I recently noticed Lagunaria patersonia listed as introduced on the Australian checklist. I switched it to endemic with this comment:
‘Changed to endemic. Although introduced to parts of Australian mainland it is native to Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island (both part of Australia) and perhaps parts of Queensland.’
Not sure if I did the right thing? Although it is endemic it is also introduced. Which takes priority?
I would set it to endemic for Australia, but on the relevant place checklists set to introduced. To my mind both statements are true and accurate.
You can change the established means locally (i.e. endemic to Norfolk and Lord Howe, but introduced elsewhere). I’ve changed it to “native” (not too familiar if native or endemic) for Norfolk (https://www.inaturalist.org/listed_taxa/47625173) and Lord Howe (https://www.inaturalist.org/listed_taxa/17026709).
Hope this helps, you’re welcome to change it to endemic if I’m wrong! :)
This sort of situation involving endemic and introduced populations seems to vary in how it’s handled on iNat. For example, the Knight Anole (Anolis equestris) is native and endemic to Cuba but also introduced and established in the Bahamas and in Florida USA. To me it seems the records from Cuba should be labeled as endemic, despite its occurrence elsewhere as an introduction (where it is labeled as such).
Thanks folks.
Cmcheatle yep that makes sense to me, both are correct but it seems right to me that endemic takes priority in this case. It would be great if there was some way to indicate a species is both endemic (or native) and introduced to a region, especially for big places like Australia. I guess that could be hard/ messy to implement though.
I suppose another option would be to mark it as unknown, but that seems unsatisfactory.
Twan3253 that’s right I think, definitely native to both islands but it can’t be endemic to both. Ta!
I was going to mark it as introduced on the New South Wales checklist but Lord Howe is technically NSW, so that won’t work. I’ve marked it as introduced on my local city checklist, I’ll look for other relevant checklists.
Jnstuart yep it seems like that species should be marked as endemic on the checklist for Cuba. You could do that, it seems establishment means for species are added manually by users, as I discovered quite recently. A species can certainly be endemic to one location and be introduced in another location.
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