What would you ID when species taxonomic heirarchy is wrong?

General
1

I am talking of cases where a described existing species name is wrongly placed in heirarchy - say wrong genus/family mostly.

three examples of what I meant are : spider A wrong family, spider B wrong family, snail wrong genus

(new poll in comment)

  • You ID the exact species ID with comments of such taxonomic uncertainity
  • You ID highest common and correct ancestor but leave species ID as comment and move on
0 voters

—

I choose second option - conditioned upon reasonable evidence of topotypical,description,figures and my reasons are: as such ID makes it more noticeable (not everyone trawls every comments/observations/keeps track of localities -species) and the movement of species is job of taxonomists (iNat taxon swaps are easy) and having that ID goto datasets like GBIF has more immediate value for future revisions in having topotypical sampling points for field researchers and such.
—

Please share your views.

2

Ah i missed third option. sorry and i cant edit above poll after 5min.

  • You ID the exact species ID with comments of such taxonomic uncertainity
  • You ID lowest common and correct ancestor but leave species ID as comment and move on
  • You ID its correct ancestor from your taxonomic understanding of genus/family even if excluding exact described relevant species ID in other wrongly placed branches
0 voters
3

If the taxon is wrongly placed in the hierarchy, then why wouldn’t you flag the taxon for curators to fix the issue?

7 Likes
4

Here is another but different and related case when species IDs could be synonyms in literature. here is an example of this case - Spider C

  • You ID lowest correct ancestor (say genus) and add comments of synonymy hypothesis
  • You ID a possible valid junior synonym species ID under other evidence of existing descriptions, type locality
  • You ID best and correct species ID under taxonomic precedence discounting the possible junior synonym
0 voters

i again chose 2nd option as to reasons for highlight those observations for future taxonomists studies who are revising that, and its not wrong ID with topographic data in addition.

5

because it is not formally moved by taxonomists. we are talking of cases where taxa described is uncertain in hierarchy for that era. please check example links i already added above.

2 Likes
6

Including examples within your text here before a poll is presented (vs. links after the poll) would facilitate understanding.

2 Likes
7

Which is why the best thing to do is ID them as the correct species, and then flag the species for curation if it needs moved to a different genus. If Species A gets moved from Genus A to Genus B, then all the observations ID’d as Species A move along with it. I think it would just add extra work to temporarily ID everything as Genus B and later manually re-identify everything as Species A once it’s placed in the correct genus. Just thinking of Nearctic moths, which are what I work with, there are hundreds of species whose genera have “pending changes” Everyone knows that “Crambus” dimidiatellus doesn’t belong in Crambus, that a bunch of the “Cryphia” don’t belong in Cryphia, that “Oligia” is a polyphyletic mess, that some of the Nearctic “Recurvaria” are misplaced, that “Afrida” exegens isn’t really in Afrida, etc. But revisions haven’t yet been published, so iNat won’t be changing these species’ taxonomy any time soon. We can’t refuse to use all these hundreds of species names because they’re currently in the “wrong” genus. If we followed “ID highest common and correct ancestor but leave species ID as comment” any time we believed a species to be currently taxonomically “misplaced”, the whole iNat ID process would completely fall apart in some areas of the taxonomic tree. “ID the exact species ID with comments of such taxonomic uncertainity” is the only thing to do without opening a huge can of worms.

8 Likes
8

thanks i moved it to top

9

if it’s a described species and you can ID it to that, ID it to that
then join a lab that’ll help you fix the problem :slight_smile:

3 Likes
10

I admire your dedication to having it be right, but keep in mind that the taxonomy will always, at least for the foreseeable future, be a work in progress. Taxonomists can only use the data and concepts available today, curators can only use published taxonomy, and identifiers can only use those parts of the published taxonomy that have been implemented by curators (and flag the taxa that haven’t kept up with published changes). As taxonomic fashion swings from splitting (which it currently is) to lumping, and eventually back, the taxonomy will change even where no new data are involved. As you said, taxon swaps are easy, but only when the observations to be swapped are IDed to group needing the swap.

5 Likes
11

If the formal taxonomy is wrong or outdated, we should still identify using that taxonomy and wait for it to be fixed rather than improvising an improved version (similar discussion today here). iNat is helpful for finding taxonomic issues but it isn’t an appropriate medium for directly resolving them. For better or for worse this is one of those things we generally need professional academics to deal with.

7 Likes
12

I do so very much enjoy identifying phrase name taxa where there is no species name to use because it hasn’t been described yet, the genus it’s in is a placeholder genus which it is guaranteed to be removed from, and I’m pretty sure that I know which genus it’s going to be in - but only pretty sure.

I flip flop between identifying nearest common ancestor and commenting and identifying to where I think it will be at that point. Observation fields are also useful.

2 Likes