places?” I’m not sure how you would apply a status to all places except Madagascar, however. Perhaps you could declare a genus section “Introduced” all around the world, then make an exception for the Place of “Madagascar” (and all included Places)???
When I tried to add the establishment means, nothing happened. By nothing, I mean that the section was not even visible as an editable taxon in the checklist. Further, the new establishment means did not apply to any observations (i.e., no “!” was present on any observation within the introduced range).
This is actually not the problem I’m having. The problem is that the establishment means itself will not apply at the level of section. Think in terms of “apply this to all included/subordinate taxa”.
yeah pretty sure it’s intentional to display just species by default on place checklists.
I might be misunderstanding but did you want to revise your feature request to something like “Automatically apply introduced status to descendant taxa in a place”? or is what you were requesting working now for you?
Oh, interesting. I can’t believe I didn’t see that!
Yeah, this is the problem then. I tested it again and marking sect. Goniostema as introduced will not mark descendent taxa (e.g., E. milii) as introduced either in the checklists or in the observations. I would like it where, if I change the occurrence status on sect. Goniostema to introduced, it applies it to E. milii and all other members of sect. Gioniostema.
Ideally, this would also work where, if a new taxon within that section were added to a place, it would automatically be considered introduced. As for implementation, perhaps something like: “automatically apply to descendent taxa unless taxon specifically marked as native” would offer the most flexibility?
Just to be clear, I think this is a good default, even though it caused me some difficulty.
