I have been building my own catalogue of observations (marine species) for several years. Finding iNaturalist has been a wonderful revelation and I’ve started loading observations into the system here.
A common problem I’ve found is finding the correct taxonomy for a species (I’ve already given up trying to find the “correct” common name). My ID reference books are often out of date (e.g. changes to taxonomy for Chromodoris vs. Goniobranchus). Recently I’ve been using the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), but I’ve noticed that conflicts can still arise.
A case in point from today: the Fine-striped Snapping Shrimp is listed in several places online as Alpheus ochrostriatus, including here. But WoRMS lists this as an unaccepted taxonomy. So I don’t know if the taxonomy is valid.
Is there any authoritative source for marine taxonomy?
i don’t think there’s one agreed upon source for taxonomy of any taxa. iNaturalist anchors on certain ones, albeit deviating sometimes. But that isn’t universal at all either. Lots of arguments about it.
We usually follow WoRMS for marine species, especially invertebrates. They are not always up to date, but if they aren’t it’s easy to tell by checking the referenced primary literature.
You can always flag these to have a discussion with other people. In this case it looks like WoRMS considers the name a nomen nudum, meaning it was never properly described. If you check the basis of record on the WoRMS page, you can see the literature that the taxonomy is based on (it lists this species as a nomen nudum). They also list the original description, which doesn’t actually have a description, making it a nomen nudum.
So, if the curators agree that Alpheus ochrostriatus is a nomen nudem, how does that work on iNat? There are currently 50 observations identified as this species, about half of which are RG. Would all of these be pushed back to the generic identification Alpheus, until identifiers go back and make a new specific ID?
I use WoRMS a lot for my museum volunteer work. Without digging into particular scientific papers, that’s usually the best (and certainly fastest) resource available for marine species.
That’s perhaps the most “correct” solution, but practically it might be a little inconvenient. In cases like these, the species is probably real it just isn’t properly named. You could just leave it as a placeholder name.
If you have the capability to write a proper species description, you could make the name valid. Refer to the original publication, write a description for the name, and submit it to a suitable journal.
I always wonder why nobody “scoops” these. There is a Caribbean dragonfly, very commonly observed on iNaturalist, which is repeatedly identified to the genus level with comments that it is a widespread, undescribed species. You’d think that someone wanting to get their foot in the door taxonomically would consider that low-hanging fruit.
The solution I would propose is to merge the taxon with the genus and thus move all observations back to genus level, but I don’t know if that is the correct action. Still waiting on guidance.
Thanks @thomaseverest … I’ll take a look at how to use the Flag option. I’ve run into this issue multiple times so being able to flag it would be good. From a practicality perspective, I’ve run into a couple of cases where possibly dozens (or more) of observations are affected by a taxonomy change. Flagging an observation to note the out of date taxonomy is probably as far as I’ll take it unless I turn a retirement hobby into an all-consuming obsession. :)