Taxonomy changes

General
1

What is the accepted procedure in case of superseded taxonomy? I have come across a case when one of my id’s had a relatively recent genus change, while there are existing records with the old classification. Should these now be marked as incorrect, because they changed?

2

For any given organism, there should be only one scientific name in use on iNat, which might or might not be the most current name (based on other recent references). Do you mean there are two active names for the same species on iNat?

1 Like
3

Depending on how many records are impacted by the change, it can take time for all the observations to be updated. It is not a ‘all at once’ process.

1 Like
4

Yes, this is what I mean.

5

There is only a handful of records for that species.

6

It really depends on what area the species is in. Many groups are tied to specific external references and will not get updated until a change is reflected there.

If you are aware of a taxa you think is outdated the best option is to go to the taxa page, click on the curation drop down towards the lower right and select the flag option and enter details there

1 Like
7

Thank you

8

Besides the latency in the system that @cmcheatle mentioned above, there are a couple of other ways this could happen:

  • It might have been a taxon split, meaning some observations moved to a new name, while others stayed under the old name. If you follow the link on the taxon change notice, you can see exactly what kind of change it was (and consider posting the link here, so we can all take a look).
  • In the account settings, users have the ability to opt out of automatically accepting taxon changes. That has the potential to leave some observations identified under the old (but now inactivated) name.
4 Likes
9

I think we may be having a conversation here while using the same term to mean 2 different things. I think we are calling ‘taxonomy change’ to mean 2 different things.

  • I think the original poster is using it in the sense of a published paper etc moving a species from genus A to genus B etc
  • I think most of our responses have interpreted it as the actual act of updating the taxonomy in iNat.

If @sylvester_k meant the first one than yes the way to get it to the attention of the site and curators is to flag the taxa as I mentioned.

1 Like
10

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