Search issue with species names with repeated parts

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Works in both Firefox and Edge

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

When searching, both in the main search field and for taxa (e.g. when identifying), entering two groups of letters separated by a space seems to return many results with only one repetition when they start with the same letters. For example a search for “per pert” returns many search results with only one instance of the string “pert”. This makes it annoying to search for species names with large overlap between the genus name and epithet such as Pertusaria pertusa or Polycauliona polycarpa.

To reproduce

Step 1: Find a search box and search for one of the examples above using the common method of entering the first few letters of the genus name and epithet

Example: I want to ID this observation as Pertusaria pertusa - usually entering the first 3 letters of genus and epithet would give very relevant results however in this case it does not (though the results are different from simply typing “per”)

Even “pertsua pertusa” is insufficient and is actually somehow worse than just “pertusa” as in this search box that will yield Pertusaria pertusa as the 8th result

3 Likes

pertu gets me Pertusaria.
I would accept that, then get to species in a second step.
Whatever workaround solves your case by case.

And also Halyomorpha halys and Lygaeus kalmii kalmii (or any other nominal subspecies) - I’d love to see this search function improved as well.