Hey everybody! Thought I’d give an update, including the current numbers (compared to when I last gave them about 72 hours ago):
United States Verifiable Dandelions: 132,402 (+487)
Total Research Grade: 54,491 (+2,055)
RG, Common Dandelion: 44,330 (-228)
RG, Red-seeded Dandelion: 1,560 (+1)
RG, Genus Taraxacum: 8,425 (+2,289)
RG, Section Taraxacum: 113 (-8) (Mistyped this one originally, should have read 121)
RG, Other: (still whatever the math says)
Total Needs ID: 77,888 (-1575)
Needs ID, Common Dandelion: 25,721 (+250)
Needs ID, Red-seeded Dandelion: 5,985 (+18)
Needs ID, Genus Taraxacum: 43,512 (-1,832)
Needs ID, Section Taraxacum: 2,349 (-11)
Needs ID, Other: (still whatever the math says)
That’s a lot of progress in a short time! At the same time, um, you know, still another 5 months at this rate until we clear out all the Needs ID. Full speed ahead!
Here’s a link to the craziest dandelion observation I’ve seen so far (picture also below)
I might’ve messed with some of the numbers because I am trying to fix my dandelion observations. I had some at section, and then still have some at species, both red-seeded and common. I tried to use the batch edit feature to ID all the section observations to genus but that ID was added as an agreeing ID, so it didn’t change the community taxon. All it did for many of them was take them from RG to needs ID. Now I am going one at a time and adding a disagreeing genus ID and marking them as good as can be. A lot more time consuming but I guess it’s just how I have to do it. I plan on going through them all and putting them to genus for the time being but I don’t know how long that’ll take. Hopefully I can get it done tomorrow but that might be wishful thinking.
Yep - that’s something I learned today! In the observation comments, there’s a link to a paper that apparently, as @wildskyflower puts it, “attributes the high rate of observed fasciation in dandelions at least in part to a higher probability that the dandelion was stepped on (or otherwise damaged by humans) during critical developmental phases.” Cool stuff!
I don’t really have anything valuable to add to this topic, as I’m far from knowledgeable and just an amateur.
However, what I don’t understand is why dandelions have to be split at species level, especially since (as someone said earlier) there’s no real universal definition for species.
Regarding observations and IDs I’m more of a generalist and not specialised on any one phylum. It seems to me different branches of the taxonomic tree have different rules, and sometimes also more or fewer “steps” to get from “life” to the most precise ID.
If taxonomy should be an accurate representation of evolutionary history, wouldn’t it make sense to make the model a bit more “fluid” (in such a way that it is still useable, of course)?
Why not define a new taxonomic rank or something for cases like dandelions, if there really isn’t an optimal way to fit them into the current framework?
Complexes could be split up too into different types of equal hierarchy, depending on the precise reason that species are grouped into that complex.
I’m sure there are quite good reasons for why these things haven’t been done, so I’d be grateful if anyone more knowledgeable in taxonomy than I could explain.
Hard to believe that batch editing won’t allow you to add a dissenting ID to your own observations. You could try deleting the ID or doing Plantae, then doing a second step back to Taraxacum. But that might not solve the problem.
Ages from now, when we are long gone but your mutant dandelions have developed culture, their vague memories of your foot will result in a fascinating religion.
Stompism. The dandelions can only attain their true glorious form through pain and suffering. Or something. Now i feel bad and also i might squish a bee so maybe my nefarious project will not occur after all.
A currently proposed compromise is to interpret the existing infraspecific rank of ‘infrahybrid’ to mean ‘microspecies’ for inat purposes. I am fond of this compromise because it basically gives everyone what they want; it makes it possible to ID to microspecies without disagreeing with Taraxacum officinale, and it makes it possible to reach research grade at just Taraxacum officinale if you do not like the taxonomic concept of microspecies.
i actually think the microspecies are kinda cool, i just don’t think it works to have them at species level since they often can’t be parsed out. If there’s sufficient evidence to get to micro(sub)species level that’s great.
As a practical matter, yes, people studying different organisms have different standards of how to apply species concepts. We try to be consistent with a genus or family or other unit of closely related organisms.
Before you go all ballistic about this, ask yourself, how else can we do things? I mean, it isn’t like there’s some meaningful way to compare the taxonomy of, say, sea spiders with fescue grasses. And no, despite the dreams of gene jocks, there is no simple amount of difference in DNA that equals species-level difference. DNA provides lots of good evidence about evolution and we can and should use that to inform our classification system, but it doesn’t turn determining species boundaries into a mindless algorithm.
Genus level seems to my non-taxonomically trained eye to be extremely inconsistent between zoology and botany. In zoology, species that look slightly different will be in different genera whereas plants have massive megagenera with species that look nothing alike that are easily dividable into smaller units.
It is not really consistent even within plants; for example the family asteraceae (which includes taraxacum) seems to have basically everything shifted by one level compared to other plant families; what elsewhere would be called a ‘genus’ is a ‘subtribe’ or even ‘tribe’ in asteraceae, as noted here ‘sections’ are what is otherwise called ‘species’. Whereas in something like genus allium, subgenus amerallium could easily be supported as its own genus, but there is reluctance to do that because it breaks certain traditions (every monocot that smells like garlic is an allium) and elevating the subgenera would create annoying constant scientific name changes because the taxonomy of most of the other subgenera is not as stable as amerallium.
So to my understanding what POWO has done right now is call the lectotype of T. officinale the type specimen of Section taraxacum, and therefore genus taraxacum, but do not accept the name taraxacum officinale as a species. So right now on POWO genus taraxacum has a Section listed as the type species. I’m not sure if there is any other instance of doing this and it is confusing. The issue of course is that T. officinale is undisputedly a legitimately published name with a valid description that has priority over all other names in genus taraxacum and has a valid lectotype, but the taxonomy followed in designating the lectotype is not the microspecies taxonomy so they just do some weird Frankenstein thing.
Okay, it is done now. All that I have left are genus observations that need another agreeing ID and then need to be marked “as good as can be”. It feels good to know they’re all in order.
