Is there a tool / code snippet that allows downloading of taxonomy data from the site?

[aspidoscelis]

@jdmore

In the context of iNaturalist, the intent is always to have a single active taxonomic concept for each scientific name at any given time. Otherwise iNat users would be confronted with a multiple-choice question when trying assign their chosen name to an observation, and the vast majority who are not taxonomists (and also some who are) would not know which to choose.

Yes, I’m aware of that.

@jdmore

For purposes of iNat, “synonyms” are those visible on the Taxonomy tab of a taxon page, in the Scientific Names lexicon, at any given time. Boechera 64070 is not listed as a synonym on the taxon pages for Yosemitea, Borodinia, and Boechera 1068235. That is as it should be, since Boechera 64070 is a different and more inclusive concept for that name before it was split into three smaller genera (one of which must by rules retain the same name).

I don’t think this is well-documented or generally known. See, for instance, the discussion between @pisum & I above, where both of us were under the impression that “inactive taxa” are how iNaturalist handles synonymy. Or this discussion, which popped up when I searched to see if the topic is clarified somewhere that I’d missed. Or the curator guide, which discusses synonymy in the context of taxon changes but doesn’t appear to mention the synonyms on the ‘Taxonomy’ tab.

Also, in the raw API output for “Boechera 64070”:

“current_synonymous_taxon_ids”:[868981,902757,1068235]

I don’t see it defined in a quick check of the API documentation, but it’s surely to be expected that people would interpret “current synonymous taxon” as having something to do with synonymy.

@jdmore

At least in the scope within which I curate plant taxa on iNaturalist, I only use (and advocate only using) ICNaft-compliant names (matters of iNat’s quirky display formatting aside). Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean by this, taxa with non-ICNafp-compliant names should always be flagged for curator attention.

I’ve come to view similarities between iNaturalist taxonomy and the ICNafp as being, mostly, what in language learning you’d call “false friends”—there are many superficially similar concepts, but they don’t map onto each other in ways that are easily inferred or well documented. It’s a separate system that is best understood de novo rather than by analogy.

For instance, in the API output for Polemonium villosum, when an entry in the ‘name:’ list is marked ‘“is_valid”:false’ this means it is a synonym of the entry marked ‘“is_valid”:true’. However, ‘“current_synonymous_taxon_ids”:null’ means that there aren’t any associated taxon changes in the database. Understanding the ICNafp isn’t just unhelpful in figuring out what is meant, it’s misleading.

That’s probably a bit of a rabbit hole, though, sorry!

More pragmatically… if “taxon concept” is our central concept, well, how does one know what the taxon concept is? You can look on the Taxonomy tab, but “stare at it with your eyeballs” doesn’t scale well…