For plants it’s POWO. Click About, then find POWO and click.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/plantae-about-tab-more-info-powo/39677/5
I know, however it is not made obvious on the ‘About’ page.
That is why I made a post to whine about it, and changes were made.
Which I appreciate.
For a free text authority option it’s ideal if there’s a bit of uniformity but fundamentally uniformity isn’t required as I’d see it more as an entry so anyone doing research can discriminate what the person’s observation represents if they find they need to, where the observer felt there was a need to enter it.
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Did I perhaps add some confusion here?
I meant having the authors name as a field on the taxon page: not something visible to ordinary users, but for use by curators, so that they can quickly see if there is some confusion.
It is not needed in 99% of cases, but where it is needed there needs to be some way of accessing it.
And if particular curators wish to fill it in for all members of their group, then great - they are welcome to.
We discussed this request and won’t be moving forward with it. Checking ancestry or checking other resources like POWO can be used for instances of potential confusion, and we feel the time and resources spent on implementing the proposed functionality outweight the benefits.
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Thanks: I can understand and agree with this decision.
However, instances like this will not be obvious to the curators, not without some additional support and input from taxonomists and specialists.
Here is an instance that was a major muddle for decades:
https://powo.science.kew.org/results?q=leucadendron%20salignum
As a result the trade name for cut flowers is still “Salignum” for Leucadendron xanthoconus and “Adscendens” for Leucadendron salignum almost 40 years after the matter was technically resolved.
So long as curators are aware of these sorts of problems and do not try to overfix the situations.
But these are rare enough not to require additional functionality.
Would a comments tab and page on the taxon page not cater for these (and other) situations?
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