I can’t mention discrete taxa without calling out specific flags or curators which we aren’t supposed to do here, so that’s why i am being a bit vague. Most of the issues i’ve come across revolve around herbaceous plants that occur in eastern North America. But that’s probably just because those are the taxa i observe and identify the most. Among other issues, i use species list to track condition and function of wetlands, use indicator species to map wetlands, and track invasive species. The constant disruption of taxonomy of herbaceous species as well as hypersplitting to the point that things can’t be discerned and ‘sketchy’ assignment of ‘species’ based on location when identifying features can’t be seen at all… has caused myself and others a lot of issues. I also used to use iNat for outreach to landowners and such and it got very hard to use for that when the species names on here don’t match any of the field guides, species lists, or other references used in the area. So i stopped suggesting it, for the most part. I don’t actively discourage people from using it, but i don’t suggest is as a gateway to learning more about the natural world any more, because it just adds to frustration and isnt accessible to people who aren’t either immersed in academia or such casual users that they don’t care.
I feel like the complicated taxonomy is part of the fun of ecology and its complexity. And usually people just want to learn common trees and birds and wildflowers; as far as I can think most trees haven’t changed much for ID (willows will never not be a mess). It’s not that complicated to explain that dandelions or sedges or asters are complicated (whether for ID or taxonomy) and that it’s simplest just to go with genus for them. I’d say it’s a win if someone cares to the point of distinguishing a sedge from a grass…
If changes to particular abundant species that cause communication issues have lasted, I would hope that means the community has reached some consensus about them, and your disagreement is probably just as much with the state of the literature as with any particular curators. In which case it should be safe to discuss them, but I don’t want to make any assumptions.
First of all, the Vogon reference made me smile!
Back on topic, it might be helpful to distinguish between changes made to track the taxonomy of one of iNat’s authorities such as POWO, and those made by curators based solely on new publications (or even pre-prints) before those are accepted by POWO. I do realize that you have problems with both types of changes, though.
For changes already accepted by a taxonomic authority, the correct approach for a curator should be something like this IMHO:
- Is there already a taxon framework deviation in place that I need to consider?
- Are there existing flags with discussions related to this taxon?
- Is this an organism where the taxonomy is in dispute?
- Will this affect a large number of observations?
- Is the change I plan to make irreversible (e.g. a lump vs. a split)?
- If any of 1–5 is true, start a flag about the change, make sure to tag in anyone with an obvious interest (top identifiers, top observers, people from previous flags, etc.) Leave enough time for everyone to get a chance to respond and (ideally) implement whatever approach gets consensus. In the absence of consensus, follow the approach that has clear majority support.
Let’s move on to those changes implemented in advance of acceptance by a taxonomic authority. INat policy appears to be that these changes should be exceptions only. My own view is maybe a little more liberal. In particular, I support the addition of uncontroversial new published taxa where there are observations of these already on iNat. (Preprints are not sufficient.) Papers describing new species increasingly cite observations from iNat. I don’t see a need to wait 1–2 years for POWO to pick up the new taxon before making it available in iNat. Allowing this encourages the field biologists working with these species to use iNat and engage with observations where they can bring valuable knowledge.
Of course, anyone planning to make a taxon change not yet accepted by the relevant taxonomic authority should make doubly sure to check for the issues highlighted in steps 1–5 above.
I am concerned that anyone with curator authority (me included) can commit a disruptive change that has irreversible effects. I understand @charlie’s argument for a much slower pace of change, but I think this is likely unworkable (batching all changes for a single update once every five years or so) and would cause more harm for the overall community than it would avoid.
I do think taxon changes could include more checks and balances or require more approval (at least where we might expect them to be disruptive). However, I think curating the taxonomy will always require iNat to trust curators to exercise good judgement and sometimes they may not.
i feel like i’ve been held to a higher level of behavior on here than others, especially in regards to taxonomy, because my view is unpopular amongst curators. So i don’t really ant to dive into that right now. There are probably dozens of examples of changes i’ve disagreed with, which means there are probably hundreds i haven’t noticed in areas i am not familiar with
How so? is this something you feel confident in? Remembering the community is all inat users not just taxonomic curators? I don’t agree with it, for one.
At this point i’d consider it a good exchange if there was any form of effort to mitigate the problems at all. I see it as out of control and gettng worse. I don’t see many cases where usability by a broad audience taex precedense over microspecies addition and such. The fact is the curators are kind of their own subset of users and there’s no checks and balances on them at all. It’s one thing to accept the changes as they stand now, but as they seem to be getting worse, there’s no reason to believe that trend won’t continue.
There are other options, such as allowing for parallel taxonomies pinned to different reference, such as field guides. But, iNat admins don’t seem to support that, probably because they are so complex and difficult to code.
I’d love to at least see us accepting creation of sections or other intergenetic groups as a concession that constant splitting DOES create data integrity and communication issues. If you don’t like them… don’t use them. Otherwise it’s just the curators adding unpublished change while scolding me for wanting other unpublished changes.
POWO doesn’t deal with infrageneric taxonomy between genus and species, which is why we need to improvise sections and complexes from our interpretations of the literature. Sometimes their species choices will imply a specific infrageneric taxonomy (such as with dandelions), but usually we’re left on our own.
I vaguely recall a feature request or discussion about implementing something like this, but I can’t find it right now. It would be complicated to set up and currently the system is just “hope that curators act in good faith and tag relevant people who will be affected”. But as a curator that’s a lot of effort and often just means waiting around for a long time with little response or resolution.
If you want a slower moving taxonomic standard for North American plants, use USDA PLANTS for your own records. This is a taxonomy employees and contractors of the U.S. government are required to use. (Additional names can, of course, be included in the report.) USDA PLANTS does change, but changes are difficult to accomplish and the people who run it are well aware of the need to keep taxonomy consistent among publications from different decades. Therefore, it changes more slowly than POWO or iNaturalist.
well yes i do refer to that database as well as other similar ones, but this doesn’t help with inaturalist observations. I’m good on taxonomy on my own database i manage, etc. Maybe a push to get iNat to use PLANTS instead of POWO? probably a lost cause since it isn’t global… but it’s again worth asking why a community science site meant to be usable to a broad audience, not just taxonomists, would ever think to use something like POWO
Tryon (1976) Cyathea in the Greater Antilles
Uses “groups.” The master key lets you key tree ferns out to “group,” and then each “group” has a key for the species in it. Thus, for example, Cyathea andina and C. parvula are in the Multiflora group, while C. harrisii and C. furfuracea are in the Fulva group. Whether these groups have any cladistic standing is another question.
Not every taxon that has groups in the published literature has them on iNaturalist.
I don’t think iNat curators have the resources to produce a parallel “field ecologist’s taxonomy”. That would require improvising decisions at every level for hundreds of thousands of species, many of which we don’t have personal expertise on. Not having any designated authoritative source would result in endless debate between opinions of different people. Some are skeptical of academic literature, others are skeptical of comprehensive catalogues, others are skeptical of field guides. There would be constant clashes with taxon specialists who join and try to participate and get frustrated when it looks outdated to them.
As a result I think it was a good decision for the staff to choose authorities and try to stick with them, and not try to go off on our own. If there were better sources available we would use them, but there are limited options and none of them perfectly cover our needs (or anyone else’s for that matter).
Sounds like what we have now.
But no i don’t see iNat doing this. Certainly it’s not impossible, but the curators don’t want to. And it’s hard. In the end i think the current approach won’t go very well either, and i think iNat will probably just end up an academic backwater that isn’t accessible to anyone outside academia, and eschewed by field practitioners, just sort of an arm of POWO, etc. But i certainly could be wrong and I hope i am. It’s a really unique site, it used to be much more willing to innovate and act as a sort of mildly subversive alternative to the mainstream privilege-laden academic system, but that is when it was much smaller. And if it hadn’t grown, it probably wouldn’t have maintained funding or viability. So necessarily, if it isn’t a tiny site with just a few thousand people, it runs into these issues. I wish if nothing else it just had more versatility to use mapping, searches, etc with a more customizable taxonomy, like keep parallel taxonomies or archived taxonomy or something. But yes, i recognize that isn’t feasible in the current system either. So basically, nothing works, and there is no option that can work, so we just hope the site is able to thread the needle and find a viable balance, or something.
You certainly have a point there. IMO we should really be picking a taxonomy and sticking with it, and while we claim we’re following POWO, in practice we really aren’t and arguments are erupting all the time.
See also: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/plant-taxonomy-are-we-really-following-powo-should-we/53424
I think plant taxonomy is, by their nature and number, always going to be more unstable and controvertible than something like birds where there’s only 11,000 species in the entire world and we can easily make spreadsheets with all of them, go and find them and watch them breed, etc. There are endless debates about bird taxonomy too but it’s much more resolved just because the task is an order of magnitude easier. There are only like 1000 bird species recorded from the US, and 17,000 vascular plant species.
Haeckel described phylogeny as the history of the paleontological development of species. Information about the course of phylogeny on Earth is contained both in the fossil record of long-extinct species and in the structure of currently living organisms. Today, genetics has become an additional source of knowledge about the relationships of organisms, and detailed genetic studies have led to many revisions in previous systematic and phylogenetic divisions in recent years.
Here’s an example where a change based on genetics seems generally unhelpful and having no relation to morphology by their own admission:
The 3 goldenrods (the gigantea/canadensis/altissima complex) formerly together in Triplinerviae are very abundant and very tricky to distinguish, so having them together in the same subsection was really useful for identification. Identifying them up to section Unilaterales means that the identification could also to refer to like 40 other species in 4 different subsections.
Yeah there are a lot of issues here.
-No notification (if the change did happen on iNat) so i’ve still been using triplnervae the way i used to. It’s not possible to know about all these changes and accomodate for them.
-the genetics is interesting and i find the diagram in the paper really valuable and interesting. But from a field ecology standpoint, forcing this change to sections does more harm than good as i now can’t use the sections on iNat to track this important group. So again… the research is worthwhile, but the change is harmful.
-reading the paper this hardly seems like settled science and furthe cahng eto this complex and rapidly evolving group is likely. So why adopt the changes as they come? This is where a longre delay to updates would be really valuable.
But, for whatever reason theiNat curators prioritize change over usability. I wonder if the admins are even aware the extent to which this stuff goes.
The identifications on my observations were automatically updated when the change was made (early 2023), but it does look like the change wasn’t rolled out properly. I’m not going to link the flag but it does look like the curator didn’t alert relevant people until after the change was made, and there was immediate pushback that it should have waited until the authors of the study published more material that they’d promised to publish (which might be that paper I linked, not sure), and that certain taxon changes weren’t done to ensure IDs remained accurate (those have been fixed now).
I don’t know enough to say how well established the new tree is, but it will at least be the current state of the literature for the next few years so I’d assume this change would have gone through on iNat eventually regardless of how well it was implemented.
This has been a major issue in other cases as well. I don’t know if it’s the same person or different people, and won’t drag that drama here directly. But suffice to say there needs to be more oversight if not direct admin involvement. Even if we want to pursue a hypersplitter course as a community, it’s not working to have some curators making changes well before science is even published.
Again the idea of this community science website trying to stay ahead of actual primary research, let alone the guides and resources others use, in taxonomic change is pretty mind blowing to me. I can’t tell what is sort of rogue curation and what is or isn’t admin-approved but it feels like a weird taxonomic mad max in here. And questioning the curators gets me flagged or muted, whereas completely breaking the taxonomic backbone to important taxa for months is rewarded with no consequence at all and continued curator benefits including site moderation tools.
My modest proposal: make a rule for curators that any taxonomic revision cannot be implemented on iNaturalist until 1 year (minimum) after the date the revision is published. That would provide time for specialists to evaluate if the revision is warranted or not and perhaps give the taxonomic reference sources we use time to catch up. Would not solve all the problems – taxonomy is certainly messier these days in many groups and no one agrees with all changes – but might help.
this would certainly be an improvement. And stop the clock if there’s a disputing paper.