Swapping a species back into to a previously active genus while keeping the current genus active

Curators
1

Hi everyone, forgive me if this is a pretty basic question, but it’s my first time doing a taxon swap so I want to be sure of what I’m doing before I commit anything.

I want to swap Liodytes pygaea into Seminatrix pygaea (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/163636). Liodytes should remain an active taxon because it still has two valid species in it (L. rigida and L. alleni). This is essentially just reversing an older now invalid swap from Seminatrix pygaea to Liodytes pygaea, so Seminatrix and Seminatrix pygaea are on iNat, but are currently set as inactive (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/28717-Seminatrix and https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/28717-Seminatrix).

I read through the resources for curators and drafted the swap linked above, but I got this unintended disagreeements message:

image
image1452×182 44 KB

So, I also drafted a “split” of Liodytes into Liodytes and Seminatrix (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/163641).

Would the following be a good way to go about doing this change?

  1. Set Seminatrix and Seminatrix pygaea as active taxa again
  2. Split Liodytes into Liodytes and Seminatrix (so that IDs of just “Liodytes” on what are currently Liodytes pygaea observations get changed into just “Natricinae” and therefore don’t conflict with updated IDs of Seminatrix pygaea when that swap happens)
  3. Swap Liodytes pygaea to Seminatrix pygaea (and swap children automatically too to cover the three subspecies – Liodytes and Seminatrix are the same gender, so should work fine)
  4. Make Liodytes pygaea and its subspecies inactive

And one other question – for the “split” of Liodytes into Liodytes and Seminatrix, there is this message:

image

I can add atlases to the Seminatrix genus and species taxa pages, but there is broad overlap between the ranges of Seminatrix and Liodytes. Am I correct in interpreting this note as meaning that IDs of “Liodytes” to the genus level only will change to Natricinae, but species-level IDs within Liodytes (e.g., identifications of Liodytes alleni) won’t be affected?

Thanks, and please let me know if I can restate anything more clearly if needed.

1 Like
2

This looks pretty good to me. Your steps 1 and 4 aren’t necessary because they will happen automatically with the taxon changes. I would also link to the flag in the change: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/637018

Correct. The system is only going to update genus level IDs. Whether or not atlases are helpful and worth the time is up to interpretation. Often they are, but sometimes not.

1 Like
3

Ok, great – thank you!

4

I haven’t worked on reptile taxonomy on iNat recently but I noticed the taxon framework says it’s “Sourced to Reptile Database: 21 December 2019”. I’m not sure if that’s an intentional backdated taxonomy or what the current taxonomic authority is meant to be, but if everything is correct be sure also adjust the taxon framework relationships - both the input and output taxa in the draft taxon change you linked to say relationship “unknown”.

1 Like
5

I’m not sure why it says the 2019 version, but I added in new frameworks for Liodytes and Seminatrix using the correct links to the current pages on the Reptile Database. It still says 21 December 2019 though… I think maybe someone added the reptile database as a source for a taxon change around then and because of that the date associated with any links to the website says that?

6

Scott Loarie sets up the taxon framework sources, so it would have just been him.

7

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