I 100% agree with this proposal from 2020. The use of ‘complex’ is a slap in the face to the hard, hard working taxonomists who developed ‘species group’ while describing many new species of Oecanthus.
You use ‘complex’ more usefully in your reply above than using it for Oecanthus species groups - [quote=“joe_fish, post:24, topic:14543”]
meaningless complexity.
[/quote]
This problem has come up again on the forum: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-of-the-term-species-complex-in-inaturalist-taxonomy/58938/.
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If “group” for animals would be the equivalent to “section” for plants, why not just rename it as “section-group” or “section/group” to cover both plants and animals?
In Zoological nomenclature a ‘Section’ is a rank between Order and Family. (In iNat this is called ‘Zoosection’ to distinguish it from botanical ‘sections’. So yes, we can do that, and we have done that in some cases: such as in Platycheirus, where there are ‘(sub)groups’ within ‘groups’, so some are at section, and some at complex within a section. But it suffers from the same issue of a rank being used to represent a slightly different concept of a rank.
For me, whether to rank a ‘group’ at section or complex is determined by the size and diversity of the group. The more like a sensu stricto complex they are, the more likely I am to use complex. The bigger the group is and the more easily distinguished its members are, the more likely I am to use section. If we actually had ‘group’ as an option, it would be unnecessary to make such judgements about which option is the least imprecise use of terminology.
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To answer your question. species group should go between subsection and complex. This is a very common taxon rank in modern taxonomy and not just for insects. Reusing section or subsection is not a viable option since “section” and “subsection” mean something completely different in zoological taxonomy (they are taxon ranks between infraorder and superfamily in zoology).
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In botany there is also something like a species group, the “series”. It is a taxonomic rank below section and subsection. I’ve had to stop sorting at sections or subsections during many revisions of plant genera because the taxonomic rank “series” simply doesn’t yet exist on iNaturalist. I think it would be good and appropriate if the “series” rank were finally introduced on iNaturalist as well.
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This is such an issue im unsure why it isnt commented more on. Especially when more and more complexs or other taxon ranks are being technically incorrectly used. The longer inaturalist waits, the more taxon swaps need to be made to replace peoples work arounds for taxa that dont have the proper rank. So the only possible way to add them is using technically incorrect work arounds.
Imagine just how many complexs would need swapping now. Then imagine another year of curation, how many more complexs are incorrect and being used as work arounds?
,
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That is very true! The amount of clean-up work is already daunting. (I can think of dozens of complexes that should be species groups off the top of my head.) The longer we wait, the more work will be needed.
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There is a feature request for series here:
Implement the botanical rank “series” between subsection and complex
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just came across “aggregates” concept for species in ICZN 6.2 which is the informal way to group things by any taxonomist opinions and to publish such I think?
I was interested of this particular feature, because in India there are thousands of observations in Ariophantinae snails and a simple grouping of two sets of species would massively aid identification - the feature to group is very obvious thing - the sinistral versus dextral coiling as used in older literature. but one modern revision simply clubbed both into single genus collapsing those sections-groups-genera from their personal taxonomic opinions without resorting to any such “aggregate” groupings point or even validating such collapse is necessary from phylogenetic standpoint in first place (the reason stated for collapse is simply that another snails from another region with different coiling turned out to be monophyletic)
Result: no one bothers to compare dozens of choices to go down to species IDs on iNat as there are two dozen plus species in this sinstral-dextral set. Separating into groups on that for ID would have allowed to limit the choices easily everytime to compare with and rely on native features of inat (identify modal) instead of relying on manually adding observation fields/notes/… 
Here is my flag of such grouping creation being rejected because the section concept is too formal and there is nothing else that iNat allows without publication I guess.
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Using “section” in place of species group, and using morphology-based clades if they’re attested in the literature, are both fine per forum discussions and I think there’s consensus that they’re allowed. However they are both controversial positions and asking for both might be a tough sell especially to curators who don’t follow forum discussions.
The issue for your situation though (from what I can tell from your flag and the MulluscaBase page) is that you have a more recent revision in literature which rejects that solution, and a secondary taxonomy authority which follows that revision. I’m not sure exactly how iNat defers to MulluscaBase but unless you can argue them into having sections again the only solution here might be to publish a new revision reimplementing the sections or creating new ones.
However, a series is a formal category properly treated by the code, while a species group, although mentioned above even for plants, isn’t (for plants).
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I had only a very brief look at this code, but the categories it uses seem to be incompatible with the taxonomy categories used by iNaturalist. No orders, instead family groups, genus groups, species groups and subspecies groups. It seems strange to request the addition of any of these without completely re-doing the whole taxonomy tree.
yes what happened is actually quite messy in literature too for that flag.
two “sections/groups” were created based on shell coiling directions for dozens of species within single Genus when all these were first described → then someone elevated these two sections to two different Genera relying on coiling direction parameter → then the modern revision of only some geographical area types “looked at subset of that later genus” and collapsed that partial subset back to single genus (giving reason that single genus can have different coilings as observed with phylogeny in other snail genera) but then ironically leaving the second genus intact which now have non-revised species occurring in nearby regions (their reasoning should have collapsed entire second genus) → now this collapse lost the very first well intentioned section/groups but again given modern reliance on phylogenetics for sections/groups (they were doing purely shell holotypes revision) the best solution would have been if they used “aggregates” concept as in ICZN 6.2 for this coiling atleast and collapse both the genera fully into these two aggregates.
Now the collapse happened to genus level but they were also not commenting anything on whether there should be no sections/groups/complexes or at the least aggregates within that single genus. And since such distinct parameter of coiling is used for identifications from very first literature (whether it was older sections or later two genera) there is no contradiction as far as I see to create a grouping within that new genus now to that stable coiling level again without warranting explicit papers of phylogeny or such for those groupings !?
as far as I understand this is in the realm of this feature request to allow genus groupings aiding identification? I also wonder just like how POWO doesnt list variations of species but iNat does, doesn’t the creation of lower species groups as this feature request for aiding identification also will not invalidate the molluscabase authority genus groupings in this context.
PS: here is a fun thing that happened with that literature on iNat, when the partial set was collapsed, the other snail researchers in India who were relying on older genus concepts and keys and so some of those older IDs ended up to that second genus level, now with the “partial” collapse the newer IDs would conflict now. Bumping all of them with geographic shape file to higher level IDs by creating taxon grafts is also not optimal because if there exists such coiling grouping as above, it would readily capture all their past IDs information content and effort (right coiled second genus IDs → collapsed to right coiled “some … grouping” in first genus from taxon swap)
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POWO doesn’t handle infrageneric ranks, but it seems like MulluscaBase does since it shows the name history of subgenera it formerly accepted like Ariophanta (Cryptozona) and Ariophanta (Hemiplecta). Presumably if someone published a paper reinstating sections or subgenera then MolluscaBase could add them? With or without MolluscaBase, iNat should also follow current literature which it seems has overwritten the old aggregate/section concepts in such a way that they’re unlikely to be valid now. Messy literature is frustrating but we can’t really start defining “new” taxonomy on iNat to clarify things for ourselves.
This kind of categorization can still be done using observation fields or projects like people already do with undescribed species, colour morphs, etc.
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