We don’t need to only follow POWO since there’s also many other credible online plant databases. On top of that, some databases for certain areas are better than it since POWO has a global focus which makes it harder for it to be up to date.
Would it be possible to maintain a list of taxa that resulted in a stalemate or have been subject to a lot of disagreement? In my experience, this problem has been pretty rare, despite being very frustrating.
I agree. So, maybe 2 out of 50 species reviewed might fall into the controversial category? I might be understanding the data wrong. Regardless, this isn’t a small number if it’s proportional across all plant species, though I suspect it isn’t given that less commonly observed species are usually less controversial. It looks like there are about 280,000 mapped, about 18,000 plant names without a relationship, about 4,000 deviations, and 3,326 flagged covered taxa. The controversial ones are undoubtedly hiding in the “flagged covered taxa” and buried in the “relationship unknown” categories.
Instead of listing, I wonder if a relationship category called “unresolved” or “under discussion” could be created. That would make finding the controversial taxa easier. If there are a large number of these, it also might also help curators trying to resolve the unknown relationships if these kinds of taxa could be filtered out.
Just as an aside, though we might not be following POWO completely, a little over 280,000 of our taxa match. Following POWO with occasional deviation seems like a pretty good definition of the data I see in the link.
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Are non-curators allowed to be in this conversation?
I am new to all this, so maybe it obvious to everyone else, but: If the default is to follow POWO, and if there is a deviation, and if no reason has been given for it, why isn’t the burden of proof the other way around?
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This seems like an important detail to me; I regularly see people complaining about POWO being out of date or having errors all over etc., but it’s not always clear whether they’ve actually attempted to communicate with POWO about fixing those. POWO isn’t static and they seem fairly responsive.
I don’t deal with the details of plant taxonomy too regularly but I have had one situation where I thought POWO’s approach was internally contradictory, I emailed them and we had a brief back-and-forth and they fixed it pretty quickly.
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I agree that seems like the logical approach. But as has been discussed above, taxon changes that end up having to be reversed later are burdensome to the system and to the curator community, especially when it involves trying to undo a lump/merge. So as a curator, it is still best to do one’s due diligence first before committing a potentially damaging change, even if the originator(s) of the deviation failed to do so.
In some cases lack of justification is not from negligence, but instead because a deviation existed before POWO was adopted as the standard, and no one has discovered or addressed it yet. That too will become apparent with due diligence.
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I don’t see why not.
IBC voted this week to set up a nomenclature registry. It sounds like it would be a distributed network with different institutions taking responsibility for specific categories of plants. I’m sure they have lots of details to work out and it will take a while to implement but it’s a step closer to a more organized system.
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Look up “the species problem”. There is no scientific consensus on what a species is and it is constantly debated. What is treated as a species in one group may be more like what is considered a genus in another group and a subspecies in a third group. Different scientist often disagree on what defines a species even in the same group. “Species” is just one of many lines people draw for various purposes. While those lines are clear sometimes, they are often ambiguous in plants. POWO and any other taxonomic database tries to follow the science but the science often needs more work and/or is debated due to differing opinions on species concepts.
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The IBC was considering the implementation of a registration system for new names/combinations (nomenclatural acts), similar to the registries already in place for fungi and animals (zoobank). This is purely concerned with nomenclature and has no bearing on taxonomic opinion. This will support the work of IPNI but will not significantly impact what names are considered correct in taxonomic repositories like POWO, when there are differing opinions.
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POWO does not claim to be an expert in any way as stated “The general rule is that the latest published species level taxonomy and synonymy is followed”
WCVP Species concepts used by POWO
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Please keep this discussion on-topic. Discussion about what constitutes a species is a bit outside of POWO and iNat’s use of it as a taxonomic authority.
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Thanks for the clarification.
Shortly after this topic was created, I applied to be (and became) a curator. While it’s only been about two months and I’ve only worked on a handful of flags thus far, I do feel like my perspective has changed a bit.
Before, I had the following impressions:
- POWO aims to maintain an up-to-date, consensus-based taxonomy.
- POWO’s taxonomy is backed entirely by published taxonomic literature authored by taxonomists.
- Taxonomy changes are quick and easy to make in iNaturalist’s architecture.
- The ease of making taxonomic changes and maintaining synonyms in iNaturalist means that from a practical standpoint most taxonomic changes are a wash, and what we call a thing is functionally arbitrary for most users of the platform (though not philosophically arbitrary for some users of the platform).
Since working on a couple of taxon changes myself, I’ve come to understand that my perspective was oversimplified.
POWO aims to maintain an up-to-date, consensus-based taxonomy.
POWO’s about page and this paper are good to read if you want to better understand POWO’s goal with their taxonomy and how they execute on that, but here are a few select quotes:
In principle the latest published species taxonomy is followed unless reviewers tell us otherwise.
The basic rule of species acceptance in WCVP is very simple; we follow the latest published species concept unless experts advise us otherwise.
While POWO certainly aims to maintain an up-to-date taxonomy, it doesn’t necessarily aim to ensure that taxonomy is based on stable consensus.
POWO’s taxonomy is backed entirely by published taxonomic literature authored by taxonomists.
POWO’s taxonomy is (supposed to be) backed entirely by published literature (though sometimes they forget to put their references on a taxon page), but that literature is not necessarily taxonomic in nature.
For example, there was a request to add Phytolacca weberbaueri to the taxonomy. POWO had made this a synonym of Phytolacca dioica and as a source they referenced “Bernal, R., Gradstein, R.S. & Celis, M. (eds.) (2016). Catálogo de plantas y líquenes de Colombia 1-2: 1-3068. Libro impreso.”
I figured this was some Flora but after some digging I came to discover that it’s a checklist for the country of Columbia. Furthermore, this checklist did not (as far as I could tell) provide any explanation or references regarding it’s synonomization of P. weberbaueri with P. dioica. Even if it had though, I’m not sure checklists are a great source of information on which to base a taxonomy, yet I often see them as references (or even the only reference) on POWO taxon pages. Many times I’ve seen WCVP (which essentially is POWO) listed as the sole reference.
Anyway, I emailed POWO and provided them with a link to a paper someone else had found that contained a cladogram showing other species (which POWO accepted as distinct species) being more closely related / genetically similar to P. dioica than is P. weberbaueri. They responded that they hadn’t read that paper yet but would incorporate it into the next update to POWO, which they have since done by (re-)accepting P. weberbaueri as a distinct species name separate from P. dioica.
Taxonomy changes are quick and easy to make in iNaturalist’s architecture.
Let me start by saying that I appreciate all of the work that members of the iNaturalist team have done on the platform, especially on taxonomy-related functionality. Having said that, the architecture around making making changes to iNaturalist’s taxonomy can at times make the process complex and effort-/time-intensive.
For example, if someone splits 12 species off from a genus of 24 species into a new genus, you have to separately create 13 different taxon changes – one for the new genus and 12 for each of the impacted species. (At least that’s how I’ve been doing such a change. If anyone knows of an easier way, please chime in here.) Each one of those taxon changes are going to take a while for the platform to process too. A taxon change involving a taxa with only a few hundred observations can take hours to finish.
It’s not, as I had somewhat subconsciously assumed before, as simple as going to some single page and clicking a bunch of checkboxes and mapping selected names to a new location in the taxonomy and a new bunch of names and clicking okay and boom, done.
The ease of making taxonomic changes and maintaining synonyms in iNaturalist means that from a practical standpoint most taxonomic changes are a wash, and what we call a thing is functionally arbitrary.
Thinking back to my P. weberbaueri example, imagine a species with 100 (or 1,000 or 10,000) observations. Maybe it’s a frequently-identified taxon, or maybe it’s one that gets love from only a very small number of people. Then POWO one day says that species and another species (with its own number of observations and amount of identifiers) are the same (not that one is a subspecies of the other, but that they both represent the exact same concept), so we merge them in iNaturalist. Then later POWO goes back to its prior position and accepts both as distinct species again. We can re-split them on our end too, but we now have a problem in that the split basically requires all observations of that species (the one we’re splitting back into two species) to be bumped back up to genus and to be re-identified to species again. There are things like atlases and stuff that can sometimes be used to make this a little better, but they’re not always applicable and they don’t completely eliminate the issue.
…
Given what POWO is actually trying to do with their taxonomy and how taxonomy changes in iNaturalist work today, I’ve begun to agree that a change in POWO should not immediately translate to a change in iNaturalist’s taxonomy without discussion or critical thinking.
I think our current process is as good as things can be right now. If someone notices that POWO has changed it’s taxonomic position on this or that taxon, then they create a flag. Then a discussion can be started with people who care or are knowledgable about that taxon. I usually start that by tagging in a non-random selection of users from the top 10 or so observers and identifiers of the taxon – or something like that, it depends on the taxon involved. The discussion starter is this: “POWO accepts or doesn’t accept this taxon, any objections or concerns or reasons why we shouldn’t do that too”? If there are no reasons to not align with POWO, then we do. If there are good reasons not to, then we email POWO and see if we can convince them of our view. If and when they do, then there’s no longer a deviation and the flag can be closed. If we can’t convince POWO and still feel ours is the “right” or “best” view, then we mark the taxon as an explicit deviation.
We’re still “following” POWO in that “what does POWO say” is always the first question to be asked and the driver of the conversation. While we don’t follow it unquestioningly, our starting position is always (in my mind at least) whatever its (POWO’s) position is. In other words, it’s not “POWO takes this position, can we justify taking it too?” Rather, it’s “POWO takes this position, can we justify not taking it?”
I will say that certain portions of the curator guide might be construed as suggesting that we aim to follow taxonomic authorities more “religiously”, or less critically, or with less effort than we actually do. For example:
Following taxonomic authorities helps us avoid having these arguments on iNat. We can argue about which authorities to follow, but following authorities allows us to skip arguments about each and every paper.
To me this suggests that we say “Well, POWO said it, so we’re going to adopt that view. If you want it changed back, you’ll have to take it up with them”. I think instead of “avoid having”, perhaps a phrase like “minimize” or “decrease the number of” might be more fitting – and instead of “skip arguments”, perhaps “not have to follow and hold a democratic discussion” might be more appropriate.
@raymie, regarding the potential paths forward that you mentioned… I don’t think blindly following POWO is a good idea as it will create a lot of additional work for identifiers. iNaturalist needs to balance the latest taxonomic information with the certainty of that information and with the needs of its users for a somewhat stable taxonomy.
Your second item is, as you and I both mention, kind of what we’re already doing, but it certainly has its drawbacks and pain points. The still present need for discussion also invites (or allows) ideas outside of the immediate matter at hand (which is, “does anyone feel this is a bad idea because science or practical reasons, otherwise we’re going with it”), ideas such as “it doesn’t matter if it’s correct or not, it’s simply happening too fast for my preferences/needs/whatever”. (While I don’t personally agree with this opinion, I do consider it a valid opinion to have and don’t mind it being discussed. I just don’t think the place to discuss it is in individual taxon flags – that’s a broader discussion.)
As other “global” taxonomy providers, there’s also World Plants and Leipzig, but I think those both have the same “issues” as POWO. And there’s World Flora Online, which I’ve been keeping my eye on and am hopeful about. If you want to read more about WFO and its state of maturity, you can check out their FAQ page and/or this paper and/or this paper. But some key points relevant to this conversation:
- They aim to maintain a taxonomy of all land plants – not just vascular plants.
- They aim to maintain an up-to-date taxonomy. Their site is updated every six months based on a snapshot of their current backbone taxonomy. I’m not sure if the backbone taxonomy is available publicly or not though.
- They aim to maintain a consensus-based taxonomy. Individual plant families are to be curated by Taxonomic Expert Networks, instead of the entire taxonomy being maintained by one person and their team of “helpers”.
WFO still has a ways to go though. Not every family has been adopted by a TEN, but they’re working on it. For families that don’t have a TEN they fall back to WCVP/POWO. And I think they’re also still reconciling some of the original taxonomy from The Plant List to WCVP/POWO. I’d be curious if WFO feels like there are any families/groups that are “mature” enough for serious use (and maybe ideally adopted by a TEN?), and in turn if there is anyone on our end who might be interested in a pilot of using WFO as our taxonomic authority for that group.
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I think the best way to think of POWO is that it is the best possible taxonomy that basically one individual expert with broad library access and a great network of professional contacts could reasonably be expected to maintain. It is not reasonable to expect it to be able to serve all use cases in the entire world, or to for it to be built to serve inaturalist at the expense of all its other use cases. Nor can inaturalist be expected to serve all possible taxonomy use cases. Arguably, they are far more responsive to queries than it is at all reasonable to expect a project like that to be.
Because inaturalist’s needs are different from POWO’s, it is inevitable that we will sometimes have a need for deviations. As you say, in particular POWO has less of an intrinsic functional demand for stability, and the changes that appear major to us are not the same as the changes that will appear major to them. What is basically a small tweak for them could irreversibly undo thousands of hours of IDer work if we were to commit it, so we should be cautious when such changes seem like the kind of change that might have to be undone in a year or two. Changes also produce huge server loads for inat, as opposed to basically changing one cell in a spreadsheet for POWO.
I think that in practice the vast majority of documented deviations are not really controversial at all. The huge debates only happen on a small subset of deviations on highly observose taxa where changes are very disruptive, where I think debates should be held to justify any changes. For things like regional endemics with 6 observations supported by some regional authority but not POWO, the cost of deviating or not is low and consequently so is the amount of debate that should be expected.
I also think that in many of these debates we curators have a tendency to significantly overestimate the urgency of doing anything in cases of recent changes by POWO; in academia I doubt anyone is saying ‘we need to decide this week’ on whether to accept the conclusions of a papers built on years of work that would take years of work to rebut.
In the long term inat will probably eventually need to figure out some more effective procedural safeguards for changes in highly observose taxa. Better notifications about taxonomy debates and and some interface improvements to make it easier to surface related flags would also be helpful (i.e. when an extensive discussion has occurred on a flag for a taxon that is now inactive). The staff only has so many resources to devote to that kind of thing when other concerns are more pressing though.
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“Observose” — Nice word!
It looks like Cassi used it in 2019 Apr:
But it probably pre-dates that, in the Google group . . .
I am going to show my age, but when I was in graduate school simulating neural networks, the origins of the CV system was a brand new thing. I remember a highly complex discussion by Stephen Grossberg (at BU?) about the challenges of maintaining a stable grouping system for recognition systems AND still have the means to send out an alert and switch into a new learning mode when the old system fails in some way. I remember he connected it to similar systems in the human brain when we need to break a category in two or merge two into one.
The trade off between these two things will always be a push and pull, but there needs to be a threshold of dissonance to make a change in a recognition system, because the stability matters. Don’t know if that context is useful, but this discussion seems to about that same fundamental challenge.
It seems to me that expert users and professional biologists are more likely to be able to cope with needing to cross-reference different nomenclatures or synonyms. Maybe there could be a set of fields that accommodate their needs to have more up to date groupings.
There could be fields for the species ID in different nomenclatures or taxonomies, toward the new species ID before the change and pointing back to the old one after.
this will come as a surprise to no one and i won’t debate since it’s so controversial and i know i get too frustrated and piss people off but…
my take is POWO is awful and totally incompattable with a community science site, and the current rate of change and level of splitting on iNat is also wildly incompattable with its accessibility to a broad audience. We should be much more conservative with our changes and all splits should retain some sort of section or Sensu Latu entity that contains only the previous taxonomy so data is not lost and people can continue to use the old taxonomy when need be. I think a ton of time is put into maintaining ‘current’ taxonomy on iNat when the curators’ time would be better spent identifying obscure taxa or dealing with interpersonal issues on the site. I’ve found iNat has become steadily less useful for applied ecology as the taxonomy diverges more and more from what people on the ground use. No one where i live uses the constantly renewed taxonomy, and most of the new ‘species’ are cryptic msot of the year disrupting things when sections aren’t applied.
I think we need to be conscious about what iNat is - it’s meant to be a site to allow anyone with access to technology to connect with nature. It’s not meant to be a taxonomic database or an extended arm of academia that shoos away anyone who isn’t currently affiliated with a university with full access to scientific papers.
I’ve felt very heavily shut down and even censored for having this opinion despite the fact it’s shared by many, maybe most people i discuss this with in real life. You all really have a chance of doing true harm to the site and i hope you at least consider these concerns every time you decide to make a change to ‘conform with POWO’ or to add changes from some new (often unpublished!) paper.
If you use this comment to attack my credentials or competency i’m blocking you. that’s happened countless times here. I’m not uninformed i just disagree with how the academic system classifies biodiversity and how iNat has applied that.
For more info: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/charlie/68030-my-take-on-taxonomy
I probably won’t reply on this thread again.But if you feel like having an angry or rude response to this, please ask yourself… why does it make you so angry that someone doesn’t agree with a new, very altered concept of ‘species’? Cosnider you might not be 100% right about this issue as it relates to iNat. Consider adding your next split at subspecies level not species. No one is forcing iNat to be lock step with academia, and the authorities ‘governing’ how we relate to lif eon Earth do not actually hold any power over us to force us to adopt their changes when they are flawed.
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I think your concerns are pretty understandable from a field ecology perspective. The question which I don’t know how to answer, and haven’t seen answered satisfactorily anywhere, is how does iNat apply this conception practically at an international scale?
I find phylogenetic lab taxonomy frustrating sometimes because it can result in a lot of cryptic species as you mention (and has been discussed in other threads extensively), but creating a parallel phenetic/macro-morphology based taxonomy for all the plants in the world from scratch seems excessively daunting to me. But I kind of feel like that is ultimately the only option if we take this argument to its conclusion, and reject all the other world plant taxonomy authorities that are available.
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I did some research into which California native plants are missing from iNaturalist/POWO. I wrote it up here for anyone interested: https://max-mapper.github.io/journal/la-nature/posts/09-19-2024-california-native-plant-list.html.
The takeaway is, depending on which list of California native plants you use, there are currently an upper bound of around 350 native plant taxa missing from iNaturalist (Missing in this case means there are no taxa or Names defined so when you search for it in the species autocomplete, it doesn’t find any results). I’m not sure how many POWO treats as accepted taxa outright, but I imagine most are accepted synonyms that should at least get added into the Names table on iNaturalist. There are however a bunch of cases where POWO considers something a synonym, Calflora, Jepson etc consider it a distinct ssp. or var., and lumping it in as a synonym under the Name table on iNat may hurt the conservation outcome.
Unfortunately coverage of the “Establishment Means” tag on taxa in California is quite low, only around (estimated) 1/3 of species are marked native. And these are using PlaceID 14 which is the state of California, not the California Floristic Province.
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I notice that some of those look like mosses, which would not appear in POWO (vascular plants only). The Calflora list uses “X” before the species epithet to indicate a hybrid, so changing the parsing of that would probably pare off a few.
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