Ok, I know this has been discussed before, but I have a question regarding a specific instance of cryptic/complicated taxonomy. I’ll try to explain it as best I can so those not familiar with the taxon can get the full picture. Davus Pentaloris is a a species of Tarantula native to central america,…

[image] spookyaranhas: This user pointed out that since none of the species discussed in the 2020 paper have been officially proposed, let alone described, it makes no sense to not simply describe all observations of the complex as D. Pentaloris and wait for the new species to be described. T…

[image] spookyaranhas: The authors of the paper concluded that the specimens examined likely represented 13 different species in the complex, 12 of which were new to science. [image] spookyaranhas: What I’ve seen from other identifiers is generally to leave all complex D. Pentaloris from …

It’s not that unusual for a researcher to identify lots of undescribed genomic diversity within a named species but then never get around to formally describing the one or more new species.

I would agree that sticking to species IDs is best. That is the current taxonomy (which is always what we have to work with), and then new IDs may be able to be automatically updated later with a taxon split. I’ve also seen instances where people “identify” dozens of new species that were never desc…

Not an answer to your question, but a grammatical note that I’m always pointing out to my students – the species name should be Davus pentaloris, or D. pentaloris – in both cases, the specific epithet isn’t capitalized. (Autocorrect tends not to like the abbreviation, with that period in there….)

I believe 12 new species and the 1 currently described species would be moved to their own genus, but not sure.

And let’s not forget the obligatory italicization! ;-)

Identifying Cryptic Species

General

jnstuart December 5, 2025, 2:50pm 2

That’s what I would do. You can’t predict if or when the taxonomy will be revised and new species described. So go with the current taxonomy. You could add a note to your ID that this taxonomy might change in the future and link to the paper predicting such.

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Identifying Cryptic Species

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