Curator guidelines about made-up names

Curators
21

I probably said this before, but anyone concerned about common names for any particular group of organisms could help organize or spearhead a naming committee to standardize or add/revise names and then publish it, thereby making it available for use on iNat. The odonatists did a pretty good job of that for North American dragonflies and damselflies many years ago. Of course, odonates are getting almost as popular among amateur naturalists as birds which have had naming committees for decades. But it does require some critical mass of interest to make that happen.

The process is explained here:
https://www.pugetsound.edu/puget-sound-museum-natural-history/biodiversity-resources/insects/dragonflies/world-odonata-list/north-american-odonata

And a published checklist is here:
https://www.odonatacentral.org/public/media/uploads/files/NA_Odonata_Checklist_2024.pdf

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22

I deal mostly with plants, and some names are confusing and misleading. At least pick a standard source like BONAP and use names compatible with theirs.

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23

In my experience the BONAP database has a lot of (not very well) made-up names invented to populate that data field. Like any such database, I would not recommend wholesale or uncritical adoption.

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24

Common names are an important feature of any naturalist identification. They must be kept legitimate. Most common names were developed based on specific scientific characteristics of the species involved and are used to help identify the species.

There is a simple solution to common name application. Before entering anything as a common name in iNaturalist, simply Google it!!!.

If it shows up as used by a legitimate major organization, or in a specific published book by a legitimate author or other authority, use it!!! If not, do not use it. It is as simple as that.

There are a lot of silly common names used on iNaturalist, and if you Google them, they only show up in iNaturalist! If every other legitimate reference uses a different common name with actual historical and scientific precedent, iNaturalist should also use the legitimate common name. Using a made-up common name or some local derivative is actually misleading and worse than useless.

There are many terrible common names used for lichens.

Here are a few examples….

Parmotrema perlatum is called “Powdered Ruffle Lichen” in every legitimate text on lichens, yet on iNaturalist it is called “Black Stone Flower.” This name comes only from India and has no reference anywhere else. Calling a lichen any kind of flower is a serious scientific error.

Pseudevernia cladonia is called “Ghost Antler Lichen” in every legitimate text. This name helps separate it from Common Antler Lichen due to the lack of isidia on the surface of the lobes. On iNaturalist it is called “Light and Dark Lichen.” If you Google “Light and Dark Lichen” you get nothing relevant to Pseudevernia cladonia. The Canadian government uses Ghost Antler Lichen, the CNALH, the largest North American Consortium uses Ghost Antler Lichen, as well as every major organization, so should iNaturalist.

Pseudevernia consocians is on iNaturalist as “Common Antler Lichen” They got that one right… Pseudevernia cladonia should also be correctly called “Ghost Antler Lichen.”

Squamulea subsoluta is called “Dispersed Firedot Lichen” in every major text, on iNaturalist, it is called “Orange Atoms” ??? What use is this name?

Parmelia sulcata is known in all major texts “Hammered Shield Lichen,” iNaturalist just has “Shield Lichen” which pertains to dozens of lichens, not just Parmelia sulcata.

Cladonia macilenta bacilliaris is listed on iNaturalist as “Brown Pin Lichen” on iNat. It is a “bright red” capped lichen known as “Lipstick Lichen” or Lipstick Powderhorn”. It just is not brown!

Parmotrema arnoldii on iNaturalist is “Arnolds Parmotrema Lichen?” It is “Powdered Ruffle Lichen” in all major texts, indicating the powdered soredia along the edges.

Parmotrema austrosinense on iNaturalist is listed as Pretty Ruffle??? It is specifically called “Unwhiskered Ruffle lichen” in major texts. This common name is important since this species does not have cilia along the lobe edges as do all other Parmotrema. “Unwhiskered Ruffle Lichen” helps identify the species; “Pretty Ruffle” is just useless.

Umbilicaria muhlenbergii on iNaturalist is “Lesser Rock Tripe? It should be “Plated Rock Tripe“, found in all major texts, due to the plate-like features on the lower surface used in identification. “Lesser Rock Tripe” is a meaningless name.

Tuckermanopsis ciliaris is “trailrunner” on iNaturalist!?!?!. It is a useless name when Googled. It is Fringed Wrinkle Lichen in all major texts.

Pertusaria superiana is listed on iNaturalist as “Paul’s Super Lichen.” It was named by Dr. James C. Lendemer for Paul Super, Research Coordinator/Biologist at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park where the lichen was first discovered by Dr. Lendemer and Erin Tripp. It is not Paul’s lichen, it is Paul Super’s lichen and should be listed as "Paul Super’s Lichen, or better, “Super’s Wart Lichen”. Anything less is disrespectful to both Dr. Lendemer and Paul Super.

Physcia millegrana on iNaturalist is called “Rosette lichen.” There are numerous rosette lichens. It should be “Mealy Rosette Lichen,” as it is in every major text, based on the fine mealy soredia found along the lobe edges.

This is just a sampling of the poor common names on iNaturalist.

Googling a common name before applying it on iNaturalist will weed out these useless and confusing non-scientific made-up names and keep “useful common names” common rather than regional or esoteric.

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25

While I appreciate the detailed examples, messes like this are ultimately only fixed by working on the iNaturalist website. Posting here about issues with particular species will have no effect unless you’re requesting feedback about something or are arguing for policy change.

Without being a curator, you can add new names and open flags to ask curators to change which name is the default for a particular language or delete particularly problematic names. Assuming you’ve never done this before:

On the taxon page for, e.g., Parmotrema perlatum, there’s a row of tabs below the images. Select the “Taxonomy” tab, and scroll down until you see the list of names in different languages. On the right there’s a button labelled “Add a Name”. From there it should be obvious how to continue.

On the same taxon page, to the right of the row of tab names is a menu labelled “Curation”, which contains an item labelled “Flag for Curation”. The instructions on that page are a bit terse, and the “Reason” can’t be edited after being submitted, but you can look at the details of other flags first so you know what they look like, and the comment can be as detailed as you like and can be edited later.

It’s possible to open a flag on a broad taxon which asks a curator to change things on multiple species. I don’t yet have enough experience to judge when doing that works better than opening separate flags on each species.

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26

A common name - is meant to be - a name in common usage (in this place). Oral history.

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27

Some of the problematic names are made up by autors of field guides and some iNat users insist that these are used on iNat.

It depends then on the individual curator, if these names are kept or deleted when flagged.

28

This post is inspired by a recent flag discussion of a weird common name in which I was made aware that some users have used the common names list of wildspecies.ca as a source for common names which as far as I can tell is a list of common names published by a Canadian government entity.

https://www.wildspecies.ca/common-names

While my current disagreement is specifically with this list I would say that it includes all such published lists, regardless if they are published by governments or NGOs.

Reading through old posts on similar topics such as
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-names-invented-on-inat/27452
or
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-names-invented-on-wikipedia/47269
I assume this is a topic that makes people have strong opinions one way or the other. It plays into how much one considers it right to regulate details or how much people should be free to do what they want. I personally come down on the “more regulation” side of things and I want to explain why.

iNaturalist explicitly prohibits the use of common names that are newly invented. We as users are not supposed to just invent a name if there isn’t already one. In the old discussions users have made the slightly facetious point that “all names are invented, who cares”. Yes, all names are invented, but it’s only a name if it’s accepted by other people. The word “table” is an invention but I can’t just change it to “tworble” and expect anyone to know what I’m talking about. I assume that the “no invention” rule is based on exactly that, it’s only a name if it actually makes it possible for anyone to know what I’m talking about.

The above mentioned list on wildspecies.ca is not a collection of common names found in literature and vernacular use, it is explicitly an attempt to systematically invent a common name for every species. It is also a very bad attempt at that. It uses quite baffling “logic” that produces bizarre and in some instances outright wrong common names. To give one example for the outright wrong, the list gives “foldingdoor tarantula” for one of the few trapdoor spiders found in Canada, Antrodiaetus pacificus. This is based on the logic that mygalomorphs are all named tarantula, a decision that makes it quite clear that no one involved in the creation of this list knows anything about the topic. “Tarantula” is the accepted common name of one family, Theraphosidae. Antrodiaetus pacificus is not a member of that family, there are in fact no (wild) tarantulas in Canada. There are countless examples of this type, this is just the first that jumped out at me.

And without fail Antrodiaetus pacificus has currently the common name “foldingdoor tarantula” listed here on iNaturalist - there is after all an outside source for this name. Making amateurs believe there are tarantulas in British Columbia.

I argue that lists that don’t set out to collect existing names but attempt to invent common names are well-meaning but wholeheartedly misguided and should be prohibited as sources for common names. Just because someone else came up with it makes it no less of an invention. If it isn’t an accepted name - and by that I mean is mentioned in several sources, can be found as a hit in Google and is used among interested naturalists - it shouldn’t be used.

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29

Heads up this exact case was already recently raised and discussed on the forum:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/curator-guidelines-about-made-up-names/53099

are you ok with me merging your post with that thread?

[I went ahead and merged the two threads to maintain the discussion in one place]

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30

iNat does not prohibit newly created common names. It prohibits common names invented for the purposes of use on iNat.

Also plenty of common names are misnomers, there’s nothing wrong with this.

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31

I’ve seen a few mentions that if a government entity creates a common name where none previously existed, that’s bad and the name should be rejected. I don’t think this is unusual where an organism might be of conservation concern but lacks a common name and, in the interest of communicating with the public, a name is invented. It’s not fundamentally different in purpose from a common name that is invented for a field guide.

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32

I disagree with the statement that

Ideally, common names would not be misnomers or contain incorrect information. At a very literal level, there is something wrong with a name like this as it is factually incorrect.

What I would say is that, being a misnomer doesn’t automatically disqualify a name from being included on iNat. There are plenty of poorly-formed common names that are in enough usage that their inclusion on iNat is helpful to users. People will be looking for the species by that name, even if it is incorrect in some way, and so it is useful to include it on iNat.

That said, I think it’s also within curators’ duties to assess when a name might increase confusion/decrease usability of the site. If there’s a case where a misnomer is very confusing, duplicates another name (especially for a very common species), actually causes an increase in misIDs on iNat, or some other reason, it’s fair to discuss not including/removing the name.

On a side note, I’ve also seen a few cases where a name seems to have been used in a source in error - what I mean by this is that a source (webpage, whatever) used a common name for an organism, but actually misIDed the organism that they are trying to describe with the common name, and because of this applied the common name incorrectly. This type of “misnomer” shouldn’t be considered evidence that a name is in usage since it is a mistake, not a legitimate use of the name.

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33

One of the biggest benefits of using iNaturalist is that it can get you from knowing nothing about an organism you have a photo of, to having a name with which you can search for more information. Adding names which are only technically in-use (searching for them doesn’t return much) and names which are misleading (searching for them returns information about something else) harms the core mission of iNaturalist by making it more difficult for beginners to connect with nature.

This is especially true when the name added is the only name in a given language, but even if there’s a better default name, bad names still cause trouble by diluting useful search results with unused and misleading names. Beginners don’t have any way to spot the good names among the bad.

There’s also the problem of citogenesis.

Core point: adding these names to iNaturalist is making the iNaturalist user experience worse, for everyone.

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34

Interesting, I wasn’t aware of this working group/committee and all of these issues seem very predictable for anyone familiar with attempts at creating new common names by people without specific expertise with the species involved. I wish they’d at least allowed for some curated public input, more or less like the AOS is apparently planning for their new bird names.

35

The rules “officially” seem to only indicate names made up by iNat users (or curators specifically). There is a general suggestion of only adding “accepted” common names, which implies wide use, but this is highly arbitrary and impossible to consistently enforce.

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36

On the contrary, I, and I know many others, have trouble connecting with and learning about organisms which lack a common name. My brain just really struggles to latch onto the binominals. In fact, I would bet most iNat users don’t really interact with scientific names at all.

Having a common name, any unique common name, helps users engage with iNat and the organism in question, and aids iNat’s core mission.

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37

this seems demonstrably untrue given the large majority of plant and invertebrate species on iNat have no common name

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38

But do most observers record those species? I would be not, at least among English speakers. And if they do, do they continue to learn about and engage with those species?

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39

why would they not? I’m confused about why you think having a scientific name only precludes someone from typing that name into Google and learning about it? It is literally the exact same process as searching for a common name

Do you genuinely think someone photographs a really cool beetle they get excited about, gets an ID where there is no common name, and then just thinks ‘yeah nah it has no common name, so I don’t care about this anymore’? Seems like a bizarre outlook

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40

Yes, I do. I interact with those sorts on Facebook and Reddit daily. Maybe the ones who download/sign up for iNat are a more curious subset. However, I am in the camp of inventing common names (not on iNat!) to aid people’s recognition of biodiversity, so that surely skews my view.

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