Capitalization of specific epithets in complex names

[sandboa]

I don’t know if this is a “bug” officially, but it “bugs” me.

When species groups are created to allow records to be identified as part of the species group, the first specific epithet is often capitalized

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/992298-Anaxyrus-fowleri (common name is Anaxyrus Fowleri-woodhousii Complex)
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/992206-Litoria-fallax (common name is Litoria Fallax-bicolor Complex)

whereas others have avoided this problem
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/922247-Hyla-versicolor
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/857190-Pantherophis-alleghaniensis

I think it has to do with iNat’s default of capitalizing all the parts of the common name but using the scientific name as part of the common name.

It certainly is not a huge deal, except to people like me I guess who preach against capitalization of specific epithets.

Chris (sandboa)

[reuvenm]

I don’t think this is a bug - the problem is using scientific names as the common name which IMO should be avoided entirely. It would be better to name these something like Fowler’s/Woodhouse’s Toad Complex (and the scientific name should probably be something like Anaxyrus fowleri/woodhousii)

[fffffffff]

I agree, latin names don’t belong to common names.

[tiwane]

For what it’s worth, here’s what it looks like if you remove the common name (I did this on our test server):