Hey, I am trying to catalogue the native plant species of tunisia. during this process I found several instances where the native distribution range of plant on inaturalist was too broad, let’s take as an example the Yellow Bee-Orchid.
This is the observation distribution of this orchid on intaturalist:
and this is its distribution according to Plants of the World Online:
These both seem to more or less match up, but on inaturalist its marked as native to the whole of africa:
In this case, its also marked as native in the individual countries which somewhat undermines the issue, but I came across other instances where a species was marked as native to the whole of africa and not to the individual regions where it should be.
In situations like this, should I make the native distribution more precise by removing the broad place and adding any missing specific regions?
Please do not remove the broad place. Native to Africa just means native to some part of Africa, even if it’s a tiny corner of one country. This is a standard way of describing whether a species is native or not at the continent level.
Here in North America we can have plants that are native to North America but introduced and harmfully invasive west of the Rocky Mountains, for example, so land managers always need to ask, is it native to my exact area?
I do think you can add a native status for any country or smaller region that a reliable source says it’s native to.
[@roadside_rambler and I composed the same conceptual reply simultaneously.] I think you may be misinterpreting the geographical concept of “native”. From a continental viewpoint, which is what the place “Africa” implies, the species in your example is native. It does not occur everywhere in Africa; that’s a different question and it is addressed by the individual country listings. Basically, listing a species as native to a larger geographical place should not imply that it occurs (natively or otherwise) in all subunits of that place.
Thanks a lot @gcwarbler and @roadside_rambler I now understand how it works,
in fact I added a native status to a plant in tunisia and a status for africa appeared automatically so its safe to say that this is intended.
