When I want to find out what types of species are in any given area, or how many species have been observed in an area, I use the search bar on the website and set the filter to the area i want.
But it seems like species complex’s don’t show up in these search’s which greatly skews the numbers to me.
For example, my recent problem is that i wanted to see what types of treehoppers have been observed in New York. So i search treehoppers, set search filter to NY, and click species and see what there is. I scroll through and see that the Two Marked Treehopper, Enchenopa binotata, has been observed 2 times. I just saw one the other day so i think oh cool, an uncommon find. But come to find out it’s more like 125 observations for NY rather than 2 because the Two Marked Treehopper complex is not listed in the species tab in the search.
The species complex and the regular species are visually identical and pretty easily recognized, so the complex observations are just as valid as the regular ones in my opinion. And if it weren’t for the 2 “traditional” E. binotata observations than I wouldn’t have even known this species was in New York(but i already knew though and knew about the species complex because i like treehoppers lol).
I’ve ran into this same problem with other complex’s like the various Condylostylus fly species. To see the numbers or range of them you have to find the species complex first, then click it and view observations, and then you can use the search filters to find out how many have been observed in a specific area, state, country etc…
This is extremely annoying and seems unhelpful. Can this be changed? Or is there a good reason it’s set up like this? It would be cool to see them listed among the rest of the species when doing a search. Makes my brain view them as not valid species when it’s set up like this even though i know it’s not true lol.
Any thoughts or insight would be much appreciated. Thanks.
