Platform (Android, iOS, Website): web URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: inaturalist.org/taxa/new Step 1: Go to inaturalist.org/taxa/new and try to create a species which has the name Libystica complex (It was originally described under a different genus, but the epit…

I bet it’s because people were appending “complex” and “group” to the scientific names for species complexes for a while (e.g., Complex Condylostylus sipho group), before iNat adopted an official style recommendation . Now you aren’t supposed to add any extra words, and maybe this is a way to try to …

This isn’t a question of why iNat is removing the epithet – it’s absolutely because complex is a rank name, see https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/blob/4e369800b974fe8f7361c9d1e5b005b3b434783f/app/models/taxon.rb#L2210-L2217 The issue is that this is a legitimate name, and it’s not the only…

We could make an exception for “complex”. Are there any other words that should also be excepted?

I don’t think this counts as a bug because I think this is iNat working as intended, rather an unforeseen consequence. Let me know if I should put this elsewhere. When trying to add two subspecies from this flag: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/562988 I’ve run into an issue, one of the subspeci…

Welcome to the forum! I moved your post to this existing bug report. There is no way for a curator to fix this, but perhaps someone on staff will help out.

With regard to botanical nomenclature, “complex” is not a rank.

There’s a similar issue to this one: the web site Upload page ( https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/upload ) strips the word “complex” from photo tags that include the word “complex”, such as Oedipina complex or Complex Fan-foot. This leads to a new observation receiving an incorrect initial ID, …

Well… there’s Notsodipus domain, and Paralampona domain, both spiders. But we don’t use domains…

Is “group” not a useable term to use in place of “complex” to prevent this confusion with species or subspecies epithets using the name “complex”?

“Species group” was already proposed as a rank distinct from complex: [image] Create a new taxon rank for iNaturalist: the species group Finally there is the species complex, another informal rank that is best applied to closely related species that can be difficult to separate. Species groups a…

Can't create species with epithet "complex"

Bug Reports

escol July 9, 2025, 2:19am 23

Hello! Any updates on this?

We’re still having the issue with this.

Topic		Replies	Views
Can't create species with epithet 'complex' Bug Reports	4	445	January 14, 2024
Troubleshooting species complexes General brainstorm	20	2195	August 23, 2020
Use of the Term "Species Complex" in iNaturalist Taxonomy General	30	1424	February 2, 2025
More on species complexes Curators	28	2781	June 16, 2022
Issues with species complexes Bug Reports	5	538	September 22, 2020

Can't create species with epithet "complex"

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