Plants like insects, are constantly discovering new UNdescribed species.
Together they are three quarters of iNat.
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Sure but the more species there are, the more difficult it is to work on a large fraction of them. A theoretical change that affects 100 species would already be affecting 1% of all bird species, whereas it would only be affecting 0.025% of all plant species.
On another thread, it came across as - the bird changes are minor. (Altho there is an Accipter ish problems thread?)
Whereas the plants get shuffled around by the DNA, bringing clarity - so we are told … Some of our Cape flora has gone thru umpteen name changes. Linnaeus’ dead herbarium specimen turns out to be … (Not a birder)
I can’t say they’re the same without actually seeing the changes but your description sounds similar to what’s happening with birds. The other changes this year that affect Ontario species are that the 3 redpoll species were lumped together, and Herring Gull was split into 4 species (only one of which has been found in Ontario that I know of so functionally it’s just a name change for the most part). Based on a combination of genetic and ecological evidence.
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Yeah, it is a non starter if i want to use the database, if it comes to that i just use inat less (or not at all, or just as a pokemon-like toy)…
Thank you too. To be very clear i think the genetic research is valuable i just think pushing the changes on iNat taxonomy (and other places) to the extent they are is harmful.
for the database, just names and linked to a location. It’s currently linked to a species list that’s kind of a hodge podge but that’s what we have our biocriteria linked to and spending time making it match any set reference would be something i definitely don’t have time to do. i appreciate any effort to help but at this point unless iNat changes how they do taxonomy significantly, i’m not interested in linking it to our database any more. There’s also the issue of the new app losing functionality without cell service which will be another issue if that’s pushed on everyone and not fixed but that’s kinda off topic here.
OK, be skeptical then. I’ve spent a lot of time convincing you all that this is a severe problem for me that breaks the site’s usability, and you aren’t believing me, so i don’t think spending a long time gathering more data for you is going to fix or change anything. it’s been a huge amount of emotional labor and time, and as described i don’t have more time in my professional or personal life (also raising 2 kids here) to try to convince you so i’m done with that. You can read my journal if you actually care, but if you just want to argue, please just don’t. Yes it’s a big problem for me and i believe it’s a big problem for others in applied ecology. But i’ve made that clear and if you don’t want to believe me, go ahead and keep on doing the damage and telling yourself it’s all fine. Same thing people are doing who are changing the climate and ruining the ecosystems. Easier to keep breaking stuff than to learn and change, but i guess maybe that’s all our species is capable of, at least within the global cultural system inat is immersed in at this time.
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Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have taken good notes at Rob Naczi’s talk this summer, but his current (2024) estimate for the northeastern US is that the New Manual will cover about 20% more species than were included in Gleason & Cronquist (1991). As best I recall, the largest category of increase was from new non-native taxa. I don’t think taxon splits (vs range extensions, or the discovery of nondescript taxa) made up a huge chunk of the pie–10%? 15%?
The 33 years includes the invention of PCR and the development of molecular phylogeny, so I would not expect the same pace to hold over the next 33 years and that non-native taxa would dominate additions.
Some time I do want to sit down and do a Gleason & Cronquist->Flora Novae-Angliae->Flora of Vermont comparison to get some stats for the northeast but I admit it isn’t a high priority.
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yeah that’s an absolutely massive disruption. i’m guessing you’ve never managed any sort of relational database, right?
yeah and maybe the climate will stop warming, invasive species will stop spreading, etc, but really, the damage is being done now. You could just wait 33 years and sort it all before then making one big parallel taxonomy on iNat, but you won’t. That’s why i say ‘zealots’. This isn’t a healthy way to engage with a community. What i am reading here from the splitty splitters is ‘this doesn’t affect me, in fact i find it fun, so the fact it destroys the community for other people isn’t an issue to me’
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I do believe more and better use of species complexes or species groups on iNat would be useful and could address some of the problems identified here. Even with some of the vertebrate species I work with, some observations get stuck at genus when a lower taxon above species would provide a better ID in cases when photos don’t suffice.
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Is this why it has been so hard to identify dandelion?! When I first took a photo of a dandelion I though this will be an easy identification but no…
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I can’t speak for Chris, but I have been involved in the maintenance of numerous relational databases. I’ve also helped maintain ETL processes between multiple databases. Thus my asking these (and other) questions earlier.
A few other questions I thought of: What database management system do you use? How do you get information into and out of your database? Via SQL queries? Or do you interact with it via a graphical application (e.g. Microsoft Access) or some other front-end application or process?
If you’re interested in exploring the topic further and are willing and able to share more information about what you’ve been unable to do in the past (or else are no longer able to do) and what you’re working with, perhaps I or some other soul on this forum might be able to suggest (or even help you to implement) some sort of solution that makes leveraging iNaturalist data more viable for you. For what it’s worth, I’m convinced there has to be a way to do what you’re trying (or else have tried) to do that doesn’t involve forcing you or your database to use names that you don’t want to.
Otherwise, please note that my intent with this thread was not to start yet another philosophical debate about good or bad taxonomy, but to help myself (and others) better understand, and perhaps even help to alleviate (in small, realistic ways after the fact), some of the practical issues underlying the frustrations that many may have when taxonomy does change – for whatever reason, for better or for worse.
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Since this is a recurring discussion, I was interested and crunched the numbers. I’m not going to dedicate a huge amount of time to this, so anyone reading is welcome to go forward with the assumption that my estimate isn’t precise and is somewhat on the low side.
iNaturalist shows @charlie has observed 1218 species of vascular plants in Vermont. I went through taxon changes that affected @charlie’s vascular plant observations from Vermont and found a lifetime change rate of 8.6% since 2013 (the API seems to have trouble retrieving 2011-2012), for a grand total of something like 105 changes. About 10 of these (9.5%) are what I would call nonsubstantial, and are changes to the written name of the taxon and not its sense (e.g. the correction of “Lonicera xbella” to Lonicera × bella in 2019). Something like 50% are “splitty” changes (e.g. Lycopodium sensu lato splits, Polygonum sensu lato splits, Hieracium sensu lato splits, etc.).
This brings my estimate of the change to @charlie’s Vermont vascular plant taxonomy to an average of 0.72% per year (an even lower 0.65% per year of “substantial” changes), with no clear upward/downward trend over time, other than a brief flurry of changes which seem to have been done to align with POWO in 2018/2019. The most changes affecting this group of @charlie’s content were from 2019 (16 changes) and 2018 (14 changes), and the years with fewest change are 2014 (4 changes), 2016 (5 changes) and 2021 (5 changes).
My method was to search for @charlie’s inactive IDs on @charlie’s own content, both replaced by taxon changes automatically pre-2023 and inactivated by taxon changes following @charlie’s opting out of automatic replacement in 2023. The limitations of this method are that if @charlie changed their IDs on their own observations manually at some point, those would not appear while searching under these criteria. Also, this method would not show changes to taxa that @charlie did not observe prior to a change being committed.
Edits are for explanations that required more clarity.
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Worth noting that @choess stated that the amount of species in the New Manual would be a 20% increase from 1991, and the estimate @choess gave of the percentage of those species that were the result of splits was 10-15%. That’s 10-15% taken from 20%, which is only a 2-3% increase overall from taxon splits.
NYBG states there are 5300 species in the New Manual and confirms the 20% increase figure on their website. Rounded up, that’s 883 more species total and 88-133 from taxon splits. Even that range seems strangely high, and I wonder if there’s corroboration available backing up the 10-15% figure.
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i don’t know if you’re just doing this stuff on your own time or what
As I said, contract work. Doing vascular plant inventory for the natural lands of a large organization, inventorying a relevé plot followed by timed meanders in the surrounding stand. The principal was pretty emphatic that efficiency was important: our team was (successfully) trying to wind up the project this field season, so we were trying to keep up a pretty fast clip (about 2 plots/pair in a short workday). No going back at different times of the year or spending 30 minutes looking at achene detail on one plant. So yeah, we were resource-constrained in the ways that you like to point out, and yet somehow we did it using a FloraQuest/FSUS based taxonomy rather than Gleason & Cronquist.
I don’t doubt that when you talk about how difficult it is to use iNat, do inventories etc. with the current taxonomy, that this is an accurate account of how you feel when you try to do these things. I get the strong impression that when you’ve sorted your plants into species, it viscerally disturbs you when those species circumscriptions change, in the way most of us would be upset by a broken contract or written promise. I think it’s really tragic that field botany, which you love and are really good at, forces you to come in contact with something that upsets you so much.
You have every right to express your unhappiness and frustration about this, and I wouldn’t inject myself into these discussions if you phrased these as personal grievances. But whenever you discuss the state of taxonomy, you state your personal discontents as though they were universal facts, and, in my opinion, misinform people who don’t know much about the state of vascular plant botany in the northeastern US and take them at face value. I think you’re a good botanist and respect your work–I’d stand you a drink at NENHC, if that’s your thing–but people deserve the whole picture.
Again, I suggest to readers trying to decide whether to incline to your opinion (we’re in a catastrophic taxonomic meltdown) or mine (things are mostly fine) to ask for, or look for, specific examples. What species, exactly, can you no longer identify because of taxonomic splits? How many taxonomic changes have affected you in the past five years, versus the previous five? Externally, find your state’s natural heritage program newsletter. Have they stopped doing plant surveys, because taxonomy is just too hard now? When published in 2011, Flora Novae-Angliae contained about 3,520 species in 973 print pages. The 2022 taxonomic update is here: is that too blistering a pace of change for 11 years?
I do think most people find taxonomic change at least somewhat disconcerting, and I think there are ways the iNat system should be improved, like notifying observers when taxon changes are drafted (rather than committed), and having a minimum discussion time for changes affecting large number of taxa. Sadly, that will probably vanish into iNat’s pile of technical debt. But I don’t think the degree of taxonomic stability you desire is representative of mainstream opinion, even among field botanists and amateurs rather than “academic taxonomists”.
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I could be wrong, but I didn’t want to lowball the figure and overstate my case. I remember looking at the pie chart and thinking “huh, that’s not that big a slice”, but it looks like I didn’t write down exact numbers. I looked around a bit to see if there were PowerPoints from one of Rob Naczi’s talks online, but didn’t find any. Both he and Wes Knapp are pretty on top of these kinds of stats, so maybe someone else who’s heard them speak on the subject will have better notes than I do.
FWIW, going through the 11-year Flora Novae-Angliae update mentioned in the other post, I count about 38 changes to the keys due to the discovery of new species (native or non-native) and 29 splits of genera or of species (and maybe 2 or 3 lumpings)–mostly of genera. That doesn’t strike me as outrageous in a >3500 species flora, but others may disagree.
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Yes! There are feature requests for these.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/notify-users-of-drafted-taxon-changes/38765
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-automatic-delay-for-proposed-taxon-swaps/38701
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It is not really the main purpose of this thread, but the Herring Gull split has been languishing in not-actually-happening-yet limbo for at least three weeks at this point, which is creating a ton of totally unnecessary busywork.
People keep manually “correcting” old observations to the new species names, and one of the results is that a huge number of formerly research grade observations are sitting at genus level with conflicting IDs, none of which are actually wrong. (Larus argentatus is still correct, because the taxon has not been split yet! But also the new species names are correct! Arrrgh.)
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Actually, as the original post stated, this thread
The issue you mention sounds like one of those ways. I suppose it’s up to each user to decide how much time they want to expend “getting ahead of” a pending iNaturalist taxon change. The chaos should be temporary and mostly resolved once the change is committed.
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Yes, in this case the difficulty appears to be with the lag time between the taxon split being created and the split being committed.
I believe what initially gummed up the works was that someone created the new species and moved the subspecies over to them before the split was ready to be committed. Adding subspecies to “prepare”, even if it’s unnecessary, would create less chaos than changing whole species.
This kind of mishap is inevitable when you have a large amount of work being done by volunteers, so I don’t think anyone is particularly to blame. However, it certainly looks like it’s ready to go, and it’s very unclear what we’re waiting for at this point, which is adding to the frustration. (I am still trying to be very patient. 
)
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Oh i didn’t mean you there.
The database i use is kind of a mess and hopefully getting better soon. It’s all on Access which everyone says is awful but also when i ask what else a non programmer ecologist can use instead without having to spend a massive amount of time to learn something else, i am told there arent really other great options.
Thanks for your help and interest, but i’m not interested in making my database compatible with iNat any more actually, and won’t be unless taxonomy policies change a lot. That ship already sailed for me, then sank in a flaming mess. But i appreciate you were coming up with ideas.
ok, this kinda weirds me out especially since you have been one of the most aggressive curators pushing changes including unpublished research and refusing to fix them when asked directly even when they violate rules. did you include your Carex groupings that still haven’t been fully fixed, in these figures?
Really don’t think this is fair. I know you don’t believe me, haven’t believed me, and won’t in teh future, but it isn’t just my personal grievences. I have gotten several personal messages, lots of journal comments, and further more importantly i discuss this in the field and at conferences and such with a lot of people. In those groups i am not in some minority at all, and nearly all of them are closer to my standon taxonomy than you. But i guess that doesn’t matter, and i have no way of proving it without sharing private messages or talking about people who don’t know they are being talked about, so i guess just go on thinking it’s some kind of personal offense then.
do you really think they would phrase it that way? any program i know is doing little to no monitoring and is losing ground fast. It’s great if you have big thriving programs that can roll with these impacts, lucky you i guess.
yeah you’ve made that clear. and i don’t have anything personal against you and in real life probably would enjoy having a beer with you, but you keep reiterating this in a way that basically feels like you calling me a liar, which doesn’t feel very good. I suppose you just talk to different field biologists than i do. I hope you’ll at least believe me that my lived experience is very different from yours and that this is not a ‘me only’ issue.
But yeah this discussion is nearing its end for me too for sure, since it just seems to be a dead end. The bottom line is YES it causes a major impact to this work and YES i have talked to probably several dozen others who also experience major issues from it. NO it is not just me. What i see is the taxonomists are really exciting about using iNat as a testing ground for ‘flash taxonomy’ and seem more worried about arguing semantics about how many change there are than listening to a group of people who are having major problems because of it. It doesn’t seem like admin is going to step in and stop it so… i will just say one more time, i think you are going to ruin the site and cause real harm to conservation if you keep doing what you’re doing and proposing to do.
But there’s a lot of that going around lately, and i guess this community just isn’t for people who aren’t either taxonomists or super casual users, any more.
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