I have been getting a lot more active in identifying other posts recently, specifically distinguishing between Downy and Hairy woodpeckers. I noticed today that the Hairy Woodpecker taxonomic ID was updated (from Dryobates villosus to Leuconotopicus villosus).
I am bummed that this will make it harder to simply search for Dryobates and ID both Downy and Hairy, but I understand this was a change made in the Clements 2025 issue and am glad it was properly updated. However, in the past I have noticed that taxon changes seem to automatically update past ID’s to the new taxon, but it does not seem to be the case with the new Hairy Woodpecker taxon. Is this just delayed because the change was certified today? Or will I have to manually go through and re-ID all the Hairy Woodpecker observations I have ID’d?
Sorry if this is a bad question, I have been using iNaturalist for a while but only got into identifying other observations recently. In addition, I am not well versed in the understanding of taxon and changes in these topics.
With the large number of observations, it may take a few days for all the observations to switch over to the new genus, but they all should eventually.
I really wonder about some of these generic splits in birds. I still find it hard to reconcile Cooper’s Hawk and Sharp-shinned Hawk being in different genera and feel the same about Hairy and Downy woodpeckers. Same for other splits where there is well-documented hybridization across genera. I can see subgenera being useful in many cases if a taxonomist feels some infrageneric division is necessary.
The problem with Hairy/Downy is that Hairy is more closely related to all the other Leuconotopicus (White-headed, Arizona, etc Woodpeckers) and the 14 Veniliornis woodpeckers, so in order keep Downy and Hairy Woodpecker in the same genus, you’d have to move all of the Dryobates and Leuconotopicus into Veniliornis, causing more confusion than just changing Hairy Woodpecker. I have no opinion on whether the differences between the three really warrant separate genera or not, but moving Hairy Woodpecker is the move that causes the least amount of change.
Thanks, I get the fact that some of these splits are to minimize disruption to multiple other taxa. But it does seem there are way more genera being described or resurrected than seems really necessary to address what genomic data are telling us. I’m still a fan of subgenera, but not many of those stand for long before someone comes along and elevates them.
With Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks, both are still in subfamily Accipitrinae so that ID conflicts don’t push observations all the way up to Accipitridae where they’ll be lumped into the same bucket as ID conflicts between hundreds dissimilar raptor species.
It looks like iNat currently doesn’t have subfamilies or tribes for Picidae, but having tribe Melanerpini would help a lot for clarity in this case. It’s a shame to have observations stuck at Picidae (could theoretically represent any of 235 species) when anyone can tell from looking that it could actually only be one of 2 species. I see this has been briefly discussed in a flag here.
Or rather Leuconotopicus and Veniliornis into Dryobates (which has priority over both—Veniliornis is in fact the youngest of the three names), as was previously the case in eBird/Clements, and accordingly on iNaturalist, until a few weeks ago. (The placement of hairy woodpecker in Dryobates wasn’t due to a misconception that it was more closely related to downy woodpecker than its actual closest relatives, but instead differences of opinion about how broad or narrow to make the genera in that particular clade on different checklists. Back in 2018 when they got around to breaking up polyphyletic Picoides [and Dendrocopos], the AOS checklist committees, and accordingly the eBird/Clements checklist, broke with the trend of recognizing two genera for the relevant ex-Picoides [and ex-Dendrocopos]—Dryobates for the mostly smaller-bodied holarctic clade and Leuconotopicus for the mostly more mid-sized group centered on North/Middle America, preserving long-treated-as-distinct neotropical Veniliornis as a separate genus [albeit with a couple minor changes from its historical composition]—by instead going with an expanded Dryobates for the entire bunch and lumping Veniliornis into it. eBird/Clements’s update this year to recognize Leuconotopicus and resurrect Veniliornis as separate genera comes as part of the AviList process.) Here on iNat, most of the species of Leuconotopicus and Veniliornis were transferred out of Dryobates a week or two ago, but the hairy woodpecker swap wasn’t committed at the time due to the much larger number of affected observations/IDs (with something like 4 times as many observations as all other Leuconotopicus and Veniliornis combined).
I was going through iNat, and found that one of the IDs I had made was incorrect; I was confused, because I was certain it was a hairy woodpecker. It was, but now it is no longer in the genus Dryobates?? It is now apparently Leuconotopicus, but the downy woodpeckers are still in Dryobates. Now all my obs of them are wonky, one of my woodpeckers got put under a new subspecies, and I am very confused. Was something new discovered? What am I missing???
It’s possible the user with the old ID has opted out of automatic taxon changes. I would guess that is also the case for the 19 observations under the inactive name:
