Have leading subspecies IDs update Observation Taxon below species, even when coarser IDs present

Feature Requests
1

Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: All platforms

URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: N/A

Description of need:
When an observation has a leading subspecies ID and it is the only ID present, the Observation Taxon is accordingly displayed at the subspecies level. (Examples at time of writing: 1, 2)

However, if a leading subspecies ID is added to an observation which already has at least one other coarser ID, the Observation Taxon does not update to the subspecies level with it. It may update to the species level, but proceeds no further. (Examples at time of writing: 1, 2, 3)

What I described in the second paragraph feels less than ideal to me. For example, I sometimes upload observations having identified them to species, then return later to add a subspecies ID once I have learnt more. But if I do this when other users have already agreed with my initial ID with species-level IDs of their own, then my Observation Taxon remains stuck at the species level.

As a result, whether my Observation Taxon proceeds below the species level seems to hinge on the seemingly arbitrary criterion of whether I make that infraspecific ID before other users have the chance to add (species and coarser) IDs of their own. This observation illustrates this point: the other user only agreed with me to the species level, but my Observation Taxon still gets to be at the subspecies level simply because I made the subspecies ID first. This would not be the case if the orders of the two IDs were swapped.

I can conceive of other drawbacks, but this is simply the one that is foremost in my mind. I say more in my post in General, where I also express some doubt that this behaviour is by design.

(Note: this is not the same issue as the one in this existing and resolved request.)

Feature request details:
Simply allow leading subspecies IDs to update the Observation Taxon to the subspecies level, even when prior, coarser IDs are present— in exactly the same way that leading IDs to genus/species/family etc. update the Observation Taxon to the corresponding rank.

2

I approved this request topic, but I suspect it’s not something we’re going to change.

I believe this is because one other person has looked at your ID and has explicitly chosen to not disagree with the ssp-level ID. Wheras if the second person has added a ssp-level ID to a species-level ID, there’s no evidence that anyone else has reviewed that ssp-level ID and confirmed it. So yes, ssp-level IDs are treated differently than species and above, but multiple taxonomic nodes are treated differently by the system in one way, shape, or form.

Personally I like the way it works now but I’m more on the lumper end of things and subspecies can be a divisive topic. I like that the system emphasizes species-level IDs.

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3

Agreed, I like the way the system works currently and wouldn’t want it to change. I tire of the flood of meaningless (to my mind) ssp IDs on my observations.

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4

Sure, I appreciate that. Just to clarify though, the way I was thinking about this, it wasn’t so much about preferring a lumpier/splittier approach or favouring one rank over another (I don’t have strong feelings about that), but about consistency— I was puzzled that “initial” subspecies IDs go into the Obs Taxon but not “subsequent” ones (for lack of better words, hope it’s clear enough what I mean), and couldn’t quite figure out why adding an infraspecies ID after the fact was “penalised” in this way, while adding one initially was “rewarded”. (This behaviour does still feel quite unintuitive to me.)

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5

I always find that frustrating, so this would be great. It does play into the greater issue that iNat is very species-focused, which makes it somewhat clumsy to use for those who do a lot of conservation work that focuses on minimum-rank taxa. As species lines are often arbitrary, subspecies and varieties of some genera are much more distinct than species in others. I do understand that many people prefer to just go to species just like many prefer using common names. There is a toggle for emphasizing common names vs scientific, which is great. It would be wonderful if there was a similar toggle for a species-based display emphasis vs. a minimum-rank taxon display emphasis.

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6

I agree with this in the name of consistency. I think a couple of replies above may be missing the main point that the order that the infraspecies ID was added seems to matter for the displayed observation taxon. It’s always annoyed me that if I update my ID below the species level at a later time, even if someone else’s species-level ID doesn’t disagree with the infraspecies, I am unable to change what shows up as the name shown for the observation – whereas if I chose an infraspecies before any other ID, it’ll stick around until someone disagrees. I have to resort to third-party tools to find all identifications I’ve made of a particular infraspecies, for example, if I haven’t uniformly gotten in ahead of other identifiers in adding them.
Not to get into a whole conversation about the actual merits of infraspecies, but also in general, plant infraspecific taxa can be quite important taxonomic units (in evolution, conservation, etc.) in a way that (for example) zoologists appear to take for granted as not being the case in animals. I value the time I put into identifying infraspecies, and the current system seems arbitrarily designed to highlight them in some cases but not others.

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7

I also support this request and added my vote.

To think of it from the opposite angle, if it is truly the preference and design intent of iNaturalist to not allow a subspecies to become the Observation Taxon until it is also the Community Taxon, then observations with a single ID at subspecies level should only be taking the species-level taxon as the Observation Taxon, since no Community Taxon yet exists.

Obviously I’m not advocating that avenue to achieve consistency. As was already noted,

If iNaturalist prefers not to grant full taxonomic status to subspecies, then why (I ask rhetorically ;-) are they allowed in the iNat taxonomy at all?

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For us identifiers who are NOT plant-blind, a way to treat subspecies and variety as valid IDs. It is weird that we are ‘allowed’ to use IDs below sp, but they jump - without landing on Needs ID below sp - straight to RG at ssp.
Lump or split is not the issue here.

Maybe a future option for Notifications? If that is part of the issue.
Do not notify me if the ID moves below species.

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9

We have this now, under Account Settings, Notifications

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10

Well then - that is already #NotAProblem @cthawley

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11

It’s difficult for me to understand any reason this change would not be implemented, and it is difficult for me to understand why anyone would think infraspecific taxa are unimportant. The lack of caring about these taxa contributes to erroneous data on iNaturalist. For example, after a series of taxon changes, there are still a couple thousand Viburnum dentatum observations lingering in New England - a species that isn’t known to exist naturally in the region. Had infraspecific taxa been more apparent and more widely used on these observations, the impact would have been minimal.

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12

You did not read my statement carefully - I did not say “I am tired of notifications”, I said

The IDs themselves are often pointless as they either reflect subspecies entities that are of dubious/no value (ie have little support other than historical usage) or are IDs based solely on range and add no information to the observation. In fact, the range-based subspecies IDs could easily be incorrect, as they only reinforce previous ideas/data about where subspecies boundaries (which are often not hard) may be, and don’t use independent characters to ID to subspecies.

Edit: I am grateful for the ability to turn off the notifications for these IDs as well - it reduces my annoyance - but I would still prefer to have these IDs follow the current system which lessens the appearance of the IDs below species level (and doesn’t encourage me to just opt out of CID which I am constantly on the fence about and have resisted so far).

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13

Meaningless to you.

But I will continue to support the botanists in my (African) slice of iNat, where subspecies is valid and useful data.

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14

I definitely understand that this is a recurring problem in animal subspecies, but once again, this is not remotely the case in most plant taxa. Botanical subspecies, varieties, and forms usually represent discrete and distinct stable differences from the type/nominate, and are of a great deal of interest from multiple biological standpoints. It’s quite rare to encounter plant infraspecies that are merely range-based. While it’s fine that animal subspecies aren’t of much interest (I often don’t bother identifying them myself), there’s no reason that a zoological perspective should hobble infraspecies-related functions more broadly across the tree of life.

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15

This is one of the most perplexing ID sequences possible via the iNat user interface. If the observer leads with an ID of subspecies (e.g.), and an identifier follows with the ID of the corresponding species, then the ID of the observation becomes Research Grade at the subspecies level. That’s a jarring result since no identifier has yet confirmed the subspecies ID.

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16

It’s especially bizarre as the actual Community Taxon ID is still at species level for those observations, even though they will show up in search results for Research Grade observations of the subspecies, like you note. I find it impossible to believe that an arbitrary display privilege for earlier-added but not later-added infraspecies IDs is desirable or intended behaviour.

1 Like