# What would you ID when species taxonomic heirarchy is wrong?

**URL:** <https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-would-you-id-when-species-taxonomic-heirarchy-is-wrong/73408>\
**Category:** General\
**Tags:** taxonomy\
**Created:** [December 5, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-would-you-id-when-species-taxonomic-heirarchy-is-wrong/73408 "2025-12-05T18:59:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![upupa-epops](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/upupa-epops/32/1972_2.png) [@upupa-epops](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/upupa-epops)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 8:41pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-would-you-id-when-species-taxonomic-heirarchy-is-wrong/73408/11 "2025-12-05T20:41:38Z")

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If the formal taxonomy is wrong or outdated, we should still identify using that taxonomy and wait for it to be fixed rather than improvising an improved version (similar discussion today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](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifying-cryptic-species/73397)). 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.

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