Ouch!! They like to make things hard…
Currently there’s a Calandrinia observation with two identifications of Calandrella!
Yes, it’s definitely not just the direct homonyms that are a problem - and the others may be harder to find!
Oh, right. There’s also an observation sitting in Plantae that was originally misidentified as a kind of flatworm? - the flatworm that you get as the second option when you type ‘monocot’…
Near-synonyms in the same family:
Two genera of Veneridae (“Venus-clams”): Dosinia and Dosina. The first has about 100 species, a cosmpolitan distribution, and has a nearly monotypic subfamily named after it. The second is monotypic and is only found in New Zealand.
Utterbackia and Utterbackiana. Both in the same tribe of Unionida (“Freshwater mussels”), named by different men (Baker and Frierson) the same year (1927) to honor William Irvin Utterback.
Not quite homonyms, but Archaeoprepona demophon and Archaeoprepona demophoon differ only by an “o”. I don’t know whether to love or hate these names.
Those very similar names, either genus or species, drive me crazy. Suggests there was a serious lack of imagination by the describer.
almost homonym of kingdom plantae and the insect genus plantea
Near-synonyms in the same genus:
Tagelus peruanus and Tagelus peruvianus
In the hoverflies we have Melanogaster, hoverfly and fungus,
Then there is Cheilosia the hoverfly vs Cheilosa the Plant. Ugh!
Homonyms also exists within the same Kingdom,
and sometimes within the same Class (for instance Roseae):
Homonymous taxa within the same Kingdom
The families Icteridae and Icteriidae are sisters in Emberizoidea. Icteridae includes blackbirds, orioles, and cowbirds.
And then there’s the gastropod families Rissoidae, Rissoellidae and Rissoinidae.
Not-Quite-Homonyms
9,043 groups of taxa with names with at least 4 letters, with same number of letters, that differ from one another only by one letter. Groups are ordered by taxonomic rank. (Species and Subspecies at the bottom of Part 4).
Not-Quite-Homonyms (Part 1)
Not-Quite-Homonyms (Part 2)
Not-Quite-Homonyms (Part 3)
Not-Quite-Homonyms (Part 4)
Some might be duplicates and need curation (or have been curated already).
Generated from a local cache that contains some inactive taxa.
Exhaustive only for ranks Genus and coarser.
(I say coarser/finer instead of higher/lower, to avoid any possible confusion).
This is way too many.
Even considering I ought to exclude the easy Family/Subfamily pairs.
I give up trying to list those that differ by one letter more or less.
I also give up looking for observations misidentified because of homonyms. It may be easier to simply treat them on a case-by-case basis, like all other identification errors.
As already suggested, it’s important to make identifiers more directly aware of the taxon they are choosing:
- by indicating the kingdom,
- by alerting about existence of [not-quite-]homonyms within the same kingdom,
- by altering about no observations, or very few observations, for the taxon, for instance 52,000 observations for Tribe Amphidorini, 37 observations only for Tribe Amphidurini,
- by alterting about no observations for the taxon in the region.
And to add to the confusion, Section Roseae (of the Genus Oxalis, Family Oxalidaceae) has the Wikipedia page for roses as its taxon information.
(alerting)
I would add the Geomodel to your list.
Why for an obs in Cape Town offer us a from the Alps in Europe genus, over our local genus?? Micranthus.
List of suggestions updated. Thanks a lot!
When my students have absolutely no clue what phyla a plant is in, I tell them to put “Plantae”. One student put Plantea which turns out to be a Genus of moths in the family Noctuidae. In retrospect I should have stuck with “Plants” instead.