I was just involved in describing a new species of hover fly. There was no controversy about it, it’s just that no one got around to describing it while it sat in a museum for decades. There have been observations of it on iNat for years and we were finally able to ID them recently. I expect there are many cases like this where changes are uncontroversial and much-needed. But there are also many cases where changes are controversial and affect a lot of people and may need to simmer for a while (e.g. I think it’s good that we’ve had years of discussion about the dandelion situation - everyone’s had opportunity to give their thoughts, no one is entirely caught off guard if/when a change is made). So I’m not sure if this makes sense as a universal rule.
For the goldenrod situation, the initial paper with the new taxonomy that prompted the iNat changes was published in February 2021, and the iNat changes weren’t made until March 2023, so there was a delay of over a year. However the paper including all the details and analysis behind the results wasn’t published until April 2023 (no one could have known it would take 2 years). I’m not sure if seeing that entire analysis would have changed how we decide to apply the results at all?
in the very least it would allow people time to adapt to the changes which are being forced on us when many of us don’t want it. One of the reasons i get so stuck on this issue and so riled up is the seeming total unwillingness of the taxonomic revisionist section to admit there are issues with what they are doing too, and to compromise or find solutions at all. It’s really ‘my way or the highway’ from a very small contingent of users. or at least that’s how it comes off to me.
My concern is mainly with major shuffling of taxa – splits, generic changes, and the like – and not with description of new species that have been known for a while but not formally described. But a year delay is not that long. The problem with the internet and electronic publishing is the revisions happen faster than the affected community (including fellow experts) have time to evaluate them. I think that’s a problem. IMHO, no curator should be implementing a major taxonomic revision on a group on the same day a new paper appears (or while still “in press”), which apparently has happened. A taxonomic hypothesis (which is what any new taxonomy is) should be given time to be assessed.
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I’m a plant person but I’m also interested in algae, mainly freshwater microalgae/cyanobacteria, and so now I mainly curate algal taxa. The community of people doing algal taxonomy is orders of magnitude smaller than that of plants, so the science moves very slowly, and it’s not uncommon to see names that are decades out of date. Because of this, when I swap taxa, I proceed with extreme caution for “newer” revisions, even ones that were published 5 or more years ago.
I used to think that authorities should be quicker with adopting new names, but I’ve changed my mind somewhat and now I’m in more support of encouraging/requiring curators to work more slowly with potentially disruptive taxon changes. The way I see it, taxon changes are more or less irreversible, so you want to be fairly certain that you’re not implementing a half-baked taxonomic revision. The word I use in my head is “marinate”, i.e. I see a new taxonomic revision and think “we’ll let that marinate for a few years before touching the iNaturalist taxonomic tree”.
that makes sense for things like vertebrates. less so for most other things in my opinion. so many groups are so specialized and the number of undescribed taxa is staggering; waiting a year to implement them really doesn’t seem necessary and seems like an additional rule. at least for my group, this would only cause more problems and wouldn’t solve any. I think a problem is trying to implement an over-arching rule for all life given the methodology and standards for describing the classification of certain groups differs vastly (as it should).
edit—I see what you’re saying about taxon swaps and changes vs. adding species. I can see how that could cause issues in some groups. I think well-worked groups that receive frequent literary discourse should be locked—I think this does something similar where only those most familiar with the group can make alterations.
yes, i don’t have an issue with adding new species that aren’t splits, because they don’t disrupt everything else. But in my area at least that is very rare. Much more common is papers declaring any slight variation in a common species as a ‘new species’ fragmenting the existing taxonomy. Those are the sort i have issue with. Really plants should just be locked like other taxa with admin approval for any change, to say the very least, given some of what has happened.
I think, there should be some sort of Research Grade logic behind taxon-swaps and -changes that could solve some of these issues.
I could imagine a solution in which a taxon-split/merge/reclassification could be proposed by a curator, which would then leave it open for a specified time (1, 2, 3 months?) in which other curators can vote to agree or disagree.
If by the end of that time „RG“ status requirements are met (so at least 2 curators having voted with a majority >2/3 being in favour), then the taxon change is carried out.
(Perhaps this vote could also be made accessible to top-IDers of that taxon)
This solution isn’t perfect (What about taxa curated by 1 or none? What if groups of curators just blindly agree with one another to brute-force the change?) but it would at least prevent a single person having all that power…
Currently the closest we have is that there’s a update in your dashboard when a taxon you’ve observed is changed. But there isn’t a notification and I don’t think that update shows until after the change is made. If it’s drafted and left sitting like you described (which does happen sometimes) you still have to actively go and look for it to see it.
Also lots of people follow over a hundred observers, observations from multiple taxa, regularly get notifications from observation updates etc., so dashboard updates are very easy to miss.
I don’t necessarily have dashboard updates and drafts in mind, but rather a whole separate system.
Say a curator were to submit a taxon change. Now, instead of going through with it immediately, the system creates a flag-like menu (but it’s own separate thing) on the taxon page that, like a flag, is only visible to curators (and maybe top IDers).
If a curator follows this taxon, they could get an automatic notification (or an automated message even?) alerting them of that taxon change having been proposed.
Honestly, i don’t think this is something only curators should ‘vote’ on. I recognize some non-curators aren’t experts but these decisions affect a lot of people and again, the selection of who is or isn’t a curator is kind of random and sometimes problematic
I agree, but I still think there needs to be some „trust“ established, so that no one can just create a new account and vote on something that potentially disruptive.
That feature request lists some options, with the default being the same as who gets dashboard alerts for taxon changes which I believe is everyone with an observation of the taxon. This is just about who gets a notification (awareness to be able to comment) not voting, creating a voting system would be another complicated question.
Articles about biodiversity loss make it sound like these two statements are the same. We are given the impression that the millions of undescribed species are in unexplored regions. This in turn could create the impression that there is, or should be, a push to survey these regions before they are converted to palm oil plantations or whatever.
In practice, the millions of undescribed species are being conjured out of existing collections of other, known species.
It’s not an either/or. We’re experiencing both a redefinition of species at home, and a continuation of interest and effort in under-explored taxa and regions abroad. There are plenty of very distinctive insect species undescribed, and probably a fair amount of distinctive amphibians even, just because tropical biodiversity is ridiculous and there aren’t nearly as many taxonomists there.
Would it help to make all curator actions reversible? I believe sometimes information regarding what ID used to be there is lost, so what if it wasn’t? What if the system kept that sort of information in a way that would make any taxon change reversible?
i do believe this is a risk… focusing on the 20% of users rather than the 80%, only to have the 20% ultimately follow the 80% to a newer, more sophisticated underlying data structure that is inherently more relational and less hierarchical. it seems implausible, but it really isn’t. it’s just defining a new structure and then having subject matter experts help with data-mapping from the old structure to the new.