I am a bit confused with the genus of Red-billed gulls and their relatives. Here on INat and on Wikipedia, they are put into the genus Chroicocephalus. But on many other sites such as Tepapa and NZBirds Online they are said to be in the genus Larus. I have found some articles saying they were recently moved from Larus to Chroicocephalus, but there are still more places saying they are in Larus rather than Chroicocephalus.
Can ya’ll help a confused person out?
Birds are one of multiple taxonomic areas where iNaturalist has selected and follows a global reference to use as its taxonomic reference. In the case of birds, iNaturalist follows the Clements Global Checklist.
While as you correctly point out there are sources that continue to place them under Larus, since 2008 Clements has placed them under Chroicocephalus, which is where you will find them in the iNat database.
There is no ‘official’ body that gets to decide where they sit. In most cases there is typically alignment between all the competing checklists and placements. This happens to be one where there is disagreement.
Ah. Thank you for the explanation.
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