Watermelon snow and multispecies assemblages/blooms?

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Hi, is there a possible solution to observations of multi-species algal/microrganism blooms? For instance watermelon snow https://uk.inaturalist.org/taxa/118485-Chlamydomonas-nivalis . In a lot of cases the observed phenomena is a bloom of multiple species. In the case of watermelon snow the species ID of Chlamydomonas nivalis will often be misleading, in that there might be multiple species with red pigmentation in the bloom. Or it might be incorrect and it is another chlamydomonadales forming the red snow bloom (eg Chlainomonas or Sanguina). It is possible to tag the red snow photos as ‘Chlamydomonadales’ and leave the ID at that. But then that loses the context of the watermelon snow phenomenon, which might be a useful thing for others to search for. Would it be possible to have blooms like these as an ID in themselves without taxon? Or have ‘watermelon snow’ as an ‘incertae sedis’ family under Chlamydomonadales where most of the drivers of the blooms sit? Or to have an annotation box for multiple species blooms? I dont know if this affects other examples of blooms too. Possibly, for things like Sea Sparkle? Maybe overthinking this. BUt ive been scratching my head about what might solve it and havent come to a conclusion yet. Any thoughts welcome! Thanks, Al

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To answer part of this: iNaturalist generally does not really support any “informal” taxonomic classifications even if they may have data or informative merit. The exception to this may be the “complex” taxonomic level. However those are reserved normally for species in the same genus.

To answer another part: Do you have more reading in terms of the other species associated with the phenomenon? In some cases this happens and it becomes more of speculation that because other species can be found, that folks should be more conservative with IDs, but I would like to see more information before giving my thoughts.

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You could also start a project where people could put observations of these blooms, regardless of their IDs. That would make them easy to find.
Making or using (if there’s already one) an observation field to note the phenomenon might also make it easier to pull relevant observations regardless of species ID.

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Here’s a related topic:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-the-best-way-to-classify-biological-soil-crusts/9113

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Also:

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is better name than our Red Tide - which sparkles at night.

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Ok, thanks. All really helpful. It sounds like a project would work. And clearly i havent searched hard enough, as there is already one project! https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/watermelon-snow-biogeography?tab=about

However it doesnt resolve the problem that many of these blooms aren’t formed of Chlamydomonas nivalis (which is in some ways obsolete for watermelon snow - see review below). Or are composed of many species driving the pigmentation. And the project above will miss out on red snow bloom observations that have been identified as a different species (eg Sanguina). But it seems unsatisfying to leave the ID of these lovely red blooms at family level?

Maybe one answer might be to start another project around snow/cryophilic algae and manually add observations? But im not sure it solves the conflict between the observation/tagging of a red bloom, and the id of the species forming the bloom.

Could the common name “watermelon snow” or “red snow” link to the family level? But without the family level linking automatically to that common name?

Thanks again for the help and responses.

Regading the ecology and composition of these blooms, Ron Hoham and Daniel Remias provide a great review here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpy.12952

(though things move fast in this glacial academic world! - see Rosetta genus: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpy.13438#:~:text=Thick-walled%20rosette-like%20snow,rosette%20morphologies%20to%20DNA%20sequence. )

Best, Al.

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I wonder if this could come up for discussion again. It really doesn’t work to have a database where you use cryptic taxa, microspecies, and a highly dynamic taxonomy, without having some way to group the species that actually works in an applied sense.

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You began overthinking it when you couldn’t leave well enough alone. This is an example of too much data muddying the waters. Look at it this way: when we refer to a “redwood forest” or a “kelp forest,” we don’t mean monoculture. Of course the redwood forest has other plant species in its besides redwoods, and the kelp forest has other algal species in it besides giant kelp. But if giant kelp is the predominant species in an image of an overall view of the kelp forest, are we really going to bump it back to “Life” because algae of other kingdoms are present?

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Well, if someone took a picture of a grove of trees from a distance and called it Redwoods just because they looked tall, but you couldn’t actually figure out which trees were present, then yes, people would bump it down to Plants. From what I read, that seems to be the best metaphor for what’s happening in their example.

Many plant diseases fall into the same category, where the symptoms may be easy to categorize, but the causative agents can be wildly unrelated.

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