Reliable sources for common names on iNaturalist

General
26

To be clear, there are common names for organisms and there are standardized English (or another language) names. The former are what come into use from various publications or within certain communities, whereas the latter are actually developed in a purposeful effort (usually by some committee) to bring some uniformity to name usage. A common name on the other hand can vary by region and in many cases there are multiple common names in use for a species at any given time.

At least for English-speaking North America, there are standardized English names lists for birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and odonates that are available as publications. Maybe also for additional taxa I’m less familiar with. Although no one is required to use these names, they are useful if you are trying to communicate with folks who don’t rely on scientific names. And some biological societies may require an author to use the standardized names if they want to publish in their journals.

1 Like
27

Does iNaturalist support synoniems ? Names you can enter but then will lead to the standard name which is used and displayed ?
Is it possible to export named (standard species) lists of countries, speciesgroups and languages so people can select and check lists on their own PC in Excel or Access ?

Inaturalist was right…standard list had some errors, somewhere in the discussion this was mentioned…and i just want to say that iNaturalist can be a standard on its own…or be better than the standard.

https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/slater-museum/biodiversity-resources/dragonflies/world-odonata-list2/

We were recently presented with a list of “mystery synonyms” of species that had been posted on iNaturalist but were not in this world list. Considerable effort was expended to solve this problem, and it led to a substantial number of errors being corrected on this list. We thank Matthew Muir, Greg Lasley and John Abbott for calling our attention to this and the opportunity to make the corrections. The list was considered updated as of 21 September 2017.

Subsequently an attempt was made to have the list of World Odonata used by the IUCN in its Red List assessments conform to the World Odonata List, and this also pointed out some errors in the WOL. We thank Caroline Pollock of IUCN for making this possible and K-D Dijkstra, Viola Clausnitzer and Rory Dow for furnishing information of importance as we worked out the problems. On 18 March 2019, all names followed by (nomen nudum) have been deleted, as these names are not thought to have any bearing on odonate biodiversity and can never be applied to a species. As of that date, the list is considered updated.

https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/slater-museum/biodiversity-resources/dragonflies/world-odonata-list2/

And i am not very certain but i thought this Belgian Species list was imported in Wikidata and it is more or less a mainted dataset in Four languages (Dutch, Latin, English and German) and has quite some supported institutes, Partners and colloboration and altough this seems not standard default behaviour of Wikidata I just want to say that also standard lists are added to WikiData.

https://www.gbif.org/dataset/39653f3e-8d6b-4a94-a202-859359c164c5

http://data.biodiversity.be/nl/dataset/belgian-species-list

http://www.species.be/en/index.php

http://www.species.be/en/partners.php

Ah, and I want to use a list of Nr3 Naturalis…https://data-blog.gbif.org/post/citizen-science-on-gbif-2019/

28

Yes. Any user can add a name for any language via the Taxon page. (Curators can also add scientific name synonyms.) Scroll down the page and look for “Add a Name” on the right side of the page. Once added, typing that name will lead to any taxon or taxa to which it has been added.

Note: for best functionality, choose the language by its English name (example: German, not Deutsche)

Personal lists and place checklists can be exported to CSV format, using the iNaturalist accepted names. They can also be added to or updated via CSV upload.

I am not aware of a way to export lists of scientific names, or common names in a particular language, from their parent taxon. Such functionality might be worthy of a Feature Request topic.

29

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.