Source of common names for Canadian species

[pfau_tarleton]

@JeremyHussell

The part that’s relevant to curators is that the only way (I’m aware of) for non-curators to get a name deleted is to create a flag on the species and convince a curator to do it. So, in this situation, where the same source has created many names which have been added to iNaturalist, each flag attracts the attention of a new curator who has likely never heard of wildspecies.ca, resulting in the same evidence and arguments having to be presented repeatedly. In my case, I think I’ve gotten involved with this same issue too many times, and I need advice on how to handle it better.

Is there a better way to handle this, when the bad names are scattered across multiple taxa, and each name is bad in its own unique way?

Since no one has offered a suggestion, I’ll propose one. I know you’ve compiled a list of names that are low-quality, and posted it on a flag for salticids. Consider creating a wiki here in the curator forum to briefly explain the situation and to have an editable list of these problematic names. Anyone can then link to that wiki when making decisions or comments regarding a specific name (such as when creating a flag). This way, the list is available in a single location and it can grow and be updated over time. This will help with tracking decisions and inform future whack-a-moleing.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-do-i-create-a-wiki/10819

[upupa-epops]

I’ve previously stated elsewhere that the wildspecies.ca names seem to consistently have issues constituting

@upupa-epops

basically a checklist of “what not to do when making your own common names”, which to me seems fairly predictable for an effort by a relatively small group of people to come up with names for literally every species in an entire country. You need to have both expertise and creativity to do it well.

…so I agree with not using names from that source unless they’re starting to be used elsewhere.

@pfau_tarleton

To be more careful in their creation of common names so that you’re not unhappy with the result. And perhaps to remove (or replace) particularly egregious names like the pink orbweaver.

What number or quality of names on such a petition do you think would be sufficient to inspire change? Does anyone have any connections within that team who can give intel on why they’re doing it (and doing it poorly)? It’s obviously a lot of effort but seems futile if curators and specialists of iNat, which is likely the platform with the most compatibility in interests and values, view the names disfavourably. Perhaps someone from iNat Canada/Canadian Wildlife Federation reaching out would be more effective?

But as I said earlier

@upupa-epops

You need to have both expertise and creativity to do it well.

and I don’t know if that team realistically has the resources to accomplish that.

[pfau_tarleton]

@upupa-epops

What number or quality of names on such a petition do you think would be sufficient to inspire change?

I sent an email to wildspecies.ca (the email at their website), and included a link to the Salticidae flag as an example of our concern. They replied acknowledging some issues and will be investigating those once they have the capacity to do so. They also said that the program and their processes are changing and that now is the perfect time for them to receive feedback to inform those changes. My recommendation is for those with concerns to reach out to them directly.

[sjl197]

Reading with popcorn.

There was once such a thing as “iNaturalist Canada Steering Committee”
https://www.inaturalist.ca/pages/supporters

I’ll keep my feelings on that to myself.

[JeremyHussell]

Created this: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wildspecies-ca-summary-for-curators/85035

Adding a list of removed names with reasons why will have to wait until I have more free time.

[JeremyHussell]

I forgot today was a holiday, so I had the time to put together a list of spider names from the wildspecies list which have been added to iNaturalist. It’s posted in a rather crude form in the summary thread.

[yorkniu]

The Canadian/NatureServe common names are indeed quite the headache for myself, and I’m sure numerous other taxon curators. They are often added seemingly for the sake of “completeness” without any consideration that nobody uses or has even heard of these names; in the meantime, they are often misleading, vague, and unhelpful. I have in fact written to people at NatureServe and had certain ones removed from their website. You cannot do that with names people use like “spotted lanternfly” or “tent caterpillar” but you can with those that exist only in catalogs.

The only real solution to the issue is if iNaturalist clarifies their guidelines on what might constitute an acceptable common name (obviously a difficult topic). Until then, debating back and forth about these in flags and forums seem futile.

[pfau_tarleton]

@JeremyHussell

Whipped Blahblah Money Spider

Looks like they took it really seriously!

[JeremyHussell]

Yeah, there are ~400 dwarf spider species in Canada, and they’re all so tiny that they’re only identifiable under a microscope, so none of them have common names. Mostly they just did straight-word-for-word translations of the scientific names. Somewhere in the middle of that is genus Phlattothrata with obscure meaning, so it seems what they came up with was “Blahblah” instead of an attempt to do better.

What bothers me more is that they named the sub-family “Money Spiders” instead of “Dwarf Spiders” - the former term is mostly used in the UK, the latter in the US.

[JeremyHussell]

I’ve been putting together a flag to review English Linyphiidae names, since they have an incredible number of species and almost no common names. In the course of it I’ve found that there seems to have been an early spreadsheet of names being developed for Wild Species which got imported into NatureServe. Unfortunately I’m running into character limits both here and on the flag, so it’s difficult to present the full evidence.

What it boils down to: the vast majority of the names (103) were added in single sessions by one user on one day, 100% of the species in those sessions were from the Wild Species list, and 100% of the names are in NatureServe Explorer. All names for species not in the Wild Species list (23) were added one or a few at a time by many users at many different times, as were all names not in NatureServe Explorer, whether they were for Canadian species or not (29).

The first big session was in 2015 and added 55 names. All of the species are on the Wild Species list, and no names for species from elsewhere in the world were added. But the names do not match those in the 2015 report’s spreadsheet. My suspicion is that between 2010 and 2015 preliminary work was being done on creating spider names for the 2015 Wild Species report, and an early, incomplete version of the spreadsheet was imported to NatureServe Explorer. These preliminary names were later standardized for the 2015 report in various ways: family and genus names were standardized or added to the species names, untranslated components of the scientific name were translated to English, translation mistakes were corrected, spelling mistakes were corrected, etc.

By the time of the second big session in 2019 which added 40 names, the 2015 spreadsheet had also been imported to NatureServe Explorer, so many species now have both the preliminary and standardized English names in the database, with the preliminary ones displayed by default because they were added first. (So, yes, NatureServe uses the names with spelling and translation mistakes as their default display names.) I’ve verified that for every name added during these big sessions, NatureServe Explorer contains either the preliminary name, the 2015 name, and no other English name, or just the 2015 name.

To sum up, in Linyphiidae:

# species	# obs.
4	26,795	On the Wild Species list, verified pre-existing common names.
23	10,403	Not on the Wild Species List. (Mostly European species.)
6	10,885	On the Wild Species List, name not in NatureServe Explorer.
72	5,514	On the Wild Species List, name in NatureServe Explorer.
39	1,458	Name in both the 2015 Wild Species spreadsheet and NatureServe Explorer

The flag was originally just to deal with the last row, but now it looks like the names on the 2nd-to-last row also originated from the Wild Species project, and have all since been replaced by other names created by the Wild Species project.

[JeremyHussell]

Some common issues with the early names, for your amusement:

• Spelling mistakes:
  • Flaned Dwarf Weaver - probably meant to be “Flanged”
  • Tuffed Dwarf Weaver - probably meant to be “Tufted”
• Parts of the scientific name untranslated in the English name:
  • Rowensis Dwarf Weaver
  • Bog Carorita Weaver
  • Tundra Masikia Dwarf Weaver
  • Reprobrus Sheetweb Weaver
• Goofy translations:
  • Blazed Dwarf Weaver
  • Teethed Dwarf Weaver
  • Groovy Dwarf Weaver