I think this question probably has been asked and answered somewhere before, but I haven’t been able to find it. I understand the community ID on observations like this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35197889
but I don’t understand why the observation ID is not at species level, since there is no ID inconsistent with the species identified. I feel like my coarser IDs on observations like this are holding up the observation ID at species level, and wonder whether I should be withdrawing my coarser IDs if they are blocking progress.
I believe it’s because the species Salacia bussei hasn’t been properly placed within genus Salacia in the iNat taxonomy. It’s sitting alone in the Celastraceae family. Therefore, as far as iNat is concerned, there are two conflicting IDs with equal support (one person each). I’ve just added a curation flag to the species asking for it to be moved into genus Salacia.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with your higher-level ID.
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Thank you. I’ve been reviewing some other observations where I was wondering the same thing. I will check and see if they have the same kind of taxonomy issue if I find them again.
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I just updated Salacia bussei to make genus Salacia its parent, but the ID isn’t advancing because of the earlier “dicots” ID which is a disagreement with Salacia bussei. iNat interprets that as disagreeing votes for everything through Order Celastrales.
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Now Paloma’s vote is the second supporting Dicots, so it is holding back Salacia?
Thank you, but I’m not sure I understand . . . is it counterproductive then to add “Dicots” or “Plants” to State of Matter Life observations? I withdrew mine on this observation.
No, it’s not counterproductive. You definitely did the right thing! This is an odd situation because it was stuck at “life” due to a taxonomic grafting error that had Salacia bussei the plant on a completely wrong branch of the tree of life as a cnidarian (because there’s another genus of hydroids called Salacia). phelsumas4life was correct at that time to add a “dicots” id, and it automatically disagreed with the previous ID of the incorrectly grafted-as-a-cnidarian Salacia bussei. However, now that older disagreeing dicots ID is also treated as disagreeing with Salacia bussei (properly grafted), Salacia, Celastraceae, and Celastrales.
Your dicots ID isn’t disagreeing with Salacia bussei, so it doesn’t need to be withdrawn.
Did that help at all? I know this stuff can make my brain hurt.
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I think I understand. If the taxonomy link is wrong, it’s better not to explicitly disagree because then a now-correct explicit disagreement will eventually become an incorrect explicit disagreement. I will restore my ID. Thank you.
Also, it seems that adding an ID while noting that it is not in the correct Kingdom is probably not the way to do it–getting the taxonomy taken care of first would be.
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