This confusion with spp is honestly the main reason that I started this thread in addition to it going against the recommendations of the ICN
I feel like there’s also a bit of a feedback loop in affect here where everybody is used to seeing “ssp” on inat and therefore thinks that it is widely used outside of iNat too. However my google scholar links above objectively demonstrate that biologists who are actually naming subspecies are using the abbreviation “subsp.” much more.
Also, from what I’ve gathered from looking at the codebase, only a single digit number of lines of code would need to be changed to implement this and entirely delete “ssp.” from taxon names. I’d definitely put it in the trivial category.
Unless you are not on the plant-blind minor third of iNat.
But it clearly is still being widely used outside of iNaturalist - it’s just that subsp. appears to be somewhat more widely used: Google Ngram.
That difference does not in itself provide a reason for changing the status quo on iNaturalist, though. Is there any evidence is that using ssp. rather than subsp. in iNaturalist is causing any real (as opposed to hypothetical) problems for users?
“ssp.” and “subsp.” are synonyms and understood by all within the applicable context.
The meaning of both is clear even when misspelled.
There are reasons to keep the ssp abbreviation
A few other major databases that have used ssp. for many years:
https://www.itis.gov/
https://plants.usda.gov/
https://www.calflora.org/
The only one I have seen in use locally is ssp. however my experience is extremely limited.
It bears mentioning that any assessment of this abbreviation would need to be considered from a worldwide perspective.
You assume that botanists use these terms consistently. In theory, subspecies live in different areas and varieties have overlapping range but different habitats. In fact, many botanists use only subspecies and an American minority with considerable influence use only varieties. Some use both. When the two are used together, the subspecies has higher rank and variety is lower, e.g. Poa secunda ssp. juncifolia var. nevadensis, the Nevada Bluegrass. The most we can usually hope for is to be consistent within one species. Ah, the joys of plant taxonomy.
I’m a coauthor on a very recent paper in which we describe a new mammal subspecies. (Despite rumors to the contrary, the subspecies taxon is not dead yet among vertebrate taxonomists.) We used “n. subsp.” next to the new name. Maybe it should’ve been “nov. subsp.” for greater clarity but it’s a minor difference and I don’t think any version of the abbreviation for subspecies is all that confusing.
ssp. = subspecies
spp. = plural of species
I also personally think that in the specific iNat context the spp. / ssp. distinction/confusion isn’t especially relevant anyways, as the abbreviation is used exclusively in contexts where spp. wouldn’t make sense, and spp. isn’t used elsewhere on the site as far as I know.
I’ve done a bit of research on this and my conclusion is that variety and subspecies are essentially the same unless both are used. People have been very inconsistent from the beginning. Logic would dictate that you would never have a subspecies unless you already have a variety, the same way you would never have a subgenus unless you already have a genus and species but the scientists from the olden days just all did their own thing and said everyone else was wrong. I think the modern view is that subspecies and varieties are essentially young species or something well on their way to becoming a species. At least in the plant world, a high percentage of both subspecies and varieties could just as easily be considered species, and they often flip back and forth between being species or not over time based on particular authors’ whims.
The final sentences yes, but I do not understand that logic for “you would never have a subspecies unless you already have a variety”.
I disagree. However, I agree with the rest of what you said.
Genus
subgenus
Species
subspecies
Variety
subvariety
Form
The “sub” ranks are to put between the other ranks when you need an extra rank. Very early on some scientists broke that convention essentially treating subspecies and varieties the same way other scientists treated varieties and forma. And, of course, how any of those ranks are defined has been hotly debated from the beginning. As species are defined in so many different ways depending on the taxonomic group and author, there is likely to never be a consensus on how subspecies and varieties are defined except as something that isn’t quite distinct enough to be called a species yet. In most cases, there are no hard lines between when something evolves from one rank to another, so it is very hard to know where to draw that line.
That makes sense, I think.
Inconsistancy seems normal.
One of my fave Vars locally is “Three fingered - Five finger”
Five finger seems to be “everywhere-ish” in NZ https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?subview=map&taxon_id=342892 but three finger is only everywhereish in the South Island https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?subview=map&taxon_id=414035
I guess looking at different Celmisias (Mountain Daisies) from my area the Sub species do seem more isolated in general.
I agree with all the disagreements and clarifications above. And just to be thorough, I hereby disagree with myself.
This topic recapitulates over 150 years of frequently contentious nomenclatural debate and we’re not going to be able to resolve it here.
It’s instructive to look back at how Darwin and Wallace viewed variation in populations. Here’s some interesting reading on this topic:
Howard, D. J., and S. H. Berlocher (eds.). 1998. Endless Forms: Species and Speciation. Oxford Univ. Press.
Wheeler, Q. D., and R. Meier. 2000. Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory, A Debate. Columbia Univ. Press.
Bowler, P. H. 2003. Evolution, The History of an Idea. 3rd ed. Univ. of Calif. Press.
Coyne, J. A., and H. A. Orr. 2018. Speciation. Sinauer Assoc., Inc.; Oxford Univ. Press.
impressive that this thread, made entirely to make a single specific recommendation about how to display a rank marker, is more or less devolving into an infraspecies edition of one of the endless “let’s talk about nomenclature/evolution/philosophy-of-science” forum threads. it’s (mostly) great to think about these matters, but it’d be even greater to do it in a different dedicated thread. the actual topic here is focused enough to qualify as a feature request.
Except that they are spelled differently. 
Does ssp. appear anywhere else on iNat other than in front of the third name in a trinomial? If not, then the shorter abbreviation is fine and easily understood. Including it in the trinomial is actually unnecesssry in my opinion. But that’s my zoology bias.
This really seems to be a particular instance of the broader mismatch between the ICNafp and ICZN (each of which has changed over time, and each of which is applied unreliably in actual scientific literature).
ICNafp does recommend “subsp.” Zoologists tend to use “ssp.” even if there’s no particular ICZN recommendation. My understanding is that very early on the folks who built iNat initially had more of a zoology (herping?) focus. Combine that with limited screen real estate, and standardizing on “ssp.” makes some sense.
It would be possible to code iNat to display different abbreviations for animal and plant subspecies, but I would really rather see coding time applied to the myriad other feature requests that would deliver a better iNat. Using the “wrong” abbreviation for plant subspecies does not actually obscure the meaning of the taxon. In the distant future, when a single homogeneous code governs all taxa, iNat should of course use whatever abbreviation that code adopts.
What would be a real improvement would be for iNat to track the authority(ies) for each accepted taxon so as to distinguish between homonyms. But that would also be a lot of work and might benefit relatively few users…
