Do I flag the next level about the missing species? for example, if morpho thamyris is not in the database, do I flag the subgenus cytheritis? (see flag)
Edit: I was looking at virus taxonomy and I notice an entire family (Genomoviridae) is missing from the database (According to ICTV). Do I flag viruses for missing species the same as other things?
I think so. I did that way many times, for missing species or subspecies.
Is virus taxonomy the same as say bird taxonomy in terms of missing species?
I don’t know at all. I suggest to @mention someone that has identified many viruses.
According to ICTV, there are “6 realms, 10 kingdoms, 17 phyla, 2 subphyla, 39 classes, 65 orders, 8 suborders, 233 families, 168 subfamilies, 2606 genera, 84 subgenera, 10434 species”
and most are not in the iNat database
To add most accepted species, just search in external databases when you add id, this butterfly was added by me now this way, took 5 secs, if you need it drafted to subgenus, add a flag. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1448614-Morpho-thamyris
Exactly, checked it and it was already there.
For viruses, external databases come up empty so I have to flag it (I flagged the order Geplafuvirales to add the family Genomoviridae), is this acceptable?
Edit: It appears that on some viruses, such as Mastrevirus, the external databases work
Sure it’s a normal thing to do, but generally it takes more time to get curators to add them (and even when that, not all add comments that they added it!).
I have no choice when the external databases dont work
You can just add one flag with a list of species to add.
That will still be dozens and dozens of flags but that is much better then adding thousands of flags
It’s ok if not everything is on iNat, check previous discussions, especially for viruses, most of those taxa will likely never be used, as iNat isn’t trying to be a taxonomical portal, it’s suggested you add only those taxa that are in use on iNat observations, so no need to try to add all at once.
Viruses are astronomically underrepresented on iNaturalist
to reiterate what Marina said, iNaturalist is an observational database, not a nomenclatural one. There is no need for every single taxonomic group to be exhaustively covered on iNat, especially for something like viruses where 99.99% of the taxa will never be observed or uploaded to the platform. Adding these is a burden to curators and to the site infrastructure for no gain. If you see an observation that needs to be ID’ed, and that species/taxon is missing, by all means ask for it to be added. If not, there is no need
How likely are they to be observed? I think there is a sort of triage as to which taxa are added.
I made a crucial mistake and for that I am sorry. Is there a way to withdraw flags?
all good, no need to apologise. If there are any you want to close, feel free to tag me in them. If there are cases where there are observations that need IDs of missing species though, definitely flag those to be added
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