I’ve recently discovered a scenario that I think sometimes results in incorrect RG IDs. Viola vittata was formerly a subspecies of V. lanceolata. There were research grade observations at both the species and subspecies levels. When the taxon change was made, all the V. lanceolata ssp. vittata were changed to V. vittata, but those that were at the species level were unchanged. However, many of those Viola lancelata obs were for V. vittata; they had just not specified the subspecies. So now those RG obs are wrong! I believe that V. lanceolata does not occur at all in Florida, yet we have many RG obs for it here and that is causing the misidentifiction to be propagated by the CV.
My questions are first, is this really what has happened? If so, how commonly does this happen with taxon changes? And, what can be done about it?
There was a problem of similar nature, although not resulting in false RG, in bumblebees of B. lucorum complex. In much of Europe, there are 4 species which are hardly distinguishable from the photos. 3 of them are closely related and the 4th is a bit more distant. Previously, all 4 were grouped into “Bombus lucorum complex”. In opinion of some identifiers it was wrong and the 4th species shouldn’t be in the complex but as long as it was there, I was using the complex when identifying the specimens belonging to one of the 4 species. Then, after some time of inactivity in the subject and after someone corrected a few of my old IDs, I saw that the 4th species was moved out of the complex. And now, most my IDs made before the change, are wrong as they don’t take into account the 4th species. I didn’t get any info about the change (if it was, it got lost in my notifications) and the IDs made before were not marked or corrected automatically.
This sounds like you need a taxon split to fix this. I would create a taxon flag on the species to bring this up for curators and IDers who are familiar with the situation.
I’m confused by your reply. It appears that a taxon split caused the problem. It seems that sometimes a taxon needs to be mass changed by geography (like eBird does). Does iNat ever do that? I really want to understand how this works in iNat and whether or not there is a problem that occurs more often than just my example.
This has been somewhat of a problem for me with grasses (Poaceae), where there are multiple supported taxonomies for certain species, and disagreement currently. This goes up even to the genus level, where there is still controversy for several taxa (and hybridization complicates the picture even more). I have been putting alternative scientific names in the notes, but a taxon flag is a good idea as well.
Exactly. A taxon split lets you mass change IDs by geography. Someone just needs to split all the Florida Viola lancelata to Viola vittata. I would do it myself, but the last time I did a taxon split by geography everyone nitpicked it to death and I felt like it wasn’t worth the trouble. Just create a flag for the taxon and someone will hopefully fix it eventually.
My example is a casual observation, but when Humulus lupulus (hops) was split to recognize endemic American species, my cultivated garden hops got renamed H. americanus, probably because I observed it in North America. However, as this was a domesticated hops cultivar for beer brewing, I’m pretty sure it was actually a selection of the European H. lupulus. I withdrew my original ID (now taxon-swapped) and identified it once more as H. lupulus.
Thanks so much for the explanation. After nearly 5 years as an iNat user, sometimes I still like a newbie. Now I know the difference between a taxon swap and a taxon split and I’ve created my first taxon flag.