antlion genus Myrmeleon has been shaken up (good!), and many species have been placed into new/revived genera. the cited research looked at a large sample of species, including a few North American Myrmeleontini, which were all transferred into genus Neleon. the remaining dozen+ NA Myrmeleon were not included in the study and will remain in Myrmeleon for now.
previously Myrmeleon was the only Palearctic genus of pit-building antlions, so any observations of antlion pits (and most adults) had been IDed as such… and are now incorrect, since most of them are likely Neleon.
nearly 6,000 observations need to be bumped from genus Myrmeleon to tribe Myrmeleontini
i’m relatively new to iNat, so i guess i’m just looking for advice about proceeding before i start chipping away at old IDs to make them less precise (but more accurate!)
Ah, yes, the joys of increased taxonomic knowledge! I know nothing about antlions, but I’d say what you need to do is recruit other antlion identifiers on iNat and figure out a plan together. Often in these cases (and in IDing in general), two or more identifiers need to follow each other to get all the observations IDed correctly relatively quickly. 6,000 observations is a lot, but not an impossible task if you have company along the way.
I’d also advise crafting a short paragraph you can copy and paste into many observations when you first start correcting IDs. If observers are given an explanation and maybe even a link to further info, they are probably less likely to be cranky about the changes.
having a note to copy & paste is a great call, thanks!
there are a scant few Neuroptera IDers active in the US observations, but the biggest one doesn’t seem to respond to comments lol (in his defense, he has close to 800k IDs, so his notifications must be absurd)
There are curator tools to automate this. Please flag the genus or tribe and wait until after CNC for the changes to apply.
all right! good to know. i’ve never flagged a taxon before.
i’ll collect some more info first, there are likely parts of the continent where all the genus-level Myrmeleon IDs can be moved to genus-level Neleon, as in Canada:
the only two species that range into Canada were included in the study and have been transferred to the new genus
looking at the range info listed on bugguide doesn’t shed much light, ha
blue shaded states/provinces only list the species that were moved into Neleon, the yellow/tan ones contain both Neleon and Myrmeleon… BUT the grey ones are not included in the listing for any species on bugguide (all (?) of these grey states do contain observations on iNat and BG - and i’ve personally seen 'em in Illinois), so this was a pretty useless endeavor for me lol
That’s still enough to create an iNat atlas. The states with overlap will get bumped up to tribe level. Bugguide is not comprehensive nor infallible, so please do your own review.
