Make computer vision include hybrid taxa on an opt-in basis

[upupa-epops]

@Jarronevsbaru

It can be very difficult to work out the hybrids ancestry without genetic analysis as many cultivars have several species and cultivars in their ancestry. The highly popular cultivar Narcissus ‘Jetfire’ for example has 6 different species in it’s ancestry!

For some flower genera there used to be a generic “cultivated hybrids” taxon that situations like this could be identified as. I think those have been removed as invalid names now and messy plants should just be identified to genus. There was a suggestion for a different way to approach these here.

[silversea_starsong]

As others have said, nothotaxa =/= hybrids. Unfortunately iNaturalist does not have an ingrained system to differentiate if a taxon falls under the first or second case at this time. But nothotaxa absolutely should be part of computer vision, no question, as they operate like “real” species and it would be extremely beneficial.

[naturalist57011]

Anas platyrhynchos x Tadorna ferruginea?

[danielcahen]

My take is that, on balance, the benefits of including hybrid plant taxa in the model would far outweigh the costs. The current situation creates a significant burden on identifiers, as illustrated by the Kalanchoe × houghtonii example. Many common plant hybrids are misidentified as parent species, leading to a constant stream of corrections. This not only takes up valuable identifier time but also negatively impacts the accuracy of the model itself, as incorrect IDs are fed back into the training cycle.

Instead of adding complexity with an opt-in system, I believe a simpler and more effective solution is to just include these hybrid taxa in the regular training process and have them show up as suggestions like any other taxon. If a hybrid is visually distinct and common enough, it should be a valid suggestion.

[Jarronevsbaru]

That is a real shame, having a generic “cultivated hybrids” ID would make a lot of sense.

[Italopithecus]

I support your request.

[pdfuenteb]

I think this was discussed, and it was said that because GBIF and POWO do not support those taxa, it wasn’t possible. IMO, that makes a lot of sense for garden varieties and complex hybrids.

[rupertclayton]

@pdfuenteb

it was said that because GBIF and POWO do not support [generic “cultivated hybrid”] taxa, it wasn’t possible.

That might be overstating the limitation, I think. I believe this is a choice (maybe a good one), not a hard constraint. iNat can choose to make its own taxonomic choices, and even has a mechanism to explicitly state where iNat deviates from a taxonomic framework such as POWO.

I imagine that the decision not to have catch-all taxa for cultivated hybrids was based on an assumption that the effort of maintaining a large number of deviations was disproportionate to the value it would provide in observing nature.

[jasonhernandez74]

@upupa-epops

Which I guess makes sense since the [duck] hybrids, accounting for backcrosses, cover a spectrum of phenotypes between the two species. But it’s kind of misleading because hybrids are much less common than either pure species.

That may be true for ducks, but not universally for birds in general. For example, in the Puget Sound region, the Olympic Gull (Larus glaucescens x occidentalis) far outnumbers either parent species. The ID situation in this case is a similar mess to what @jf920 described for Kalanchoe, with hybrids usually being identified as Glaucous-winged Gull.