Well i am not saying iNat should make up our own scientific names. It’s an interesting idea but maybe not viable. I’m just saying we shouldn’t accept splits that elevate cryptic species or microspecies to the species level. We could accomplish by reverting taxonomy to ~2016, by just not accepting new splits, or by defaulting new splits to subspecies unless there’s really compelling reasons not to do that.
my true and probably impossible hope is that iNat can pus hback some against the tremendous damage that is being done to our ability to understand biodiversity by rampant splitting to species level, by figuring out either a way to put these in subspecies or else maybe retain some level between species and genus for the ‘lumped’ species. I recognize most of the professional taxonomists don’t agree but they are invested in the splitting for reasons i don’t really understand.
Honestly i’d kinda rather have the made up names than what we are being offered. I know that’s not gonna happen. But some of you don’t seem to realize how bad it’s getting.
Aside from the dandelion question that started this, what are some of the species in the northeast that you think have been unjustly split that would be restored by this treatment? Or to put it another way, how specifically would this improve your ability to do field botany?
Just a reminder to please keep the discussion focused on the original post’s topic here which was addressing the current state of Dandelion IDs on iNaturalist. It’s totally fine to discuss approaches to taxonomy as they relate to dandelions and related concepts like microspecies, etc… However, there isn’t a need to expand this to consider other taxonomic groups or general concerns about implementation of taxonomy. There are other open threads where that type of discussion would fit better. Thanks!
well ferns are a good example, i can’t even use iNat to track ferns and cross reference to my database because the changes are constant. I know it’s not all splits and has other types of change but i’m not exaggerating when i say i had big plans to integrate iNat into my database i manage and totally abandoned the plan because of the taxonomic revisionism. In terms of splits i think the Caulophyllum one is pretty ridiculous. When distinct, the two ‘species’ can be differentiated, but they intergrade VERY widely and usually aren’t distinct. Flower color is different and one sprouts earlier than the other… sounds like a perfect case for subspecies treatment and absurd as species level. There’s also a Phegopteris variation that people are trying to push to species level that literally even the person describing it doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate most of the time. Again, really interesting evolutionary unit and should be recognized, but not at species level. Really weird to have at species level. I could carry on with more examples but will leave it at that for now. Remember i am not saying that the entities aren’t discrete or that the people describing them are bad scientists, i just think broadly it’s an absurd policy to put things like that at species level.
Oh… jack in the pulpit too… interesting subspecies with different environmental preferences… but having them split means if i were to use taxonomy from iNat in the database i’d have to delete all records of jack in the pulpit from the past because no one discerned the subspecies before.