Description of need:
Identifying hybrids on iNaturalist is kind of inconvenient because you need to manually look at each parent to see if the organism looks like a hybrid between them.
Feature request details:
Just like how each taxon has ancestry, hybrids should have parents. Right now, you have to look at the taxon name to know which parents it’s a hybrid between. When hybrid parent information is added to iNaturalist, it should also be possible to see hybrids from parents. Perhaps a new “Hybrid Info” section should be added to show the hybrids of a parent and parents of a hybrid. iNaturalist search should also have an option to include hybrids of a taxon when searching for it.
I think the best solution here is to flag these problematic taxa and request that the curators add a hybrid formula as an unaccepted scientific name, following the typical Genus speciesA x speciesB where the species are arranged alphabetically. The taxonomy system used by iNat is only designed for taxa to have one parent, and having two parents would be a major redesign with little practical gain.
I still believe iNat should have a function where you can set parent 1 and parent 2 to a hybrid taxon, but I know hybrids are not a priority of the development team at present.
Continuing on, yes please, even just as an informative thing. Have two fields you can enter on the taxon page if it’s a hybrid or genushybrid, and then visible on the taxonomy section. Doesn’t have to affect anything else on site for now, just let us see it.
