Species Only Common Name Causes Misidentifications - What to do?

General
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Coming off of a discussion on this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/85273529

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Agree with you, they can look up Flesh Fly topic where it all was discussed. Evey used common name is good, part of guidelines that say about being specific means don’t put high level names to species.

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I looked up that flesh fly topic (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/changing-common-names-common-flesh-fly/11255) and will note that this very species was discussed and it seemed to have been concluded that “Aster Leafminer” was best kept as a name. I welcome more discussion here but I’m readding the name now.

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I agree with ceiseman. If a common name is “in use”, that does not mean it SHOULD be used. It means it MAY be used. In other words, the “in use” criterion is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for usage on iNat.

There are many bad common names “in use”. IMO, no common name is better than a bad common name. The latter leads to errors.

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I’d be fine dropping this name because of the following criteria:

  1. The name is new and barely established. Other “sources” using this name copied it from the original use. That doesn’t mean it should be given benefit of the doubt.
  2. The name has no unique specification to one species over 40 or more others, which are closely related. It was arbitrarily added to one taxon with no specific basis.
  3. There is no evidence this name has practical use or benefit. If anything, someone using this name will use it to assume their aster leaf mine is that one species.
  4. Several past instances of this, for instance “common green lacewing”, a European species being applied to American, Australian and Asian specimens with the sole reasoning of the common name have resulted in an agreement to drop the common name.
  5. It is ok to have no common names for complex groups whereby the individual members have no defining characters that could form common names. This is clearly one of them.

Amendment: in the cases where a solution was reached, it was almost always far more feasible to have a common name on the genus or otherwise umbrella taxon for all the involved species. Since “aster” leaf miners are across multiple genera, there is no application for this common name in an efficient way.

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I think nearly everyone on that flesh fly thread would disagree with #4.

I completely agree that it is okay for species to not have common names! But of they have one, it should be on iNat, no matter how practical it is or is not.

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Could the strikethrough on the name be removed? If the conclusion is reached that the name should be deleted, the name should be removed, not given a strikethrough. For now I think we should keep the name but remove the strikethrough until a conclusion (whatever it may be) is reached.

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Disagree. A bad common name that is not in general use should not be added to iNat.

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It is in use though.

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It isn’t the first result that comes up when you google ‘aster leafminer’; the first is a moth Leucospilapteryx venustella, then something about calcomyza humeralis, then an article claiming that in 1948 ‘Aster Leaf Miner’ - Liriomyza flaveola - was the only economically important aster leaf miner in Los Angeles, then a bug guide result for Bucculatrix staintonella. So it seems like the term ‘aster leafminer’ is best described as being in common use to the extent that it describes any leaf miner which affects asters, not necessarily for calcomyza humeralis specifically.

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I’d forgotten (if I saw that comment before) that the name appears on ITIS. Definitely doesn’t change my opinion about keeping the name though. I just checked under Calycomyza humeralis, and quickly found an example of the kind of misidentification this leads to:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/89196539

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This name isn’t in use in reference to a specific species. I agree entirely with Charlie’s points in the observation.

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I have come across a number of these situations (mostly not on iNaturalist though) and I think the most important consideration for these sorts of names is @silversea_starsong’s second point:

Most of these names are in common usage and for that reason I think that they should stay on iNat, but in the vast majority of cases the common name is not used for one species but for a group of species that are all similar. A website or guide book may include one species out of a few hundred that look similar, and they are generally obliged to supply a common name of some sort to help people out. But when that name is used in the community it is used for ALL of the similar species, not just one single one. The common names tend to get used for a much broader taxonomic spread than just the single species that they were originally assigned to, and for that reason their usage here on iNat should reflect that. In this case it is not so simple because leafminers are a rather polyphyletic group, but if it was just a single genus for example, then the name “Aster Leafminer” should be used for the genus here on iNat because that is how the name is used in the community. If the species cannot be distinguished easily then any sort of common name used outside of a specialised context is very obviously used for more than one species even if certain guide books or websites may only use it for a single species.

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The other problem with common names is that people can be offended by them. I won’t name any here, but there are at least 3 common names that have been deleted from iNat in the last month or so even though on the taxon page (sourced from Wikipedia) the deleted common names are prominently displayed. Of those 3, I deleted one (even though it’s still on the taxon page under about) and tried to defend another. For the one I deleted I was chastised for being too hasty. For the second one, a few weeks later, I was chastised for trying to defend it. In both cases the common names could be regarded as offensive by some people. So it’s a no win situation. Delete, bad. Defend, bad. In both situations I tried to be neutral but clearly that strategy didn’t work for me. So I simply won’t engage in conversations of that sort anymore because no matter what decision is made someone will complain and I end up feeling stressed and unwell. Maybe a better solution would be to not allow common names for ID, but that might exclude a whole heap of IDs and make an unnecessary barrier. I don’t know.

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In the sense of leaf miners, “aster” leaf miner is about equivalent to the use of “common”. Aster refers (broadly) to Asteraceae, which is a family with a great diversity of species and associated mining insects. As such, the concept of an asteraceous leafminer is so frequent that it might as well be a synonym of “common leafminer”. Even though it could be used to just refer to the genus Aster, that’s a bit of a messy application since it only represents a very small fraction of the involved host plants.

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I personally find the idea of allowing all names, including impractical names, a bit chaotic. Granted, I’m usually in support of “archiving” all existing common names on iNat, so it’s not common that I’m against the use of one. The only time I am is when it’s a poorly supported name that’s too ambiguous to use, e.g. 1 species out of 10, 15 or more that are equally “common” or share the generic features used to establish 1 single common name.

But by your logic, I could just make up a common name for another species tomorrow and it feels like you’d be likely to defend its use. That’s not the problem of the topic at hand admittedly, though it’s always worth considering for discussion purposes whenever this subject comes up.

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Common names are being “made up” all over the place to not offend people. I’d just delete them altogether especially when the offensive common name is in the about tab of the taxon page. I don’t think making up common names serves any purpose except to cause confusion.

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I absolutely agree with you!

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I’m not comfortable sharing the specific names because: a) I was accused in the first instance in being too hasty in deleting it; and b) in the second instance I took on board the feedback from the first instance and decided not to be “hasty” and discuss things in a way that, I thought, was objective only to be told that discussion was not permissible (despite the purported offensive name being in bold on the taxon info page, so the first thing anyone sees). The other curator didn’t “imply” I should not have defended the common name, they said “you are not allowed to discuss this” (paraphrased). So I won’t. In the other case when I was “too hasty” I deleted the name of the northern chink moth, or something like that. To me, chink in that context is not derogatory (it’s a legit word) but I deleted it anyway. So when a few days/weeks later a similar objection to a common name came up I tried to be objective and did not delete the common name and got told off. So, as said, cannot win.

Edit: And, so, I am not going to enter such debates at all anymore I don’t think. I am the most non-racist person you could ever meet. I left the conversation feeling accused of supporting racism and that offended me a lot. I felt that I let myself down, I felt that I let my dearly loved dead father down. I actually cried. Feeling like this is not why I am on iNat

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Maybe. I’d rather just try and forget it though.

As an aside, I’d like to apologise for taking this thread somewhat off-topic, but I do think it’s important to note that curators have feelings as well and we’re confronted with this stuff like common names every day. I can’t speak for others but sometimes the decisions I make hurt me. It’s not easy.

Edit: the thing that annoys me most is that the comments I made are there on the flag forever. I could delete them because they seemed to be misunderstood. But because people replied I cannot do that without making the problem even worse. I wish there was a way to delete every single comment made on the flag. Maybe staff can do it, I don’t know.