It is so frustrating that iNaturalist has lots of subspecies included but neglect to include the autonym (type) subspecies - even though this is usually in POWO. In the last month or so, I have had to add in about 50 or 60 such names into iNaturalist just for Western Australian plants.
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Seems like that is something that could possibly be fixed automatically by one of the staff. They should be able to do a query to find all taxa with a subspecies or variety that does not have a corresponding autonym. I don’t know if they could mass-create the missing taxa though.
Looking around, I found a post on the opposite problem here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/single-nominate-subspecies/11004
As @loarie was involved in that, maybe he knows. Unlike that problem, this seems to be a case where people wouldn’t need to individually assess each instance. Creating missing autonyms causes no taxonomic issues and they can be lumped if needed if someone ever lumps the other subtaxa within a species.
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I have found some (not many) where POWO has a couple of subspecies but not the autonym subspecies. It is not a problem in iNaturalist, as I can add them when I find them, but it all takes time away from adding new observations. Hopefully time will improve it all. It would be good if they could be added automatically
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There used to be many many more. It seems like POWO has been addressing that issue at a pretty fast pace lately. Either way, though, we can’t get around having to manually add them to iNaturalist unless, like @keirmorse suggests, staff can come up with an automated process for it. The complication is that it also involves updating Taxon Framework Relationships to match.
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As these are added please do avoid adding common names that are the same as at the species level. Otherwise the subspecies gets tagged in by people who mean to do just species level ID
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If i added a subspesies but the spesies did not have the nominate ssp. listed, should i add the nominate too?
And what’s the point of nominate ssp. if the species only has single ssp.? I notice some species only have the nominate ssp., but did not have any other.
No species should have only one subspecies. If that’s the case, the species is monotypic and should have no subspecies designated. Maybe a leftover from when more than one subspecies was recognized in that species?
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I guess I’d make certain that the species is not currently recognized as polytypic (has two or more subspecies that are currently recognized).
As the case of the taxa that i present, no other ssp. is recognized right now. But the present of another ssp. is possible because the taxa has a very wide range
Do you mean, no other ssp. is recognized here in iNaturalist?
Or, do you mean no other ssp. is recognized in the external taxonomic authority that iNaturalist uses for its framework?
As far as my valid source go, the answer is both. WOL listed the then species as synonym of O. sabina, not ssp.
I think this is the case when the taxa is synonymized, everyone just treat the taxa as an ssp., which is wrong.
WOL and IUCN Red List do this correctly, but some authorities don’t.
I see. Because the status is not very clear yet, i would rather not to delete it.
Thanks for your thought.
Yes - if you add a new subspecies and the nominate subspecies is not already there, then it should definitely be added
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