So lately I’ve finally gotten around to digging deeply into the troublesome Southern Australian sponges, which are problematic because most research on them was done in the 1800s and then never again. Obviously this is leading to a lot of problems in matching living species - even common ones - to names from the 19th century. I’m actually having a surprising amount of success, but I’ve run into what I assume will be an ongoing problem. Old, outdated names have never been revisited and are in need of updating - that in itself is not too troublesome, since the old names can simply be used as is with the knowledge they’ll require updating, but a worse problem is that few authors have thoroughly studied these old texts and this has lead to a lot of erroneous synonymization.
Specifically there are two (likely) Callyspongia species from around Sydney that are clearly different (though possibly closely-related) species, as they appear to have different skeletal structure and there are no visually intermediate forms. The first is Siphonochalina axialis (and its several actual synonyms). The second is Callyspongia tuberculata. The problem is, S. axialis has been incorrectly synonymized with Callyspongia truncata - a junior synonym of C. tuberculata. This means I literally can’t ID this animal without shifting taxonomy, first by splitting S. axialis off from C. truncata, then synonymizing C. truncata to C. tuberculata (which has about 4 actual synonyms). I’m not certain what the order of this would be and there would be an inevitable incongruity with WoRMS, which is not up-to-date on these old names.
I’m uncertain how to proceed and just lumping clearly different species seems unsatisfactory.
If I understand correctly, the best course of action would be to un-synonimize S. axialis and C. tuberculata. If the difference can be clearly made it could be a short-ish taxonomic paper. Are you, or anyone you know, in position to do it? That would surely make things easier, not just for iNat but for the whole scientific community
Yes, publishing a paper would obviously be the best solution, but that would take months to years. Also, that doesn’t solve the synonymy issue. iNaturalist lists Callyspongia truncata as a separate species. It’s not. It’s a synonym of Callyspongia tuberculata. That needs to be synonymized regardless of whatever else happens. But I’m uncertain what happens if that’s done before splitting off Siphonochalina axialis.
How many observations are we talking here? Because you won’t have anything left to swap if you split first (bumping everything above genus). Could be easiest just to swap and then reID as necessary. But I would also caution against large taxonomic changes that have yet to be documented in the literature.
That depends on what kind of paper you write. Might be possible to get a fairly short note published, quoting lots of synonymy and explaining why you think it’s wrong. Maybe include some photos. Publication can be very fast once it’s written, e.g. with Phytoneuron. Then contact POWO, explain the problem, and cite the paper.
Better yet? It may not even need a publication! You can just lay out your argument clearly in an e-mail to POWO. Why you think it’s wrong and what should be done. Though they don’t just automatically change in response to an e-mail, the people at POWO can be persuaded. (I did it once.) They’re nice people who want to get things right.
Both are very local species only seen around Sydney, and none of the S. axialis have been IDed as much of anything yet. C. truncata isn’t currently being used for anything.
So neither species have any IDs? I don’t see what taxonomic changes would need to happen on iNat then. Just go ahead properly IDing observations. If you are using a somewhat new paradigm, you could explain it in a journal post.
It would be a good idea to correspond with the most recent author(s) of the species accounts on WoRMS, to understand why they synonymised these names, and if necessary, correct things there. There might be other information that you are not aware of that means the synonymy is valid. If you can resolve that on WoRMS, then the simplest course of action would be to delete Siphonochalina axialis as a synonym of Callyspongia truncata. As it’s not an active name and there are no observations, you don’t need to do this via a taxonomic split if it is just correcting an error. You could then create a new taxon, Siphonochalina axialis, and merge Callyspongia tuberculata and Callyspongia truncata.
For further discussion, best to open a flag on the relevant taxon and tag in observers and especially identifiers of Callyspongia tuberculata.
Problem: I’m literally the only identifier of Callyspongia tuberculata on the planet. This is a very understudied sponge fauna. I actually tried deleting S. axialis from the C. truncata page, but after entering an explanation I don’t know if I pushed the wrong button or something, but it didn’t delete. I could try again. I reached out to WoRMS so now we wait and see what happens on that end.
So would I just add Siphonochalina axialis as a new species and go about ID’ing. What about the synonym listed at Callyspongia truncata? Will that not interfere, or is that simply a listed name with no functional ability?
The problems you mention are extremely common in entomology. When I run into similar situations, I just ID it to genus and explain the situation in the comments. I might also use tags to track the different groups involved. Once the genus is revised (which, yes, may take 100 years), I revisit the observations and update my IDs. If it’s a relatively simple case, like an incorrect synonymy that is geographically distinct, I might ID it to the (incorrect) species, with the knowledge that it can be easily split later using an iNat taxon split with atlas. We should never jump the gun and do our own taxonomic revisions within iNat as this causes even more chaos. Either follow the published sources (even if you know 100% that they are wrong and outdated) or ID to a higher level taxon.
Yep, this is the answer. ID the actual C. tuberculata, identify the S. axialis to genus. Since iNat lists Siphonochalina as a genus but with no species under it, and currently no observations, you don’t even have to flag these specific observations (at least for the time being) while waiting for the situation to get resolved.
The fact that S. axialis was first synonymized with C. truncata doesn’t really matter, since now they’re both listed as synonyms of C. tuberculata. Compared to some taxon splits I’ve seen in insects and plants, this is relatively simple!
Gotten a few ideas from this thread. Right now, I think the best course of action appears to be to delete the S. axialis synonym from the C. truncata page, then to create S. axialis, ID the specimens I believe are this species with the new name and basically leave it at that. Since right now S. axialis is considered a synonym (and a currently inactive one on the site at that), that shouldn’t be too much of an issue, I think. If a more correct synonymy comes along, a taxon swap can be performed later.
That sounds fine. One thing I’ve learned is people often don’t give their opinions until after you make taxonomic changes (hence this request). It sounds like this is pretty minor, though—and easily undone—so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s always courteous to ask other users on taxon flags, but if you repeatedly aren’t getting responses it’s probably fine to just go ahead with changes.
Oh wow, so I did that then looked up the synonymy on WoRMS again and realized S. axialis was considered a synonym not of Siphonella truncata, but of Chalinoporatruncata (from the same publication). This is why this paper is such a mess. Lendenfeld used a lot of very common species names across multiple genera that are now considered synonymous like laxa or communis. Chalinopora truncata has a very brief, non-diagnostic description and no images. Nor does that description bear any resemblance to S. axialis. All of these would be considered Callyspongia species today.
Are you sure that’s the real synonymy and not an error on the part of WoRMS? You’d need to look up the paper where it was made. But I’ve found that before as well, where a one species was synonymized with another and then an aggregator later mistakenly took the wrong one as the senior synonym, one with the same specific name but in a different genus, published in the same paper.
