Greetings, This is formatted as a feature request, because I originally submitted it as one. However, the iNaturalist admins are reluctant to allow new feature requests related to flexibility & interoperability of iNaturalist data in the context of alternative taxonomies. So, I post it here instead…

[image] jasonhernandez74: Then, if they are later re-split, it would go by the name that had been typed in when deciding which observation was which species. Problem is, there would be no way to know whether the taxonomic concept of Yucca torreyi (as the hypothetical example here) being used …

That’s the case for every identification on iNaturalist as it is.

This is kind of a whole different rabbit hole, but I don’t think anyone really knows exactly what a taxon concept is or how to tell if two taxon concepts are the same. For instance, we might consider a distribution map to be a component of a taxon concept. Now suppose someone names a new species tha…

Just to clarify, in the context of my posts here, I have been referring to taxonomic concepts in the narrow, nomenclatural sense. Does the usage of a name include the type specimens of more than one named entity, and if so which ones? Is someone else using a different name for some of the types th…

Agreed. Your comment just prompted my mind to go down that path. :-)

For what it’s worth, although it’s still more of a pipe dream at this point… supposing one had the taxonomies of a couple dozen floras digitized for the western U.S., it would then be trivial to take the name applied to a particular observation and pull out the set of taxonomies in which that is an …

Could this be solved by simply adding another field called “inactive_taxon_ID_by_user”? Specific identifications by users are downloadable. If the inactive identifications were also downloadable, that would at least make the data available. And, if these could somehow be made searchable, this wou…

For what it’s worth, I think this is an important topic. Even if the only way we can figure out how to use it is awkward and difficult to utilize, implementing a change here would be valuable. Otherwise, I feel like we’re throwing away data that could be utilized by future researchers. It may not…

[image] nathantaylor: If there were the ability to add an identification of an inactivated taxon as an inactivated identification, that seems like it would properly allow the use of an alternative taxon concept while still representing the preferred taxonomy on iNaturalist. Perhaps that would ge…

[image] nathantaylor: It may not be particularly obvious to most people why these data are important, but they represent a history of species circumscriptions (like annotations on a preserved specimen). Yes, this is a big part of my thinking, as well. The best way to learn the taxonomy of any…

Improving iNaturalist's nomenclature & taxonomy

General

jdmore January 11, 2023, 11:45pm 97

Ok, no worries and sorry for the confusion.

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Taxonomy changes and preferences vis a vis long-term iNat data use General	50	1497	March 5, 2022
Flag identifications that are out of agreement with iNat's taxonomic structure? General	21	2233	February 26, 2020
Opting out of taxonomy changes General	40	1261	October 14, 2022
Changing of ID from specific species to higher taxa General	29	1412	December 18, 2019
What is a "taxon concept"? General	30	1936	November 1, 2022

Improving iNaturalist's nomenclature & taxonomy

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