So I want to merge Rhyothemis phyllis to Rhyothemis variegata, based on WOL and this paper. I want to graft R. phyllis as a subspecies of R. variegata, not just as synonym. But R. phyllis has some subspecies that should be treated as subspecies of R. variegata. Of course, I can not directly swap R. phyllis with R. variegata phyllis because the other subspecies would be still under R. phyllis and will not change name automatically.
Are there any suggestions on how to this efficiently?
Thank you
Move or swap the other subspecies first, and then you can swap R. phyllis. I don’t think there’s an easier way than doing it one by one unless you swapped R. phyllis with R. variegata and moved children to output. But then all the observations would be in the wrong place.
It sounds like Rhyothemis phyllis and R. variegata will be considered conspecific, but the various subspecies currently recognized under R. phyllis will continue to be recognized as distinct subspecies under R. variegata for now (vs. being lumped together as a single subspecies), correct? If so, then current R. phyllis and IDs thereof don’t correspond 1-to-1 with post-lump R. variegata phyllis (in which case a swap of the species to that subspecies would be appropriate), but rather a group of numerous subspecies, only one of which is R. v. phyllis. (What would actually correspond in scope with post-lump R. v. phyllis is pre-lump R. phyllis phyllis, which doesn’t seem to have been used much for IDing.) Swapping the species R. phyllis to the subspecies R. v. phyllis would imply that all current species-level IDs of R. phyllis correspond to the current subspecies R. p. phyllis/post-lump R. v. phyllis, which—given that that subspecies seems to be restricted to the Asian mainland and the islands of the Sunda Shelf as far as i can tell, and over 2000 observations of R. phyllis, 2/5 of all iNat observations of R. phyllis, fall outside that region—is incorrect (and would create thousands of incorrect extralimital IDs of R. v. phyllis conflicting with their proper subspecies IDs).
Since iNat doesn’t currently support subspecies groups (i.e., in this case, an informal “phyllis group” taxon between the species R. variegata and subspecies, to which all current IDs of R. phyllis could be accurately referred, with the subspecies corresponding to pre-lump R. phyllis grafted under it), there are two courses of action that wouldn’t result in unreasonably large numbers of erroneous subspecies IDs of R. v. phyllis: 1. simply swapping R. phyllis into R. variegata (the simplest option, though it loses existing ID precision where R. phyllis approaches/overlaps with pre-lump R. variegata), and 2. manually swapping each subspecies of R. phyllis to its counterpart under R. variegata and then performing an atlased split of R. phyllis, with the outputs of the split being all of its subspecies under R. variegata (transferring all species-level R. phyllis records to their corresponding subspecies) (or alternatively just two split outputs, R. v. phyllis [atlased where it approaches/overlaps with pre-lump R. variegata] and species-level R. variegata [atlased everywhere else where it’s less worth distinguishing them from pre-lump R. variegata]). (In any case, transferring all of the 17000+ currently-active species-level IDs of R. phyllis to R. v. phyllis wouldn’t be appropriate unless all other subspecies of R. phyllis were to be synonymized with it and no longer recognized as separate subspecies.)
Yes, thank you for your input. This is the perfect way to do this.
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