For me, the common Fence Lizards formerly assigned to Sceloporus undulatus in the Southwest US constitute a species complex. The three species now recognized in NM include S. consobinus, S. cowlesi, and S. tristichus and there are many places in this region where assignment to one species or another is just guesswork without genetic analysis. Range limits, areas of sympatry, and hybrid zones are poorly understood. I informally consider many records as “S. consobrinus complex” (following the oldest species name) but many on iNat from areas where 2-3 species could occur simply end up as Sceloporus sp., which could include several other more distantly-related congeners … or they are assigned to one of the three species based on “best guess.” Until we understand what their status really is, assigning records to a complex would be useful.
I’m not sure I see why confusion would/should ensue here. When I look at, say, a genus on iNat, I assume that the species listed under it probably do belong to it, but I don’t assume that that list is exhaustive. For fungi, that would be a bad assumption - there are lots of species not added to iNat, or placed in the wrong genus, and a decent fraction of species have inconsistent or unresolved placements even in the literature.
So maybe we’re seeing this part differently because my field has a less “complete” taxonomy? From my perspective, iNat is a major tool for working on taxonomy, so it would be odd to assume users should assume everything they find is complete.
Would you say that someone should not be allowed to add a new family without adding all genera contained in it?
This sounds like a reason that “adding a complex name + adding all species under it” is better than “just adding a complex name” (of course!) but it doesn’t sound like a reason that “leaving the complex name missing” is better than “just adding a complex name”. If the two proposals are Species A and Species B, and B hasn’t been added to the complex, the ID will go to Genus X, which is correct. It’s equally accurate as Complex A (they’re both true), just less precise. More precise is better (of course!), but preventing curators from adding species complexes without adding all species isn’t going to make that ID more precise.
Make a flag and try to get a complex added then! If they are all considered one species in the past, that’s very strong evidence they are in a complex and there is likely literature support.
Of course not. I thought one of the conclusions we reached earlier in this thread is that all species in the iNaturalist database should be added as child taxa to the complex. If there are especially prominent members of the complex which are not yet in the database, then a flag should be created to add them.
When creating a complex it is important to add all the relevant species that are already in the iNat database - and actually I would add any others to the database to stop them being grafted to the genus if someone were to add them later. But I do not think it is so important as to make it better not to have the complex if it is impractical to do so.
What I mean is this: say there is a genus of 100 species. A curator knows that there is a recognised complex around ‘Species A’. They do their best to add all the species - they add 6 species to the complex - but they cannot find information about some of the more obscure species in the genus, and they cannot find a list of species that they are confident is globally complete. They should make ‘Complex Species A’ anyway. If it turns out that there are in fact 11 species in the complex and a species ID is made of one of the five obscure extras, bumping it back to genus, then a flag can be raised to change the parent.
We should not make perfection the enemy of progress. We shouldn’t be afraid of leaving some rough edges to clear up later, there will always be some ‘incertae sedis’. but we should see how well we can do, and then there is a judgement to make over whether the addition of a complex brings enough benefit to outweigh any hypothetical future issues caused by any of those remaining rough edges.
Absolutely agree. Add what you know or can glean from research belongs to the complex/ species group. Very few users are even aware of taxonomy, so will just pick the first thing that comes up on a search/ computer vision guess. The complexes/ species groups are more for people adding later identification who actually know about the grey areas.
That may depend on the Taxon. I identify a lot of Canadian Noctuid moths, and have found the users to be generally quite careful and knowledgeable and open to learning. Others may have had a different experience, but that has not been mine.
Thanks for clarifying. I suppose we should be distinguishing among several protocols of different strictness, e.g.:
- names not meeting the criterion are deleted on sight
- names not meeting the criterion are flagged, then deleted if the flag is left unresolved
- names not meeting the criterion are flagged, then deleted only if the flag is “known unresolvable” (e.g. nobody can find a literature reference)
- names not meeting the criterion are flagged, without risk of deletion
- guidelines recommend the criterion (but not enforced w/ flagging or deletion)
- community members unofficially recommend the criterion (but not enforced w/ flagging or deletion)
- criterion disregarded completely
As far as the subtaxa-added criterion goes, it seems to be at 6 now, right? I’d vote for 5 or 6 (but again I’m biased, coming from mycology, where there a huge fraction of complexes/genera have poorly resolved taxonomy and a high percentage of undescribed species.)
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