Can you be more specific? That is absolutely not my experience. I find that curation of all the different groups (vascular plants, vertebrates, invertebrates, algae, fungi, bryophytes), and into even smaller subdivisions, carries on in totally different directions. I am constantly amazed by the different ways people approach taxon curation.
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no, i canāt be more specific without inflaming arguments here and getting in trouble. But if youāre really curious you can read my journal post about it: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/charlie/68030-my-take-on-taxonomy
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I recall in the past that taxonomic changes ā a new genus name or species split āwere allowed to āmarinateā for a couple years before being accepted and becoming commonly used, if accepted at all. Changes seem to happen faster now. A paper comes out with a new taxonomic arrangement and itās being used almost immediately. I think a lot of the revisions we see nowadays based on a single genomics study are not that well supported and the pendulum has swung too far towards splitting. I expect it to swing back at some point.
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My $.02: Evaluation is more important than time. Personally, Iām only making taxon changes in iNaturalist if Iāve had the opportunity to read the relevant research and evaluate it.
If thereās a high rate of well-supported changes, that just means taxonomists are being productive. :-) On the other hand, poorly-supported changes are probably better not followed even if they occur at a low rate and have crept into various secondary sources.
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I think that the lag time (marination) of scientific names in the past was a matter of logistics, not principle. Names considered āofficialā by most botanists (for example) were those published in major works like Grayās Manual of Botany or Flora of the Pacific Northwest. Such works came out less than once a decade, so changes came at us at a slow pace (though believe me, we complained when they did!).
Now, weāre relying on computer databases that can be, and are, updated much faster than that. This can result in a frustrating sequence of changes, e.g. most of our Oregon needlegrasses have gone from Stipa to Achnatherum and now to Eriocoma. A particular wheatgrass has through 5 genera and 3 species names in the 30 years or so Iāve known it. I am not pleased.
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Your definition of āmajor worksā is idiosyncratic, but so is mine. :-)
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I would greatly appreciate it if iNat were to expand the criteria of what comprises a legit taxon swap, instead of permitting completely under-qualified individuals to flagrantly alter very important taxon-related data, decades old in some instances.
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thatās ridiculous.
Open question: how ācompletely under-qualified individualsā make it to Curator role?
i wonder if some folks here would be satisfied if they just had more insight and input into the process when taxon changes are considered?
i was looped into one of these discussions a while back when it was being decided whether to change Pisum to match POWO (who had subsumed it into Lathyrus), and i was happy to have been part of that process. (in the end we decided to deviate from POWO because Pisum is such an important plant, and thatās a name most people recognize and use, even if they agree with the Lathyrus classification.)
i think i was only invited into that particular discussion because of my name though, and we ended up inviting other members who had more expertise into the discussion later. i think in the end, we got the right people into the discussion, but i know what would have happened if it had been just one person making the decision, and i can see how i might not have liked that particular result.
ā¦
so what if there was some sort of list of all the taxon changes that were under review, and what if that list was highly visible, inviting folks from the community to chime in? maybe if you have a particular taxon listed as a favorite taxon in your profile, or if youāre following a particular taxon, you get a notification when someone flags that taxon for curation?
this way, people have more of a chance to participate in the process (and donāt feel left out), and hopefully more opinions leads to a better decision in the end?
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Evaluation requires time.
They donāt happen faster now, thereāre many splits or merges sitting for years now, look at Ceratiomyxa situation, where both var. and synonym-species are active and working and have observations! And nobody can do a call to finally do something with the proposed change, we for some reason have two taxa that mean the same thing.
Anyone can be a curator, and in the past curator could make other people curators, even when they didnāt ask.
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True. Theyāre not independent. :-)
Taxonomy will unavoidably proceeds and with the aid of genetics I think that changes will be faster and possibly implicating bigger and bigger revolutions in the relationships among taxa. Thinking to understand your needs, I believe that the most potentially negative changes are ther merging of various taxa into one, especially if not agreed among specialists and if one or more valid species are then hidden inside onther one.
That said, taxonomic changes are not that bad. They could also help to raise non-specialistsā awareness on the existence of a process in which researchers works to make things in taxonomy more consistent (not alwaysā¦), especially if such changes involve iconic and famous species (e.g. Rosmarinus into Salvia).
Apart this, maybe, could it be better if synonyms would be shown in the srt file? For example, one or more columns for each synonym. This could be helpful to link a name to another if in the meanwhile in one database taxonomy has changed.
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Obviously that can vary depending on the taxonomic group. But there are certainly many proposed revisions among vertebrates that seem to get adopted rather too quickly ā and Iām talking about outside of iNaturalist. The revisions on iNat should lag behind whatever the newest cutting-edge arrangement is thatās being proposed and debated among specialists. I donāt see a problem if iNat is a little slow in adopting some new arrangement, especially if thereās a lack of consensus among the specialists.
However, I do realize that iNat relies on certain major taxonomic references to guide their decision-making for what to revise. Unfortunately some of those sources themselves might be too quick to adopt a change. When thereās legitimate concern about adopting a revision, my preference is to just leave it alone for while (maybe a year or two) and see what shakes out.
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i suspect you use names differently from how i do. this sort of statement is dismissive and you canāt actually know it to be true. They are indeed āthat badā.
I still wonder what happened to Unkown ā according to Mindat, a genus of grasses with 40 species; according to iNaturalist, nonexistent, not even as a synonym.
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Iād recommend using tags or observation fields or some other system for data tracking if you want to map your observations to a taxonomy that you have complete control over.
The core functionality of linking observations to the taxonomic backbone via community IDs relies on a single shared taxonomic backbone and we donāt have any plans to change that.
However we are doing increasing work to standardize that taxonomic backbone with other global systems such as GBIF/Catalog of LIfe/Species2000/IUCN and also within specific branches of taxonomy e.g. Kewās Plants of the World Online and the World Flora Online etc. But we definitely realize that no single shared taxonomy will meet everyoneās needs, nor is it intended to.
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Apparently itās unknown. With a terrible name like that it seems destined to being lost as a misspelling.
GBIF lists the name but with no species included and no occurrences.
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