Is there any way to get iNat to show the Common Name as the header of a record as not everybody knows Latin (or cares about subspecies levels). For example I posted a Eurasian Stone-curlew and it was labelled as such, but now a couple of people have come along so the record shows the header Burhinus oedicnemus ssp. insularum at the top. I’d much rather it just said Eurasian Stone-curlew. Is that an option please?
I share with that frustration of IDs changing from (say) English to Latin when someone has added a subspecies ID. Even though I have some facility with scientific names, this outcome is annoying (cacti and North American butterflies come to mind).
In theory, this would go away if an appropriate authority in a group has actually proposed subspecies common names…but that is exceptionally rare. And as is oft repeated, iNaturalist is not a place to “create” new subspecies common names. So it’s a bit of a dilemma. I’ll be interested in any new ideas that might arrise here.
A “bug” fix pathway might have to do something like this: When a subspecies without a common name is added to an observation, the default would be to carry over or “retain” the species level common name, until and unless the subspecies acquires a legitimate name.
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As somebody who adds many subspecies IDs, this has been on my mind.
You’re spot on (as you typically are, haha!) that we can’t “create” a new subspecies name, and the curator guidelines say not to add common names for infraspecies that are identical to the common name of the parent species, because it’ll confuse people. But - I wonder if we could start providing common names for subspecies like
This: Gulf Fritillary ssp. incarnata
Instead of: Dione vanillae incarnata
(In @GlosterBirder’s situation, the common name would become Eurasian Stone-Curlew ssp. insularum).
I think that would be a really positive improvement.
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Just to buck the trend and to prove it can be done, this one is a subspecies with a Common name.
The issue isn’t that some subspecies have common names, it’s that according to iNat’s guidelines, those common names need to be used outside of iNat, rather than being made up for the site. For many taxa, those names don’t exist.
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I understand that but it’s not the case with birds. I can’t think of anyone not using common names.
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I suggest “Burhinus oedicnemus insularum, a subspecies of Eurasian Stone-curlew”. I’ve seen genera without common names within families with common names, or some such ranks, treated thus.
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I agree with you. I think the current way is one of the most off-putting things about iNaturalist, sure to make many beginners want to quit contributing.
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I think this is a brilliant suggestion. I’m going to do it with a bunch of plant species.
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@GlosterBirder Mike, yes, there are actually numerous examples of common subspecies (or subspecies-group) names in the realm of vertebrate taxonomy and to some extent in higher plants. But in the grand scheme of biodiversity, such cases are overwhelmingly outnumbered by invertebrates of all stripes.
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@gcwarbler The discussion is about how to display a common and or binomial when it has been confirmed to subspecies WHEN THERE IS NOT COMMON A COMMON NAME for that subspecies. Any such display is not based on how often such a combination occurs. A little logic about whether there is not a common name for the subspecies probably already exists, all people are asking about is not to ignore a species level common name when none exists for the subspecies.
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Which lexicon would one use for such a name? It’s not a scientific name, and it’s not really an English name either.
In any case, I think it would still violate iNat’s policy to not invent common names here.
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I guess I’m a very rare case of a person who gets frustrated with websites / FB groups that don’t provide scientific names for organisms (birds in particular) :) I use 5 languages in my daily life (with a couple on a more sporadic basis), so I find it much easier to simply memorize the Latin names. For instance, I don’t remember what’s the English (or any other) common name for Sitta neumayer, I only know this bird under its Latin name.
Having said that, I think it’s always good to try to accommodate users with different preferences (and I can totally imagine that those preferring common names largely outnumber weirdos like myself), so the idea proposed by @comradejon sounds good. I don’t think that would violate iNat’s policy of not inventing common names here - it’s just a combination of the common name with the Latin ssp name.
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Well, as @kseniiamarianna notes, it’d just be using the acknowledged species common name and the acknowledged subspecies scientific name.
Is that combination “making up” a common name for the subspecies? I’d personally argue not, but regardless, I do think it’d be very useful to have Staff feedback on the idea, as it could affect tons of names.
@tiwane, any thoughts?
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I wholeheartedly agree. I think the suggestion e.g. Gulf Fritillary ssp. incarnata is perfect. There is nothing ‘made up’ about it; it is simply the common name with a scientific qualifier to indicate a subdivision of that species. It avoids the problem of confusion with the parent whilst recognising that the animal is indeed a gulf fritillary
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Currently for making common names for things which lack them, iNat “walks up the tree” until it encounters a node (genus, family, order) and then says “a member of <that named group>” e.g.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254883172
For some reason it skips the species when walking up the tree. I don’t see why that’s the case and changing the code such that the site says “a subspecies of Matchstick Flapwort” instead of “a member of Subclass Jungermanniidae (Leafy Liverworts)” would go a long way to help fix this.
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That would definitely be a good improvement, although I believe it would just impact the page from which IDs are being made. Overall, I think one thing (of many, of course!) to think about is that users can choose in their settings how they want names to be displayed. If they’ve selected “Common Name,” and the options are:
- Dione vanillae incarnata,
- Gulf Fritillary ssp. incarnata, or
- Dione vanillae incarnata, a subspecies of Gulf Fritillary
Then that second option, I think, best honors the user’s request.
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There are quite a few birds that don’t have common subspecies names. A North American example would be Song Sparrow – Pyle lists 39 subspecies (well, 29 with a note that there are 10 more in Mexico), none of which has a common name as a subspecies. And I’ve talked to ornithologists who work in South America that don’t use common names for the birds they’re working with. (As in, they didn’t recognize the common names when I’ve used them.)
It’s the best solution I think. I see it working for german, spanish, dutch, french and english without inventing a new common name:
https://observation.org/species/search/?q=Burhinus+oedicnemus&species_group=1
But it could be that the policy on this webportal is that it is not allowed on iNat.
Song sparrow example:
https://observation.org/species/search/?q=song+sparrow&species_group=1
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I expect you can refer in a lot of cases to an existing source, but it might be against iNat’s policy.