iNat uses ‘open source’ taxonomic sources. The list is here - Curator Guide . iNaturalist.ca, under External Taxonomic Authority List. If anyone has sources to add, consult the admins.
What’s also at stake is how to identify what you mean when you don’t mean a monophyletic group.
Why not identify all Lichens as Lecanoromycetes, until such time as they can be identified more fined (eg. to family)?
If a Lichen expert wants to see ID all (most) Lichens, then bookmark this [sorry, this is for southern Africa, you will need to tweak it]:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?taxon_id=152028,55456,128050,54743,118252,152030,175541,127378,117881,175162,117869,174730
or handle it via a Project (e.g.: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?verifiable=any&project_id=lichens-of-southern-africa - from https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lichens-of-southern-africa).
So we need not be restricted by polyphyletic groups: we can handle them once identified to specific groups easily. For just the overall group, using a catchbag group - such as Lecanoromycetes (which accounts for 95% of Lichens anyway) seems an acceptable compromise.
3 Likes
If you do not know species or genus, it is always wise to use the name of the largest group of lichenized fungi Lecanoromycetes. It will attract attention of lichen people and will be corrected if it belonged to a smaller group, such as Arthoniomycetes or similar. Much better for IDers than to dig into a huge pile name Fungi or even Ascomycota.
5 Likes
The same can be said for Pisces, and its subdivisions Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes. As @pmeisenheimer pointed out, the Chondrichthyes are no longer considered fishes on iNat at all.
I was going to suggest using “lichen” as a tag but I think I like your idea better
3 Likes
Taxonomy by its nature is inconsistent … different taxonomists across very different groups of organisms organize them differently (an Order of vascular plants might not be exactly equivalent to an Order of vertebrates). The goal for all is to have a taxonomy that reflects phylogenetic relationships but that’s not always possible due to incomplete knowledge or a lack of consensus about what arrangement best reflects reality. Where there is no consensus, paraphyletic taxa can function as useful placeholders until such time as the relationships are better understood. If a paraphyletic taxon has been widely used and is understood by a broad range of researchers and even the public, I don’t see the harm in continuing to recognize it while a better arrangement gets “phased in.” Molecular techniques have led to a lot of reshuffling of taxa that might or might not hold up over time. I don’t see an issue with being somewhat conservative by hanging onto some “old-fashioned” taxonomy pending better information. If iNat is striving to stay on the cutting edge of taxonomic change, for many groups there’s going to be a lot of rearranging and some back and forth for years to come.
2 Likes
I don’t see any harm in getting birds under reptilia though, it won’t change its iconic status, and people iding “true” reptiles can search for lower groups to exclude birds (and there’re not as many to make it problematic) or even you know, learn them too.
Reptilia and Aves are both currently Classes. What arrangement would you propose or has been proposed elsewhere?
I’m sure there’re many papers about that matter, so it’s up to staff to decide what fits more while saving relationships, in my personal opinion using clades is the best we can do with taxonomy nowadays, but I’m not a website developer.
I personally am very much a supporter of Aves and Reptillia being separate classes.
2 Likes
That’s part of the problem.
How about putting Tetrapodans (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds) under Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fishes)? It seems more useful to have them separate.
I think it can be done too, but only with switching some names, it shouldn’t make searches harder than they already are with fish, in the end we also need many more iconic taxa.
I’m not proposing this, but the simplest arrangement which I believe would be consistent with most research findings and cause the least disruption might look something like the following:
Under the Subphylum Vertebrata:
Class Amphibia (amphibians)
Class Aves (birds)
Class Crocodylia (crocodilians)
Class Lepidosauria (lizards, snakes, tuatara)
Class Testudines (turtles)
… plus the mammals and fishes.
I’m excluding all the extinct forms within and associated with these clades, which definitely complicate the picture in terms of what taxonomic ranks you would assign. And I’m not convinced the rank of Class should apply to all of these in the list.
Is this just something you made up on the spot, or are there actually taxonomists who split Reptilia into three classes (not counting Aves)?
why not just lump them all into Animalia? I mean, unless we can split plants into a few iconic taxa also, that might be good instead.
We need more of them no matter which kingdom we talk about, what’s the point of lumping them in one? Because plants are in one? Do we even need to discuss it? If there’s a problem on one side there’s no need to make the other one more problematic too, there’re separate topics about it, I just mentioned that iconic taxa would help with filtering if some taxa were less known to general public by scientific name.
sorry, it wasn’t a serious comment, more a cynical reference to plants being lumped into one… i think we should have iconic taxa for plants at least into bryophytes, ferns, conifers, monocots, and dicots (though dicot may be polyphylletic?).
3 Likes
Yeah, I’d like to read more about current high taxonomy of plants, Wiki writes everywhere how dicots are not quite right thing, but I never saw anything concrete about it.