But I want to point out a big reason why the current policy is problematic.
I work mostly with plants, and there’s no authority assigning or creating common names for plant taxa. Most common names for plants came about the regular way, through usage by people who named the plants they encountered in the places they lived and traveled. We all know the drawbacks of common names, which are imprecise in a bunch of different ways and regularly misrepresent the relationships between organisms. But they’re a lot more familiar and less threatening for most people, and having good support for them in iNat is a great way to further the mission of connecting new people with nature.
One thing that happens pretty regularly is that new infrataxon is described for an existing plant species that has an established scientific and common name. In this case we go from one taxon to three (1 species + 2 subspecies). Similarly one existing species may be demoted to become an infrataxon of another, going from two taxa to three.
In either case the three taxa all have scientific names, but (unless the protologue author proposed new common names) we’re short by at least one common name. You may feel that’s no big deal because there’s no requirement for every taxon to have a common name, but there can be an unintentional effect on novice observers.
Let’s say an author demotes the uncommon plant Pileoflavus pauciflorus (Few-flowered Yellow Hat) to be a subspecies of the very common Pileoflavus campestris (Yellow Hat). The result under current iNat policy is as follows:
Pileoflavus campestris (Yellow Hat)
Pileoflavus campestris ssp. campestris [no common name]
Now let’s consider the effect on an average iNat user who saw a plant on a hike that someone told them is a “Yellow Hat”. They upload their photo(s) and type “Yellow Hat” next to “What did you see”.
When both plants were separate species, the user would see two options: “Yellow Hat” and “Few-flowered Yellow Hat”, each of which accurately reflects the name of a leaf taxon.
After the taxonomy is changed to include the subspecies, the user also sees two options: “Few-flowered Yellow Hat” (a subspecies) and “Yellow Hat” (its parent species). The more common subspecies P. campestris ssp. campestris isn’t offered, because iNat rules say we can’t give this the same common name as the parent.
The result is that the more common subspecies attracts fewer IDs than we would expect its prevalence to merit. The lack of a common name skews the apparent importance of the two taxa in other places as well.
While most of us on the forum probably use scientific names far more, the average iNat user thinks mostly in common names (and this is how we all started out). We’re not respecting these users by insisting that nominate subspecies need to be stripped of common names in pursuit of some purist ideal of common name uniqueness. If @comradejon’s proposal were implemented the nominate subspecies might show either like this:
Pileoflavus campestris ssp. campestris (Yellow Hat ssp. campestris)
or like this:
Pileoflavus campestris ssp. campestris (a subspecies of Yellow Hat)
Either of those seems a better solution than showing no common name at all.
Is it necessarily a bad thing for some of the subspecies to get fewer IDs? If a user doesn’t know what subspecies are (which are already often an ill-defined concept), then shouldn’t they probably be just identifying to species anyway?
I see this situation from both sides, and it can be frustrating no matter how you slice or dice it. Here’s a couple of scenarios and examples:
Example #1
The Vaux’s Swift (Chaetura vauxi) has seven subspecies divided into 4 distinct morphological, ecological, or perhaps even genetically. The nominate subspecies is a part of a monotypic group that has always been known in literature as the Vaux’s Swift. And regardless of the future systematic placement of the other three groups, this nominate group is always going to be referred to as Vaux’s Swift. That is its common name.
Example #2
I have seen the application of non-default common names of species used for subspecies. A few years ago, Circus aeruginosus had its official common name changed from Eurasian Marsh Harrier –> Western Marsh Harrier. Since that new name was implemented on the site, someone named the nominate subspecies the Eurasian Marsh Harrier, and called the other subspecies the Northwest African Marsh Harrier. Don’t know where those names were pulled from, but they’re currently in use, even though Eurasian Marsh Harrier is still a common name for the species.
Example #3
I think the issue also extends outside of the species–subspecies correlations. I have changed the default common name for Callospermophilus latearlis from “Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel” to “Common Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel” three times in the past two months. Curators keep re-defaulting the former name, even though there are multiple Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels as species level taxa, so that cannot be used without an additional specifier (it is also the name used in the taxonomic source).
Example #4
Sometimes the subspecies with the same common name is not even the nominate subspecies. The grasshopper Trimerotropis verruculata is an example of this because subspecies suffusa is the one commonly called the Crackling Forest Grasshopper. But that common name is equally applicable to the species as a whole. Whenever I hear a entomologist specifically refer to the nominate subspecies, it is Crackling Locust, but in any other context, it is Crackling Forest Grasshopper.
As for my opinion on this, it really has to be a case-by-case situation. I know we have broken rules (by “making up” names) to satisfy the rule above via the community choosing a specifier for the nominate race (ex. Eurasian Kestrel –> Western Eurasian Kestrel). But also in most cases, the nominate race is likely going to be the most expected subspecies, so what harm comes from it if someone choses subspecies level because they didn’t realize two taxa had the same name?
Usefully, if you were the idiot who added the same common name for the subspecies as the parent species, you can also delete it without taking up a curator’s time.
I don’t think this is necessarily the result of a lack of common name. Not choosing the nominate/more common subspecies is pretty frequent even in cases where the “regular” subspecies has been assigned a common name. (For example, Malva sylvestris sylvestris vs. mauritiana in Germany.) This has to do with salience – we tend to feel that it is more important to mark what stands out or departs from the norm; what is unmarked is assumed to be the default.
(This is known in linguistics as “markedness” – in some cases it may grammatically encode social biases, but it is not inherently negative, merely a strategy that humans use to structure information and determine what is relevant.)
This used to be my practice for Malva sylvestris, but it then leads to unnecessary notifications about disagreeing IDs from those who later add the subspecies info, so I will probably stay away from doing that.
I didn’t say that the subspecies information isn’t important to botanists. I was merely noting that there are other reasons besides a lack of common name why people (for example, non-botanists, but likely some botanists as well) may not identify subspecies in some cases when they do in others. This scenario presumably applies to non-botanist regular users in any case, since botanists would not be deterred from adding a subspecies just because it lacks a common name.
I’m not sure I follow? If you are IDing only at species level, people adding subspecies info later will not be disagreeing with your ID, they will be refining it. There was a recent change to notifications that means you should now be able to choose not to get notifications for subspecies IDs.
Yeah, I’d say the fact that CV doesn’t suggest subspecies is a huge part of the reason observations get placed at species. I’d guess that most users use the CV to “auto-complete” their IDs even when they know the correct ID to save time (I know I do). If I’m observing a Monarch in Pennsylvania, the CV says “Monarch”, I know it’s a Monarch, I select Monarch. I also know which subspecies of Monarch it is, as we only have one subspecies in my region, but typing out the subspecies name seems a waste of my time when every researcher is already aware of the subspecies based on the location, and the species name has popped up “automatically” when I uploaded the photo.
My Monarch subspecies does have a common name now, and that hasn’t changed my practice at all. If I’m using the filters correctly, Pennsylvania currently has about 11,000 monarch observations, all of which are the same subspecies, but only 227 of them are ID’d to subspecies. I’m sure if CV suggested “Migratory Monarch” as an option, those numbers would be very different. I’m not suggesting that the CV ought to suggest subspecies. But I think that’s a much bigger factor than the common name issue.
I do, normally want to get notifications about subspecies IDs, especially so for my own observations.
I have this off, otherwise I would be getting too much noise: “Confirming IDs If you turn this off, you will no longer be notified about IDs that agree with yours unless they have additional remarks.”
However, if someone adds a subspecies ID, it is not an ID "that agrees with mine and I will get a notification.
Obviously the use of common names for subspecies varies a lot among different taxa, based on what the users in those groups think is important. As I mentioned, herpetologists in North America have given unique common names to subspecies, perhaps because there are some distinctive features of subspecies that even a hobbyist will notice. The mammalogists don’t seem to care as much and, to be frank, a lot of mammal subspecies are just not that well-defined. The mammal subspecies that do have established common names are often those that are of conservation concern. But I do recall seeing the species common name repeated for the nominotypical subspecies for some mammals. I don’t personally know that many birders who pay close attention to subspecies for most birds … the juncos are probably one exception. It all comes down to what the specialists and hobbyists in those broad taxa think is important.
That is very questionable for most species that hardly ever appear in any common usage. Most of them are just slightly less scientific, but still defined by some authority, names, just in some living language.
And I know of at least one example of the reverse: “Rufous-sided Towhee” disappeared when it was split into Eastern Towhee and Spotted Towhee. Neither new species got to keep the old name.
And as has been discussed many times, a whole slew of new problems is created. Namely, that the name keeps changing. Example: the plant which has long been known in the houseplant trade as Haworthia, because that was its correct genus for a long time, is now Haworthiposis attenuata. So anyone who identifies it by the name they know will find it knocked back to Subfamily Asphodeloideae as soon as someone takes it to the species level. That is, unless they go by its common name of “Zebra Haworthia.”
Frankly, I’m tired of this. Every time anything to do witn common names is discussed, someone feels the need to bring this up.
Very true for some grasses. Example: Bluebunch Wheatgrass has been placed in 5 different genera in the time I’ve known about it (plus it was in a few more long before that), but it’s been Bluebunch through all that.
I don’t think it’s as much “the subspecies is not important”, more “putting the subspecies when it’s ‘the most common / default’ isn’t done very often” - in Europe I rarely see people putting Malva sylvestris sylvestris or Calystegia sepium sepium because it’s the default, the most common taxa, widespread. But people do put Malva sylvestris mauritiana or Calystegia sepium roseata because the subspecies there is interesting rather than “eh, just the default”.
Or at least - I know I do that when IDing Calystegia. I know the European IDers for bindweeds rarely tag stuff as C. sepium sepium - but they will often tag C. sepium roseata.
That actually happens a lot. For example; Blue-headed, Cassin’s, and Plumbeous Vireo were once a single species called the Solitary Vireo. Additional examples include the Western Flycatcher being split into Pacific-slope and Cordilleran Flycatcher (then relumped back into Western just a few years ago ), Mew Gull being split into Common and Short-billed Gull, and if Yellow-rumped Warbler is split (again), the children taxa will be Myrtle and Audubon’s Warbler.
), Mew Gull being split into Common and Short-billed Gull, and if Yellow-rumped Warbler is split (again), the children taxa will be Myrtle and Audubon’s Warbler.