I frequently see subspecies on iNaturalist listed with the same common name as the parent species. This is confusing, as if one isn’t looking too carefully a person can easily accidentally select a specific subspecies when they meant to identify something at the full species level. I have seen this error (and even done it myself) a good number of times at this point, so I’ve gotten into the habit of flagging subspecies I see like this.
Up until recently, I had assumed this naming convention (subspecies with the same common name as the full species) was generally disallowed and/or highly discouraged (perhaps with a few narrow exceptions), largely due to this passage in the Curator Guide:
"Do not add common names for infraspecies that are identical to the common name of the parent species, e.g. if the species is Cola coke and it has the subspecies Cola coke ssp. classic and Cola coke ssp. zero, don’t add the common name “Coke” for the subspecies. That will just confuse people who are trying to add an ID for the species Cola coke and make it harder for people who actually want to choose the subspecies. Instead, try to choose unique common names like “Coke Classic” and “Coke Zero.”
However, I have now had a few users argue that this policy does not apply to nominate (type) subspecies. This is confusing to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, if this rule doesn’t apply to nominate subspecies, then it doesn’t solve the confusion problem at all, since a person could still easily identify to the nominate subspecies when they intended only to identify at species level. Secondly, in this imagined scenario, wouldn’t Coke Classic be the type subspecies, even if it doesn’t share its subspecific epithet with the species? I suppose that’s ambiguous.
So what’s the verdict here? Should type subspecies share the common name with the full species?
Yes I’ve had to wrangle with this too. It’s a problem that’s basically been created by places like iNaturalist trying to juggle the issue of avoiding duplicate names over multiple taxonomic ranks.
I’ve seen some people get around this with specific common names such as “Dazzling Sunbeam (nominate)” or “Regular Dazzling Sunbeam” to separate the name from the base species. But then you start treading into inventing common names territory, which is technically also against the rules.
The boring rule-affiliated answer is probably that we just have to accept nominate subspecies just can’t have common names. But is that really the best solution….
Personally I’m generally not sure every subspecies needs a common name to begin with. Subspecies to me feel like kind of a niche concept available for those who want it but otherwise not super relevant to most users, though I’m totally aware that others may feel differently. But generally, I think the answer that nominate subspecies generally shouldn’t have common names is a perfectly acceptable answer.
I would say it’s not, as the type subspecies would have to be Cola coke coke, a subspecies not addressed in this example scenario. So this scenario doesn’t really have anything to say one way or the other about naming nominate subspecies.
I think the issue is that nominate subspecies frequently don’t have distinct common names, so either you copy the species’ common name, invent a new common name, or just don’t give that subspecies a name at all. Personally I’d say just leave them without common names.
I think the main cause of this issue is for taxa with subspecies-heavy identification. Like cactus, sometimes birds, that have two or multiple important subtaxa where every observation is identified at that level.
Yes, of course if Coke was a real species then Cola coke coke would be the type subspecies. However, if we look at the soft drinks this entire theoretical scenario is based on, then Coke Classic is the standard variety of the beverage, which would imply that it is the nominate subspecies. Coke Classic is the original, everything else is just a spin-off of it. So it makes sense that Cola coke classic would be the type species, even it doesn’t fit conventional naming rules.
The thing is, for most species, the subspecies don’t actually have common names that are different from the species name. Giving them a different name would constitute making up a common name, which we aren’t supposed to do. Yes, giving a species and subspecies different “common” names is confusing, but it’s also real.
Do most subspecies even have a common name different from the species as a whole though? I don’t know that this is a problem unique to nominate subspecies.
If you’re referring to just the species, you’d call it “wood spurge” - but if you were referring to the subspecies, those would probably be the names used. The first is the native, the second is a garden escape (from Turkey) with lots of other names - Turkish Wood Spurge, Mrs Robb’s Bonnet.
Another possible option is to keep the name on the nominate subspecies and remove it from the species. I imagine that is probably less likely to be useful or popular though.
That’s definitely a worse option in my mind, as far more users are going to be identifying to the species level than the subspecies level. Also the common name for the species should apply to all of its subspecies anyway, at least most of the time.
It may just depend on how popular the subspecies is and whether it was once treated as a species, e.g. the Red-Spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax) is the widely accepted common name for a NA butterfly - no confusion! Was once (Howe 1975) treated as a separate species. Limenitis arthemis is listed as Red-Spotted Admiral in iNaturalist, but I recall that it used to be just White Admiral.
Most subspecies are probably not widely known or used, but not all. So it makes sense to generally use the species common name for all its subspecies unless …
I believe that for North American reptiles and amphibians the standardized common name is purposefully made to be different for the nominotypical subspecies versus the species as a whole. That’s not true for mammals which are less well standardized. Not sure for bird subspecies.
Maybe. Sometimes it’s clear that the common name for the species was only meant for the nominate subspecies (say, it got the name before it was considered to have subspecies), in which case a new name for the species would be a better fit.
In some species, the subspecies do have common names. In many others they don’t. Making up names for the subspecies of obscure plants doesn’t see worthwhile to me.
I think this feature request would help a lot here, since seeing the subspecies scientific name is a bit jarring when you’re used to a common name for that species and I can understand the impulse to want to add a common name as a result.
The herpetologists in North America really got into the details when standardizing common names. Check out these guidelines that the committee for common names developed:
The full species name is generally meant to apply to all subspecies for most birds, though there are a few exceptions to this. However, typically if multiple bird species are lumped, a new common name is created to encompass all of the subspecies.
