A general question to the public, one species I’ve been iNatting particularly recently has been the Swainson’s Thrush . It has six subspecies, let none of them have a common name besides phillipsi listed on the site. The issue is, nobody is confirming my numerous Swainson’s Thrush sightings, and it …

[image] birdwhisperer: Is there an iNat policy prohibiting this? I would say yes. Just the Name, Please Please don’t add information to a name in addition to the name itself, e.g. “grumblefoots (this genus is monotypic, just ID to species!).” We use names in a lot of places for a lot of di…

The common names on iNat should be those names that are actually in use outside of iNat. Not to be created for purposes of iNat identification. And I don’t think each subspecies has a common name–just the two subspecies groups. But iNat doesn’t offer a “subspecies group” taxon that could be used in …

[image] pfau_tarleton: I’m not sure what you mean by “adding the scientific name to the common name”. Taxa are based on scientific names, to which common names can then be applied. Are you asking that the same common name be applied to each of the subspecies within the two subspecies groups? And…

[image] birdwhisperer: I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, there’s definitely no range overlap in Oregon. A rough (too rough) approximation from Fig. 1 in this paper Fig. 3 in this paper shows that both mtDNA clades (mtDNA from both of the two subspecies groups) are found in western …

[image] pfau_tarleton: shows that both mtDNA clades (mtDNA from both of the two subspecies groups) are found in western Oregon. That’s actually not that all surprising to me at least. Many Rocky Mountain species do a circular migration because they can’t necessarily access their breeding grou…

The user PNW ids is the main part of this problem… he just changed all the ids in western Washington into the subspecies no matter if it is or is not that species. This becomes a problem bc he identifies all day at the thousands. I have not had the nerve to say anything about it until now…

Flagging those can help to bring attention, but I understand you, there’s a user who agrees with ids by thousands with no knowledge, but I also didn’t have the nerve to flag those, it’s not against the rules to add wrong ids.

I kinda think It’s partially iNaturalist’s fault for making leaderboards,which most people shake off but a few get caught up on getting to number 1 (until a taxon swap I was that way w genus amazilla [misspelled genus of hummingbirds], but I had a idea of what I was doing)

Using modified name for subspecies

General

vreinkymov July 3, 2022, 12:52pm 3

There can also be problems with assigning common names to subspecies, see topic: House Sparrow now English Sparrow subspecies?

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Subspecies Having The Same Common Name as the Species General	38	683	November 20, 2025
Are There Really Common Names for Subspecies? General	24	1493	July 11, 2021
Common name v Latin name for subspecies General	29	612	December 20, 2024
Inconsistent subspecies name syntax in iNat General	16	635	June 16, 2024
Incorrect Common Names Being Added to Bird Subspecies General	34	1789	March 24, 2020

Using modified name for subspecies

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