Species of Conyza on Erigeron taxonomy page

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Safari

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/50879-Erigeron
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1197689-Conyza-burkartii

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

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

Under the Erigeron taxonomy tab Conyza species are listed, I am not sure why this is, but I did notice that the Conyza genus is not accepted in iNat’s taxonomy and does redirect you to Erigeron, so should these be changed?

unfortunately, this is a problem that exists outside of iNaturalist. no name in Erigeron has ever been published for these “Conyza” species; they were presumably originally described under the names they appear as on the page that you see. the rules of nomenclature require that someone actually clearly and formally make a “combination” of these names under the genus Erigeron in the literature. until that happens – and it may not happen quickly, since taxonomy and nomenclature receive very little funding or attention these days – they have to be treated under the name “Conyza”, even if they are thought to be related to members of Erigeron. in iNaturalist, this problem can only be dealt with by “grafting” un-combined names to the genus where they are most closely related.

this is even more common in the fungi world; for example, the powdery mildew genus Erysiphe has a synonym, “Pseudoidium”. on the page for that genus, you can see the exact same problem where it contain un-combined “Pseudoidium” species.

3 Likes

Welcome to the forum!

Yes, this isn’t a bug as described above, just a way to deal with a very inconvenient nomenclatural position.

For any future issues like this, the best thing to do is check the taxon (in this case the genus) for any existing flags about the issue, and raise one if you have a question or think something is incorrect.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.