The International Botanical Congress recently had a vote and decided to change a number of plant species name to be less pejorative. IPNI and POWO have already updated their databases and Wikipedia is updating as we speak. When will iNat follow suit?
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this was already discussed in another thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scientific-name-changes-theyre-real-now/53858.
that thread was closed because it kept straying in directions that were unproductive. if this thread remains open, i hope folks keep the discussion more productive here.
There was an earlier forum discussion of this change and it seems there is broad agreement.
Perhaps someone familiar with the IBC decision can confirm that no further action (e.g. an additional publication) is needed to make these changes effective? If IPNI and POWO have made those changes, my guess would be they are already effective. But I’m not yet seeing Article 61.6 listed here: https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/pages/main/art_61.html
Once we’re sure of that, we just need a good process to make the corresponding changes to iNat. Some thoughts:
- We should have a presumption to make these changes, even when iNat’s taxonomy diverges from POWO.
- We need to decide whether we are preserving the old names as synonyms. Pro: People can find the current taxon using the old name, which will appear in all literature prior to 2024. Con: The old names are being changed because they’re offensive; preserving them as synonyms perpetuates that offense to some extent. From what I can tell POWO may not be listing the old names as synonyms. Does the IBC decision have any guidance here?
- Ideally, the changes would get some review by iNat users/curators familiar with the taxa involved. I’m not suggesting that iNat should decide whether to make these changes on a cas-by-case basis, but there may be unresolved flags and other taxonomic issues that can be addressed at the same time.
- We may need an overall process to track the 200+ name changes to help ensure that they’re handled consistently and completely. Maybe @loarie could offer some guidance?
- It would be great to have input from botanists from southern Africa in this process.
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Can someone please link to a version of the story on this recent vote that is not behind Nature’s (or other) paywall?
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these are all the proposals (with links) for the 2024 IBC: https://www.iapt-taxon.org/historic//Congress/Prop2023.htm. the specific proposal to add article 61.6 is 126. the vote also contemplated 119-122.
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No additional publications are needed to make the name changes effective. Changes to the code go into effect when it is ratified at the end of the IBC, but it will be months before a new edition of the code is published that shows what the changes are.
The old names starting with “c” are regarded as orthographic variants. POWO and IPNI do not usually maintain separate records for orthographic variants (IPNI does note them, but the note field can not be searched, so the “c” names are basically invisible on IPNI). IPNI and POWO are using the same record IDs for the species that they were using before, but the spelling has been changed.
Some other databases do maintain separate records for orthographic variants. The ARS-GRIN database has retained records for the “c” spellings, but has marked them as orth. vars. and has created new records for the “a” spellings. The IBC doesn’t dictate whether or not taxonomic databases should list orth. vars. as separate records.
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The offensive common names have been kept, but scored thru. Searchable but not used.
That’s good to know, but I believe this topic is about changing the scientific names.
I believe that on iNat we would need to use a taxon swap to ensure that IDs get updated, and this would then mean that all these species get new taxon IDs. I’m not aware of a way to avoid that.
Unless we could persuade staff (@loarie) that this would be a good case for them to directly edit the spelling in the existing taxon records?
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what @jdmore said – staff (or the original creator[s] of the taxon entry) can edit the name directly.
now seems like a good time to remind people to vote for and ask about the iNaturalist proposal to allow curators to directly make minor edits to taxon entries, which would save us the obtuse and enormously inefficient taxon swap process for tiny differences.
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I think the same approach with the “original” scientific names could be taken as with the common names, ie marking them as “unaccepted”. The option was actually created on iNat for scientific names that are no longer accepted but which some people might still be searching for (to help site usability). The use of this for offensive common names is a somewhat established “off brand” usage of the option. However, using it for these scientific names seems to fit the intended usage of maintaining the name for search while indicating that it is no longer acceptable.
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