this has really significant implications. i spent a couple hours writing them out, and then i deleted my entire explanation. why? it’s because i made socrates roll over in his grave. forums should be about learning through dialogue rather than lecture.
do you agree with either of my two opening statements? if so, then what do you think the implications are?
Can we have a TLDR version of your hours of work? A few sentences for 1 and 2 ?
You will need to explain more specifically what you are talking about.
e.g. are you referring to:
How physical differences correspond to taxonomic categories? (iNat does not create taxonomy)
How IDers use features in photos to make IDs?
Ok, I’m a sucker for philosophical discussions. I’ll take a crack at a response.
I would agree with both of the opening statements. The main implication to me would be that any system that utilizes categories of organisms must also be subjective. The subjectivity of the system is more diverse, however: it comes not only from how the differences among organisms are used to define their categories but also what those categories mean, what the information being gathered is for, and how people wish to engage with the system as a whole. This is evident in the endless discussions on the forum where we can see the vast array of different opinions about both what iNat is currently and what they feel it should become in the future.
Is this what you’re getting at with the title of this thread? If so, I also wonder about the purpose of this post… it strikes me that both what iNat is and what it should be will be endlessly debated since the subjective nature of this system is inescapable. I also don’t really see that as a problem–such discussion is vital both for innovation (in that it allows for new ideas) and stability (in that it allows people to at least attempt to be on the same page about what is happening with this system). What is the intent of this iteration though?
“All models are wrong, some are useful.”
If this is about the subjective nature of taxonomic categories, then yes, of course the application of taxonomic names to groups of organisms is subjective, and every taxonomist knows this. But there is an objective reality to how all organisms on earth are related to each other, and we as scientists need a way to communicate about these organisms. So modern taxonomy provides a way to categorize organisms to quickly express our current understanding of their relationships and easily communicate which organisms we’re talking about. We can argue endlessly about species concepts and the value placed on various methods for dividing a phylogeny into taxa, but given what we desire to communicate when we name a taxon, the current system seems pretty useful to me. Anything short of displaying a full taxonomic tree of all the ten-to-the-whatever organisms that have ever lived on earth with one branch end highlighted will be an inherently incomplete way of describing an organism’s place in the tree of life. But since this is impractical and logistically impossible, assigning names to the various branches as we discover them and making subjective choices about how much of the branch to include in the name we pick is really the only practical way to communicate what we want to say.
In keeping with the idea of Socratic questioning, my question to anyone who wants a complete overhaul of taxonomy because it’s subjective is: what better idea do you propose instead? Assigning numerical values to organisms rather than species names to indicate where they fall on a phylogeny? Naming every organism by just reciting its DNA code? Abandoning taxonomy’s connection to evolution altogether and defining everything based on some subjective but pre-defined formula to measure morphological similarity? These ideas all seem ridiculous, but as many times as I hear people complain about the subjectivity of taxonomy, I never hear them suggest anything better.
Your topic title and your two bullet points have nothing to do with each other. INat uses what biology and Linnaean taxonomy provides so it’s really a question about the science itself.
Incidentally, systematics is science. It’s the quest to come up with the one true phylogeny for life. Taxonomy is simply the organizational system by which we try to keep track of what systematics tells us. Neither is complete or perfect.
I think your title doesn’t match your subject. Your question seems to be about species and taxonomy vs. real variation. (A great subject!) Your title could refer to how we share data or inboard new users, how the computer systems work, even the financial support for iNat. I suggest editing the title, if you really want to discuss whether our taxonomic system works.
i love hummingbirds but for the life of me i can’t identify the different species that i see here in los angeles. well, honestly, it’s not like i’ve studied what their differences are. i do know that when the brugmansia sanguinea i grew from seed and planted in my friend’s front yard bloomed for the 1st time, that i’m sure it attracted the attention of all the hummingbirds in the area, but none were able to pollinate it because their beaks are too short. in the brugmansia’s native habitat there’s a hummingbird with a long enough beak. just like in the native habitat of darwin’s orchid there’s a moth with a proboscis long enough to reach the nectar.
beak and proboscis length are objective differences between certain organisms. but the importance of these objective differences is entirely subjective. just like the importance of inaturalist is entirely subjective.
the two questions are fundamentally the same, but how they are answered is not. therein lies the, well, insanity. maybe cognitive dissonance would be a better term than insanity.
@paul_dennehy can two fundamentally different ways of answering subjective questions be equally effective?
Perhaps your deleted longer version explained it, but I would be interested to understand the connection between the content of your post and the heading you have given it.
Point number 1 appears self-evident. Six walking legs are objectively different from eight walking legs.
Point number 2, I’m less sure. @epiphyte78 's question about beak length can be looked at another way: how important is beak length to the bird? and how important is beak length to the flower? The bird either objectively obtains nectar, or objectively does not. The flower either objectively gets pollinated, or objectively does not. These survival outcomes are not open to the organism’s interpretation.
If the bird or the flower had the capacity to think in terms of “should,” the bird could think, “this flower should have a shorter corolla” and the flower could think “that bird should have a longer beak.” Less likely perhaps, the bird could think “I should have a longer beak” and the flower could think “I should have a shorter corolla.” That’s where the subjectivity comes in: who “should” change for whom.
It’s not “subjective” at all - it’s context-dependent. The fitness of a trait varies with the environment in which it is expressed.
Meaning in human languages is also sometimes context-dependent (in various complex and often ambiguous ways), but it’s a very big stretch to claim that this somehow makes it “just like” the previous example. I think you need to provide more … context.
I’ve moved this to Nature Talk because as far as I can tell the OP is not actually directly about iNaturalist itself. It seems more broadly to be about taxonomy.
figuring out the objective differences between organisms should be the job of taxonomists. but when it comes to giving the proper weight to these differences, anyone who wants to do this job should have the opportunity to do so. this is what inaturalist should be.
for example, in florida the common fig is very difficult to grow in the ground because its roots are devoured by root knot nematodes (rkn). one guy in particular (florida fruit geek: ffg) spent quite a bit of time and energy trying to figure out which tropical ficus species would make the best rootstock for carica.
ffg’s search parameters: different enough to carica to be resistant to rkn, but similar enough to carica to be compatible with it. these are characteristics that are important to ffg. but they aren’t important to taxonomists. why would they be. taxonomists can’t possibly take into consideration the significance of every characteristic for every person in the world. no scientist contains multitudes. nobody contains multitudes. this rule has only ever had one exception. if you don’t know who i’m referring to, then maybe you aren’t giving enough weight to “leaves of grass”.
if inaturalist was as it should be, then everyone interested in the characteristics of hummingbirds would have the opportunity to help rank their characteristics by importance. then at a glance, someone as clueless about hummingbirds such as myself would know which characteristics to pay the most attention to. maybe it’s their size, or color, or preferred habitat, or song, or mating ritual, or nesting material, or… it’s a long list of characteristics, the significance of which can only be correctly determined by everyone and anyone, just like the significance of inaturalist itself can only be correctly determined by everyone and anyone.
how it currently works…
determining inaturalist significance: inclusive group endeavor
determining taxonomic significance: exclusive group endeavor
this is incoherent.
this is how it should work…
determining inaturalist significance: inclusive group endeavor
determining taxonomic significance: inclusive group endeavor
this would be coherent. and we’d all greatly benefit. the natural world would make a whole lot more sense to everyone. naturally there would be a whole lot more naturalists in the world.
Why do you think that iNat excludes “anyone who wants to do this job” from doing so? Anyone can enter an ID on iNat – isn’t this precisely a process of assessing objective differences between organisms and deciding which ones are relevant in any particular case? There is no requirement that one be a taxonomist or have formal training or be familiar with the scientific literature. The only requirement is that one be able to provide reasons for one’s ID. This may be based on experience with the local species and their behavior, field guides, etc.
In order to make observations findable and usable for the scientific community, iNat has to use accepted taxonomy for structuring its data. Not because this is the only system of classification, but because it is one that allows for consistent communication everywhere in the world about what that data represents.
There is lots of relevant data that is not incorporated into taxonomic classifications. There are various ways on iNat for people to collect this information – for example, using projects or observation fields.
Systematically incorporating identification criteria into iNat’s infrastructure is not simple, because the relevance of particular features will depend on what other similar species are present at a particular location.
However, particularly for something like hummingbirds, there is likely to be published material elsewhere that has been created to help laypeople and beginners (field guides, websites, etc.). In addition, many IDers will be happy to suggest resources if you ask, or they may have have created journal entries discussing particular topics. (The findability of journal entries on iNat is an issue, but the opportunity to create such resources absolutely exists and is available to anyone.)
All these characteristics can be entered in observation fields, and observations can be sorted accordingly. Characteristics that most people find significant have been entered on many observations, while characteristics that fewer people find significant don’t appear as much. For example, there are currently about 1000 hummingbird observations with a “habitat” entered: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=5562&field:Habitat=
I would push back on the assumption that there is a “proper weight” to give any characteristics of anything. “Proper” is entirely relative- proper for what? I bet if you asked all the observers of figs what they consider to be their most significant characteristics, very few would say “root knot nematode resistance!” but clearly in the specific case you cite, that was among the most important characters to that person. I don’t know how I would even begin to “rank” what characteristics of an organism I find to be “important”. If I’m identifying it, classifying it, conserving it, controlling it, or looking for it, I’ll care about totally different things. I can’t imagine what a list of qualities ranked by how many people care about them would be useful for, honestly. Everyone can pay attention to whatever they want to and enter whatever they find significant in the observation fields. And as far as “determining taxonomic significance”, this is done by the taxonomists who determine how to separate the taxa that they name. My opinion about whether two moth species can be separated by host plant is pretty much meaningless if I haven’t done the research to back up the claim.
That may be because you are asking observers of figs instead of growers of figs. But if pest or disease resistance is a heritable trait, couldn’t it be indicative of taxonomically meaningful lineages?
And this is just what the OP was pushing back against, as I understand them. How does reiterating the party line advance the discussion?
Specialists in any endeavor tend to become an exclusive group. Regarding taxonomy, we have seen that again and again in Forum discussions; no matter how this is discussed it always comes down to “we have to do what taxonomists say, whether it works for our purposes or not.”
I’m still not clear whether you are talking about how the taxonomy (what the species are and how they are related) should be determined or about how identifications (which species this is) should be made.