Don't suggest genus for monotypic genera (computer vision)

I can imagine a researcher who is planning on splitting a monotypic genus might prefer the ability to only put it to genus until it gets published, but that seems like a real edge case, whereas the Sanguinaria situation has probably come up many, many times.

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Nothing would prevent them from doing that. They just couldn’t use Computer Vision as a shortcut, and would have to type in (part of) the genus ID.

I do find that I am frequently adding IDs to observations where monospecific genera have been specified, just to get them to species level. Would be more efficient if I could just agree to an ID that was already at species level in those cases.

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I was interpreting this statement:

as a suggestion to automatically change the id to species-level site-wide. If it were only on the computer vision part, then I agree, there would be no issue.

It was. But I don’t feel strongly about it.

I heartily agree with this suggestion. The monotypic species issue is a point of needless complication, in my opinion. Both for this specific issue and people leaving monotypic species on genera or even the family (or higher) level.

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I just ran into this again today when the computer vision suggested the monotypic genus Diadophis. It seems so obviously wrong!

For what it’s worth, I support this idea a lot. Though it might take some effort to ensure iNat can detect “monotypic” genera correctly, as opposed to the genus having only one out of several species listed.

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We discussed this and we’re pretty comfortable with it if the genus is marked complete. So it would affect most vertebrates and some other clades.

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There are also identifiers who are aware of taxonomic revisions, and that a monotypic genus may have been split at any time since the last time they looked it up. Or who do not know that a formerly multi-species genus has become monotypic since the last time they looked it up. Cladistics seems to have made taxonomy a lot more unstable that it used to be. I sure was surprised to find out that cacao is considered to be in the mallow family now; all these years it was Theobromaceae for what had seemed like good reasons. My awareness of this makes me less confident of identifying something to species.

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A lot of plant genera in particular probably need updating then to account for this. I don’t think many of those are marked “complete”, that tends to come with bird or mammal taxonomy more often.

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This really does need to be addressed. The taxon that comes to mind for me is Malosma laurina, the only member of a SoCal genus Malosma. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve IDed genus-level Malosma observations to the single species, and then had to write out a comment saying “this is actually the only species in this genus, so no need to ID to just genus level”. It’s just aching for a fix. Although, I’m told by forum moderator that they aren’t taking CV-related feature requests, which seems odd. Maybe a lack of in-house expertise, or concern over having to take it offline for some short period of time to make changes?

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Probably just a matter of time before the single polytypic and wide-ranging species in Diadophis gets split.

Wait if this is true then this issue shouldn’t be happening…

They’re in the “We’re pretty sure this is in the genus” section of the drop-down (which is programmatic/not a “cv-trained” taxon), but they’re not included separate as taxa that are listed below that part.

A lot of us can relate. One of these days, I’m going to see a “plants” observation of a tree with leaves shaped like a duck’s foot – and just to be That Guy, I’m going to identify it as Class Ginkgoopsida.

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Haha, yes, there are actually plenty of observations at “Ginkgoopsida” level on iNat. Most fly under the radar because of being casual. The monotypic genera I most commonly bump to species are Galax and Medeola.

I don’t really get the point of this for genera unless the CV is 100% accurate at monotypic genera, because if someone blindly clicks ‘we’re pretty sure’ on species it is the CV directly contributing to becoming RG whereas it just makes it easier for human IDers to find if they click the ‘we’re pretty sure’ at genus.

Disallowing recommending ‘pinopsida’ instead of ‘pinales’ seems harmless although I also don’t see how it has any meaningful impact on making anyones life easier because I don’t know how common it is to set up search filters like ‘all tracheophyta currently IDd to order exactly’.

The current setup seems fine. In your example the species is the top result in the species suggestions, so the AI is doing its job.

I’d rather that the system stays as regular and uncomplicated as possible, and if that means that some people choose genus rather than species, well, that’s also a good thing. Means that they’re being responsible iNat users and not trying to identify beyond their confidence level.

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It usually means they have no idea what they id and just choose the first option.

All the more reason to keep the genus option there then in my opinion.

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