Common names on undescribed recognizable species

General
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Im going to start this off by stating i dont think learning common names is a good way to go about things as they usually are very demographical and people can the call sames species different common names. However, i recently found and discovered to me that alot of undescribed groups of invertebrates get given common names within the community of them to describe these undescribed species.

An example of this would be a small Euophryini i photographed recently and was told people have been naming them “Exclamation mark jumpers”. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/326271806

i was more starting this discussion to see what peoples thoughts are on the adding of common names on undescribed species on Inat to be able to see distribution and able to accuratly group these similar and most likely same genus invertebrates on Inat without having an official scientific name.

i think the idea could be useful in some areas but also see how it could have a negative impact and was curious of what people in more professional areas of the field feel about it as im just a amatuer naturalist who doesnt understand alot of the academic side of the taxonomic world

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An undescribed species without a scientific name can’t be added on iNat. Observation fields are sometimes used for organizing taxa that aren’t yet described.

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The observation field called Gallformers Code is used to search for undescribed gall species. The codes use the first letter of the host genus dash host species dash descriptive name. Some examples: q-nigra-leaf-spot, q-arizonica-woolly-midrib-cluster, b-asteroides-stem-borer, t-distichum-urchin-gall

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This is defiently a good way of doing it. Im a big inat poster but the ID side ive yet to explore much. this is an excellent idea of how to do it.

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There’s also the “Provisional Species Name” observation field. It’s very useful for grouping undescribed species.

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I have also seen project beeing used to group certain undescribed species, which allows for a very easy acces to the maps function and to find those observations again once the species might be described

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