I don’t think there is any requirement that IDers can’t consider evidence provided by the observer that is not in the form of photos or audio. I’ve found that plant and fungus IDers are often willing to use observer notes about smell or taste for helping confirm IDs. So if a user includes a note that describes the type of song they heard (not just “heard song typical of x species”), I don’t see why this couldn’t be used to confirm an ID if the IDer is comfortable that the information in the note is sufficiently plausible and convincing.
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This is something that’s bugged me for a few years. In insects, this is a no-brainer to make a species complex for groups like these that are visually difficult to tell apart from photos only (I’m also thinking of rufous / Allen’s hummingbirds, Cooper’s / sharp-shinned hawks, etc). But when I tried suggesting that it got shot down. Is it just that since birds are mapped to a backbone taxonomy we don’t want to insert useful-but-unofficial ranks in between official levels? This is implicitly pushing users to select species more often than is appropriate (since the alternative is languishing at genus), making a lot of false precision in the exported data. Ebird allows “slashes” for taxa like these, so iNat is the outlier here.
Yes, that’s exactly the kind of distinction I was thinking of. If they’ve provided supporting evidence you think is sufficient to be conclusive, I think that is perfectly valid to confirm.
The flip side I was thinking of was where the observer is someone I trust to have made an accurate ID on site at the time of the observation, but who didn’t (for whatever reason) capture and share enough evidence to enable me to confirm that. I don’t think in the general case that I should confirm their ID just on the strength of that trust, but I wouldn’t disagree with them when adding an ID to a higher rank if there was no evidence showing their ID was clearly incorrect.
Thanks for saying it better than I did :)
Sounds like somebody who knows about this (including the fact that they are sister species) should flag both Willow & Alder Flycatchers saying they can be and should be made a species complex and recommending the name Traill’s Flycatcher for the complex. And then some curator should do that.
In general, when there are species that can’t be distinguished I may just move on without adding an ID. If I do something, I ID them to genus or complex, with a short explanation.
If I want to change the ID, unless the observation is very recent, I go ahead and do it and ask the observer to comment. Theoretically, I could ask first and finalize my ID later, but many observers don’t respond. This approach wastes less of my time and I can always correct later, in the rare case where the observer actually does say something.
If I know that there are two very similar species in the area and one is common while the other is rare or unlikely, I’ll leave an ID of the common one alone or sometimes even agree with it. I figure the harm done by missing an observation of unlikely one is less than the harm done by IDing the unlikely one where it isn’t. I probably should always just leave these alone, though.
There’s been multiple flags opened from at least 2019 for this very request (and even older history of requests for rufous / Allen’s hummingbirds) but they go nowhere. Staff apparently don’t want any species complexes in birds. Sad face…
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This is sad. For those of us who band these birds, when we capture them during migration, we have to use Traill’s as the name.
The wing formula idea was mentioned above. But to attempt a species ID with banding (in-hand) measurements, it’s more than wing feather measurements. It’s a mathematical formula that includes tail length, and bill length; and measuring the differences between several different flight feathers is not easy (we’ve done half a dozen this month and with differences of 1-4mm I feel like our measurement errors may obscure true differences). Even with perfect measurements, The results are not 100% conclusive. (There is some level of overlap).
In any case, Traill’s is what we have to use- again when capturing these birds during the non-breeding season. Too bad we can’t do this on iNaturalist.
Same of course for Rufous/Allen’s.
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Is there an official standard that describes which species are treated like this in banding? Perhaps that could be used as a basis for creating a limited number of “species complexes” (or something that functions like that) for birds.
I don’t recall how official it is. But, I email the folks regularly as I’m working on some old data issues with them. I’m currently on vacation - but will plan to ask them after I return.
The “standard” that we have has been a learned thing for many of us, as we carry out our work. The codes are available (TRFL for Traill’s flycatcher for example). A few years ago I had a conversation with one of the persons who reviews our submissions and he “asked” that we use the Traill’s code for the migrants.
Again, I will plan to email him to understand how “standard” this is and for which species. (There are other species pairs for which it’s ok to use a code that is for both species; I’ll see if they have created a separate list for these).
The same problem occurs in some frogs. A good example in the U.S.\ are the two Grey Treefrogs…one is diploid, one is tetraploid. Short of a chromosome smash for karyotyping, the only way to tell them apart is by call. Regardless of the evidence presented, I try to limit my identifications to the evidence itself. Location, photo, sound can all be part of that. If the observation doesn’t include a sound file for such a species, to me, that is no different from an observation lacking a photo and the observer saying, take my word for it. Trust, but verify. ‘Take my word for it’ is not evidence.
For gray treefrogs, the species complex is available for ID:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/922247-Hyla-versicolor
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