Transition to Plants of the World Online as a taxonomic reference

Update: this article is out of date. iNaturalist has a taxon framework on Phylum Tracheophyta referencing Plants of the World Online downstream to infraspecies that is described here alongside the set of deviations

iNaturalist used to use several regional floras as vascular plant taxonomic references with The Plant List as the tie-breaker. As discussed here, we are now using Plants of the World Online (POWO) as the primary vascular plant taxonomic reference with two exceptions:
1) POWO isn't yet complete for genera beginning with the letter 'P' (e.g. Phacelia) or Ferns (Class Polypodiopsida).
2) We maintain a list of potential deviations from POWO that we will discuss on a case by case basis. Those we determine to be 'Accepted Deviations' take precedence over POWO.

If you'd like to propose a deviation from POWO, flag the taxon (if its not already flagged) kick off a discussion for why you think the name is valid despite not being in POWO and also add the name to the list of potential deviations.

Here's a decision tree for how to go about helping resolve vascular plant species in iNaturalist that are not in POWO:

Names added to the potential deviation list will be discussed (in their corresponding flag) and potentially discussed with Kew Botanical Garden staff (which maintains POWO). From there we will decide whether to go with POWO or maintain them as 'Accepted Deviations'. As POWO updates, any corresponding rows should be removed from the potential deviation spreadsheet.

For example, Lithospermum parviflorum is an active species in iNaturalist not valid in POWO. It was added to the potential deviation list while @bouteloua led a discussion that seemed to indicate that it should be valid in POWO. This recommendation was brought to the attention of Kew and they agree it should be a valid species. We responded by marking it as an 'Accepted Deviation'. If Kew updates POWO by adding Lithospermum parviflorum, it should be removed from the list (as it will be no longer needed).

Publicado el agosto 20, 2018 11:34 TARDE por loarie loarie

Comentarios

Exciting. :)

Was there any comment on whether clearer information on taxon splits would be incorporated into POWO?

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

Can we talk about how POWO frequently fails to list nominate vars/subsps in any given parent taxon's "Accepted Infraspecifics" section?

For example, Cirsium hydrophilum, which is (in reality) parent to both a nominate variety and also to C. h. var. vaseyi: http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:59046-2

Only the latter variety is listed, even as the former is federally endangered! I immediately was able to find example after example of these omissions (Lasthenia californica ssp. californica was the lone counterexample I found in a few minutes of searching).

If we intend to mark deviations, these are going to surface over and over again.

Publicado por dgreenberger hace más de 5 años

Scott did mention that in the Google Document proposal, though it might be good to list it in the flowchart or otherwise provide a clear list of guidelines/caveats.

"One annoying caveat about POWO is that they don’t always seem to include the nominate infraspecies (e.g. Diplacus bigelovii var. bigelovii). Technically these should be created even though they are not in POWO if POWO does have non-nominate infraspecies in that species."

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

@bouteloua Thank you, I hadn't seen that doc!

Publicado por dgreenberger hace más de 5 años

It would be nice to check the on-line Jepson for California specific plants otherwise we may end up without some subs and var.

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

As a way of thinking of 'disruptive changes' this implies, here's a quick analysis of the 'most observose' species in iNat that aren't accepted in POWO https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZ8HMRvRA6Wb7XPNgpLr-hGXn1SGNtX2UQlW5XxE3kU/edit?usp=sharing
I excluded names starting with P since those aren't very complete in POWO

So Anagallis arvensis has 5,473 obs and POWO suggests changing it to Lysimachia arvensis
Likewise, Heracleum maximum has 3,471 obs and and unclear why its not listed as accepted or a synonym in POWO, we should prob contact them about that one unless anyone sees an obvious explanation

Publicado por loarie hace más de 5 años

@loarie What is going to be the protocol for contacting POWO about deviations etc.? I'm guessing a single point of contact at both ends, on a monthly (or other periodic) basis, would be preferable to constant random queries coming at them from multiple different directions (some possibly contradictory...).

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

I've been seeing several fern taxon swaps based on POWO as the source...I'm not sure this workflow has gotten through to all. Should all ferns be flagged, or otherwise marked (to curators), or something else?

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

please tell whoever is swapping ferns not to use POWO as a source (along with P-genera) as described above. No one should be curating Ferns until there's clarity on what taxonomy we're using. See https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/271039

Publicado por loarie hace más de 5 años

I was told this was the place to discuss issues with POWO. I'm trying to resolve https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/269917, which concerns what to do with forms of Potentilla tridentata, which is now known as Sibbaldiopsis tridentata on iNat. POWO does not include those forms (harking back to David's complaint above about spotty coverage of infraspecies), and to confuse matters, POWO seems to support both Sibbaldiopsis tridentata and Sibbaldia tridentata, which seems like an error. For my first issues of these forms, I walked through Scott's flow chart and added them to the "Vascular Plant POWO Deviations" doc. For the duplicate concepts in POWO, the chart suggests we should also have this duplication on iNat.

So @loarie, two questions I'd like you to answer (both of which seem like they've already been asked by David and Jim above but not answered):

1) How to we tell when POWO doesn't have a name because they reject it vs. when they have overlooked it and should be prompted to add it?
2) What is the process for getting POWO to update, e.g. resolving this issue of what seems like two active POWO names for the same concept? Should iNat curators email BI@kew.org directly, or are you perhaps monitoring the "Can't match" entries in the "Deviations" list and contacting Kew on a regular basis?

Publicado por kueda hace más de 5 años

@kueda I just left a comment on the flag you referenced. Short version: support of both Sibbaldiopsis tridentata and Sibbaldia tridentata is definitely an error POWO needs to fix. And don't expect each and every name in IPNI to be accounted for in POWO. Many IPNI names are historical synonyms that are long out of use.

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

1) How to we tell when POWO doesn't have a name because they reject it vs. when they have overlooked it and should be prompted to add it?

If POWO doesn't recognize the name as a synonym than its likely they've overlooked it. I'd recommend making and swapping into 'frankenstein' forms not in POWO (e.g. Sibbaldiopsis tridentata f. aurora) that match the POWO binomials

2) What is the process for getting POWO to update, e.g. resolving this issue of what seems like two active POWO names for the same concept? Should iNat curators email BI@kew.org directly, or are you perhaps monitoring the "Can't match" entries in the "Deviations" list and contacting Kew on a regular basis?

I just asked them which they'd prefer - standby. But in the meantime - the 'deviation' that we want to record is
that POWO has "Sibbaldiopsis tridentata" and "Sibbaldia tridentata" but iNat has just "Sibbaldiopsis tridentata"

Publicado por loarie hace más de 5 años

Hi all,

This seems to be turning into us changing our 'no primary literature' policy, which is leading to some splits that have been really brutal in terms of time and communiy frustration. Is it time to step back and be a little less eager to rush into these things? I know in the past I've pushed for more scientific/'professional' functionality on inat and been told no, this isn't meant to be a hard science site, it's for connecting people with nature. Is thisstuff really helping people connect with nature? Sure seems to frustrate or confuse more people than it helps. In the least, if we are going this route can we be consistent in our approach so we can get more 'hard ecology' functionalty elsewhere on the site too? This really feels like the worst of both worlds.

Not trying to argue or be contrarian here... but I watched Mimulus aurantiacus get torn apart, first all accidentally put in the wrong species, then split but with most of them stuck in a section, causing tons of frustration and confusion. 'Amateur' people had no idea what was going on, IDers had to waste lots of time straightening it all out, and i had to deal witha bunch of changed IDs that blew up my notifications and took a lot of time i'd rather be spending on other things like helping people with IDs. Now we are talking about doing it with Spiranthes ceruna too, another 724 observations going to be chopped up. https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/269211 I am not questioning the research or hard work by taxonomists, but is this really how we want to do things? Can we take a step back here? please?

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

We are talking about a Spiranthes split, but it hasn't yet been committed and won't be committed until either a) the new taxa and ranges described by Matthew Pace are included in Plants of the World Online or b) there is rough community consensus* around the split.

People connect with nature in different ways. For some it's taking a walk in an area that has plants and animals and not just concrete, relieving stress, hearing birds, etc.. For others, it's observing, cataloging, and categorizing the components of those plants and animals and their communities. That includes taxonomy. Taxonomy includes splits.

*But yeah, what is rough consensus on iNaturalist and how is it achieved? (a question I raised 2 months ago on that long flag discussion).

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

I would at least agree that maybe there should be an enforced "gateway" consisting of a few of the most experienced taxonomic curators in each major group of organisms, through which changes affecting more than, say, a hundred existing observations would be vetted first before they can be committed. Vetting would consist of ensuring that (1) the proposed change or deviation has collected sufficient community consensus, and (2) it is being done in the least disruptive way possible (mechanically). Beyond that, their function would NOT be to agree or disagree with the scientific merit of the changes.

While I agree that taxonomic changes are inevitable and necessary, to the extent we can minimize their impact on connecting people with nature, it would be a good thing.

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

I mean, i am not anti taxonomist or something. But this is something that is basically forced on everyone on the site not just those with interest in microsplitter taxonomy. Is the ecology behind it neat? sure. Do i want to spend hours of my time sorting through old Diplacus IDs i have made which are differentiated only really by range unless you have really specific pictures? Not at the top of my list but when we all adopt the taxonomy, we don't have much choice.

fwiw i don't see any reason why one couldn't continue collect ecological data without all the new splits. Things were working fine before. Not perfect, but fine. I think this sort of thing is, overall, way over done. Like, why aren't these all subspecies? Especially the ones that freely hybridize? But anyway. My point isn't to have the same rant again and again. I'm just throwing my hat int this 'rough consensus' and my vote is to tone the primary resource taxonomy down on iNat if not eliminate it completely (i did not realize POWO was stuffing in these primary literature changes so extensively or i might have voted no from the start). If I get outvoted, and i probably will given the rampant nature of splitters throughout taxonomy, so be it.

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

In place of my previous comment, I made this. All I can think of while reading this thread lol.

https://i.imgur.com/QgLMKTW.png

Publicado por wdvanhem hace más de 5 años

hahahahahahaha

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

hahaha perfect

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

It's not that POWO entries are undisputed, some plants are moved so often, like Mimulus/Diplacus.
There are more recent papers suggesting that things are far from sorted out.
iNaturalist and many users disregard variations and subspecies, but the trend seems to be to remove variations and subspecies, invalidating hundreds of observations.
The automatic system is probably to blame, it's often amazingly good, but doesn't give the full name.
It's not always good to have the most recent names, sometimes older names work that much better in iNaturalist.

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

none of this is sorted out and extremely high numbers of name changes will continue for the next decade or two. Most people, including many if not most professional ecology types (in my experience at least) would rather just wait it out a while. There's no imperative to do so... if there's some special conservation issue we can address those directly.

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

The hardest push is going to come whenever new species are discovered and named. Sometimes they fit right into the existing taxonomic framework, but in other cases they force alteration of taxonomic concepts in related and/or parental taxa. If we wait, or shoe-horn those latter cases into an existing, now-inconsistent taxonomic framework, that only creates deferred maintenance that must eventually be addressed. And some iNat users are likely going to want to connect with those particular units of nature sooner than POWO's nominal 2-year incorporation process.

A case in point is https://scholarship.claremont.edu/aliso/vol30/iss1/6 (already noted in the Diplacus topic). Five obviously distinct species were named under Erythranthe. When those species were first added to iNat, Erythranthe had not yet been fully segregated from Mimulus in iNat. And the existing (still Mimulus) species under which they had formerly been lumped necessarily changed in scope too. How much other, analogous taxonomic inconsistency will we be willing to wait out? Will no one notice except taxonomists? (That's not a rhetorical question -- I'm open to being convinced!)

Bottom line, imperfect as it may be, I think the process that has been developed here is the best framework to address a perpetually thorny issue. (Crataegus taxonomy, anyone? ;-) Adoption of POWO necessarily forces us to address some of the deferred maintenance already accumulated. And doing that correctly necessarily means referring to the primary literature on which POWO is based.

(All of which is soooo much easier to do now than in the pre-online world of 30 years ago -- thus the accelerated rate of change.... sigh.)

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

I mean, anything is based on primary literature if you go back far enough. Maybe i should just stick to the base issues.

-The process of splitting here doesn't work very well and cause mass scale problems and frustration especially if there isn't a geographic difference. If there is a geographic difference then we are mapping solely based on location which means we aren't actually learning anything about the species range or distribution because we aren't even looking.
-Taxonomy has become heavily dominated by splitters and any slight difference is described as a different species when it should be a subspecies (imho of course). Adopting this doesn't fit well with iNat's functionality.
-Drifting taxonomy has a very high cost in terms of database management, data collection, etc. both on here and elsewhere.

I understand that there are upsides to adopting the new names too, and i am not saying we shouldn't do it per se. I am saying i want the downsides to be recognized more fully, and for us to be open to different solutions other than 'everyone forced to accept the new splitting taxonomy with no effort to fix the issues' which is how this seems to be going now.

Instead of not adopting the changes we could also consider 'holding bin' taxa in the official taxonomy. In the past the iNat admins have been very resistant to that, but in this case it's a really simple (comparatively speaking) and effective solution that would stave off a ton of problems. Want to split Spranthes cernua into 12 species that all share the same range? Create a S. ceruna sensu latu designation and put it between genus and species. That way we don't have to adopt the new taxonomy or at least can do so gradually and have something to fall back on other than 'Spiranthes sp.' when we inevitably can't tell most of them apart.

And for goodness sake if we are going this route that involves catering to 'hard science' rather than the 'amateurs first' ideology that was pushed on us before, can we please consider adding some other ecology tools? Things like plot functionality, secret observations (even if you have to pay or something), negative data, improved mapping, improved geoprivacy, default fields, linking of observations, etc. I don't think it's a good approach to say 'iNaturalist is for amateurs and so doesn't support basic functionality for professional style monitoring, but we are forcing all our users to stay up to date with super obscure taxonomic changes'...

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

Where do I report things that are messed up.
Like Ambrosia salsola var. salsola.
There are 3 entries.
Ambrosia salsola salsola -> Ambrosia salsola NOT CORRECT
Ambrosia salsola salsola Correct
Ambrosia salsola salsola ??????

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

@jdmore Change isn't the problem, but loosing a lot of data and thus frustrating users is. They initially left out the variation not always a problem as in the same area there may be only one.
Next after the change the same plant is bumped back to the Genus level.
The conversion process is far from flawless, so we always check all our entries for the one or two the system somehow missed.

The biggest problem is a good on line reference that keys the new name.

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

Another one that drives you n....
Used to be Orobanche cooperi now is Aphyllon cooperi in the Jepson and Orobanche cooperi cooperi without a picture in Inaturalist.
So all valid Orobanche cooperi now seem to be invalid.
Why Orobanche cooperi cooperi ?????

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

@efmer Once upon a time O. cooperi consisted of ssp. cooperi and ssp. latiloba. The pair exist in iNat despite having been submerged into the parent in just about every other reference I can find. The Aphyllon switchover hopefully will be less awkward than what happened with Mimulus, although O. uniflora has been split (rightfully) into two occasionally sympatric species (A. uniflorum and A. purpureum) so that won't be fun

Publicado por dgreenberger hace más de 5 años

@efmer if you find an issue with the taxonomy, like duplicate names, go to the taxon page for one of the species, or the genus, and
-click Curation
-Flag for curation
-leave a comment saying what the issue is

I fixed the duplicate Ambrosia salsola varieties.

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

@bouteloua Thanks, next time we will take that route, there are probably many more.

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

@dgreenbeerger Until we found this recent paper: http://www.phytoneuron.net/2015Phytoneuron/48PhytoN-Orobanchearizonica.pdf
So it it's wise to add a ruler to the flower shot.

Publicado por efmer hace más de 5 años

These issues are complicated for sure, so I always think it's often prudent to use a stepwise approach if the taxonomy is less than "rough consensus"....just so you leave yourself with a chance to walk things back if you need to. Mike Hough and I have now looked at several 1000s of Spiranthes and it might be prudent to treat the Spiranthes cernua/incurva complex similarly to Nymphaea odorata complex. I get very queasy just using locations to assign species rank here, at least when your close to areas where overlap likely occurs.

Publicado por mattyoung hace más de 5 años

@mattyoung That's why we need experts like you ready to zero in on the observations from the overlap areas and re-identify them if a split is implemented.

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

Agreed -- some literally cannot be identified to species IMO though.....especially when looking at just a crappy photo or two. There are plants in the field that I've seen that look intermediate too, and so maybe as high as 20-25% can't be ID to species IMO.

Publicado por mattyoung hace más de 5 años

And having them sit at Spiranthes (genus) or Diplacus sect. Diplacus, if necessary based on the evidence, is fine. There is an option in the Data Quality Assessment section where we can (carefully, measuredly) mark it as that the community cannot improve the identification.

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 5 años

Cool, good to know -- it's just we know the ID is basically between only "2 species" in the Spiranthes complex and it would seem you'd want some community agreement on how to ID them apart or at least be able to tag them as cernua/incurva.

Publicado por mattyoung hace más de 5 años

@mattyoung if intermediate plants are frequent (more than just occasional spontaneous hybrids), then I would wonder what the justification is for treating them at species rank.

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

exactly. i think the reason is that for some reason splitter papers are published more? Everyone wants to find a new species...

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

@charlie Not in my experience, at least. I've published new things at both variety and species rank, depending on what the patterns of variation (and other evidence) told me about gene flow (or lack thereof) between populations. But whatever the appropriate rank, there are definitely new things still out there to be discovered or recognized, and doing so doesn't automatically make someone a splitter. Otherwise Linnaeus would be the grandfather of all splitters ;-). And whether they get published or not is still up to the good ole peer review process.

Publicado por jdmore hace más de 5 años

Curse Linnaeus the splitter.

I guess my main gripe is just with usability. If these super similar, intergrading things are to be considered species we need some formal subgenus type category to keep track of them. That somehow seems to get lost in the rush to classify each cryptic species but is crucial for broader ecology work as i'm sure you know. At least until we get handheld sequencers :)

Publicado por charlie hace más de 5 años

We've done a first pass through all the "cernua" and "Spiranthes" records and ~20% can be assigned to a species with a high level of confidence. We came up with 45 cernua s.s. and 111 incurva out of 750-800 records. S. arcisepala is much more straight-forward though. And there's overlap, at least when phenotypically identified, in ranges of the species.

Publicado por mattyoung hace más de 5 años

and wait til you get to the cacti..........

Publicado por ellen5 hace más de 5 años

Was recently going through observations of Veronica hederifolia/sublobata aka. V. hederifolia ssp. hederifolia/lucorum.

The inaturalist database currently has V. hederifolia and V. sublobata, as per POWO. But it then also has V. hederifolia ssp. hederifolia.

Distinguishing between the two taxa is tricky and unreliable, even with the specimen in hand, so in most cases, the suitable ID would usually be Veronica hederifolia sensu lato. It's not currently clear whether that's what V. hederifolia represents.

I've opened a flag: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/314837

Publicado por jobangles hace alrededor de 5 años

@loarie How should I handle Malacothamnus to prevent a POWO lumping mess? As many of the Malacothamnus lumped by recent authors are considered rare taxa by CNPS, I'm considering them all valid until proven otherwise. My initial inclination is that all or most fit the taxonomy of Kearney which is what CNPS mostly follows and what was used until the 1993 Jepson. I'm just afraid someone will try to make the taxonomy fit POWO which would possibly require a lot of cleanup when things are probably mostly put back to the way they are currently on iNat.

Publicado por keirmorse hace alrededor de 5 años

You may want to flag the species/other taxa for curation and use the flags to discuss the taxonomy/propose deviations from POWO. For those trying to make the taxonomy fit POWO, there will then be a little text that says "Flagged for curation". This should indicate to those users that they should check the flags before committing anything. Here's an example with a summary of taxon changes (or not) in the first comment https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/276284

I started one on the genus here: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/324799

Publicado por bouteloua hace alrededor de 5 años

Okay. Thanks. I'll see what I can do.

Publicado por keirmorse hace alrededor de 5 años

Hello All,
I am from NatureServe Canada and I am currently working with iNaturalist to update Canada's list of obscured species (by province/territory) we mainly follow FNA as our taxonomic standard and have noticed quite a lot of differences with iNat. I am wondering if any curators here would be interested in helping add some subspecies/varieties (if recognized by POWO of course, and following proper iNat taxonomic updates protocol). I will list the taxon below (one animal listed below as well). Thanks in advance if anyone feels like helping out.
Crataegus margarettae angustifolia
Crataegus margarettae margarettae
Artemisia campestris canadensis
Atriplex gardneri aptera
Corispermum ochotense ochotense
Cuscuta gronovii latiflora
Elymus canadensis brachystachys
Mimulus ringens ringens
Plantago patagonica spinulosa
Potentilla arenosa arenosa
Potentilla effusa effusa
Tanacetum huronense floccosum
Centrocercus urophasianus urophasianus

Publicado por allisonsw_nsc hace casi 5 años

Crataegus margarettae - no infraspecifics accepted in POWO; flagged for curation (discuss there, not here)
Artemisia campestris subsp. canadensis - added taxon
Atriplex gardneri var. aptera - taxon already present as Atriplex × aptera
Corispermum ochotense var. ochotense - added taxon
Cuscuta gronovii var. latiflora - added taxon
Elymus canadensis var. bachystachys - no infraspecifics of the species in POWO; flagged species for curation
Mimulus ringens var. ringens - no infraspecifics of the species in POWO; flagged species for curation
Plantago patagonica var. spinulosa - no infraspecifics of the species in POWO; flagged species for curation
Potentilla arenosa arenosa - no infraspecifics of the species in POWO; flagged species for curation
Potentilla effusa effusa - no infraspecifics of the species in POWO; flagged species for curation
Tanacetum huronense var. floccosum - treated as a synonym of T. bipinnatum subsp. bipinnatum on POWO

Generally the way to get taxa added is to flag the genus or species for curation and a curator can look into adding it. You can go to the taxon page, then click Curation>Flag for curation to generate a flag. Doesn't look like many of these would have a collection risk, so hopefully they won't be auto-obscured in Canada.

Centrocercus urophasianus subsp. urophasianus - not a plant, but looks like only C. urophasianus and C. minimus are listed in Clements 2018. No subspecies of either are included.

Publicado por bouteloua hace casi 5 años

Hi all, I am wondering how I need to handle the Morella pumila taxon on iNaturalist? I've flagged it, and I included a number of people in the discussion under the flag, but have had very little feedback. I've had quite a bit of field experience with the entity, and it appears to be distinct at some level from M. cerifera, both in morphology and habitat. There are some intermediate plants (these tend to be more common in fire-suppressed areas), but 90% of the time, they are easily sorted between species. POWO lists M. pumila as a synonym of M. cerifera, but I don't want to simply sink the entity under M. cerifera, as this would obscure the differences between the two entities. Should I list it as a deviation from POWO?

Publicado por williammcfarland hace casi 5 años

@williammcfarland thanks for the poke, and see https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/351717 for a new update. Looks like you got a 25% response to the people you tagged for discussion, which is often as good as you will get. At some point we have to assume that the non-responders had no opinion, and go with what we've got. But if you want more consensus first, maybe you can come up with other folks to tag into the conversation?

Publicado por jdmore hace casi 5 años

Is it still the case that ferns and "p" genera are not up to date?

Publicado por reuvenm hace más de 4 años

Hi @reuvenm - have heard from Kew today that these taxa have now been completed.

Publicado por lera hace más de 4 años

@tiwane and @bouteloua it might be nice to remove the bit about genera beginning with "P" from the curator guide. Would it be possible to add a note to the effect that ferns and lycophytes are mostly based on PPG I, but with some deviations? While POWO and PPG I are probably identical for the majority of genera, the differences are still big enough that it would be nice to explicitly warn people that we often don't follow POWO for them.

Publicado por choess hace más de 4 años

Yep. I'm not able to change the source in the title at the Taxon Framework though: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/121943-Polypodiopsida/taxonomy_details

Publicado por bouteloua hace más de 4 años

hey all, i saw that some people were trying to split off a semi-cryptic fern (Phegopteris exelsior) in a group that in our region includes a common and a state tracked rare species. Doing this will pretty much break our ability to track the rare species on here, and it's based on a paper published just a month ago. I thought we weren't doing this on iNat? Can we pump the brakes a little here please? I Don't think this benefits conservation, the 'species', ecology as a hole, or 'connecting people with nature'... it just makes another species impossible to track on iNat. I already stopped adding polypodiums because of a similar issue but that was just one species split into two... with the third species this will be a real issue for us :( So please... don't? @choess

Publicado por charlie hace más de 4 años

Hey, I committed a few taxon swaps recently where, based on a recent article, POWO, and iNaturalist sentiment, I merged the Genus Decumaria into Hydrangea. I created Section Decumaria under Hydrangea to accomodate the former Genus Decumaria (based on the paper and iNaturalist sentiment). I then merged Decumaria barbara with Hydrangea barbara (both active taxa), and I merged Decumaria sinensis with Hydrangea obtusifolia (D. sinensis is listed as a synonym of H. obtusifolia in POWO). Now I have a problem where Hydrangea barbara and Hydrangea sinensis are listed under Hydrangea (all well and good), but they are not listed in Section Decumaria. What steps should I take to move Hydrangea barbara and Hydrangea obtusifolia into section Decumaria?

Publicado por williammcfarland hace más de 4 años

@williammcfarland go to each species, "Edit Taxon", and under "Parent name", search for Decumaria or section Decumaria. When you find it, save the taxon page, and they should be re-grafted into sect. Decumaria.

Publicado por choess hace más de 4 años

@choess Done! Thank you!

Publicado por williammcfarland hace más de 4 años

Hello, I would like to list some genera for whose we cannot follow POWO, mainly because a lot of species complex are merged in a same unique taxon, while on the field ecologists and conservationists recognise usually and easily several distinct species, including in a same area (synpatric) or even same habitat (syntopic).
From my own opinion, about western Palearctic flora concerning the Mediterranean, I know the following genera that POWO's taxonomy causes systemic problems to the whole users community :

Allium subgen. Allium (Amaryllidaceae),
Brachypodium (Poaceae),
Ophrys L. (Orchidaceae),
Tulipa (Liliaceae),
At least for Monocots. Does someone know any other else ? Also for Dicots ?
Thanks,
Errol.

Publicado por abounabat hace casi 4 años

@loarie Did you ever get clarification on getting POWO to update things? You said "standyby" on that 3 years ago. I was looking at Amsinckia intermedia recently on both iNat and POWO and the lack of information on POWO was disappointing as far as what references accept or don't accept a name. It made me wonder if POWO would like to be contacted when there appear to be issues and, if so, what information would they like. In this case, it seems like a curator could provide them with a list of the many missing references that could inform their decision and state how each reference treats the taxon. Ideally, the curator could also provide a synopsis of whether the name appears to be relatively stable in recent years or if it is fluctuating. They probably don't want to be harassed about their nomenclature being out of date, but seems like they would welcome help if important information is provided to them.

As a side note, the synonym list on POWO for A. intermedia (A. menziesii var. intermedia) is amazing. This one species (or variety if you follow that taxonomy) has 153 synonyms! I'm generally a splitter (or unlumper) as the evidence seems to often support that but I think this is the craziest example of splitting I've heard of.

Publicado por keirmorse hace más de 2 años

From where I sit, POWO is working well as a reference. They make hundreds of changes each week and if you contact Rafaël (r.govaerts at kew dot org) you generally get a response. Have you contacted them about Amsinckia?

Publicado por loarie hace más de 2 años

@loarie Nope. Whether curators should contact them is what I was curious about as earlier comments here implied maybe not. Sounds like it is fine to do so. I can contact them about Amsinckia at some point after I do more research. I was thinking about trying to do some IDs in the genus but backed off when I saw there were some POWO issues and that the taxonomy of the genus may still be in flux, though some things looked like they could be corrected to better fit the keys most people are using if POWO wants to go that way.

Publicado por keirmorse hace más de 2 años

According to POWO (on their About page):
https://powo.science.kew.org/about
“Newly published names are added from IPNI annually into the names backbone, they are then edited and therefore take some months to become visible on the POWO website, so if a name you recently published is missing, please check the IPNI website https://ipni.org/ and if the name is present then it will be visible on POWO soon, if it is not on IPNI, then please email them directly on ipnifeedback@kew.org so it can be added by the IPNI editors and will then be automatically be incorporated into POWO.”

Would it be acceptable to add a new species to iNat which is present in the IPNI but not yet visible on POWO? If not, we have to somehow remember to keep checking POWO before we add it.

Publicado por pfau_tarleton hace alrededor de 2 años

@pfau_tarleton If it is a recently described taxon, it's in the flow chart above. If it is a recent name change, that is more debatable.

Publicado por keirmorse hace alrededor de 2 años

@keirmorse, the flow chart leads to posting the species as a deviation and initiate discussion. I was asking if it's in the IPNI (but not yet POWO) is it acceptable to add the species into the taxonomic framework. It appears that if the new species is in the IPNI queue, it will automatically be added to POWO and thus no discussion is warranted.

Publicado por pfau_tarleton hace alrededor de 2 años

The flowchart is outdated, but it would still need to be logged as a deviation (via taxon framework relationship) since it isn't matching to a taxon on POWO. I would feel fine adding it unless there was some reason not to, like it's controversial and should be discussed first. Before activating the taxon though, you would need to check if it's split off from an existing taxon or wholly new.

Publicado por bouteloua hace alrededor de 2 años

I'll just add that whether something is split off from an existing taxon can be a gray area. Specimens of many newly described species have had other names previously (mis)applied to them, just because nobody was looking closely enough, or it was the best available cubby hole to put it in at the time. I would tend to treat those more as misidentifications, than as formal taxonomic splits. A recent example familiar to me would be all the new Nemacladus species described in https://doi.org/10.3120/0024-9637-67.1.35

If an author specifically treats their new taxa as splits, then I would be more inclined to mirror that in the iNaturalist taxon changes.

Publicado por jdmore hace alrededor de 2 años

I can't access the paper, but it says one of the new species was elevated from a variety, which would have required the species be split.

Publicado por bouteloua hace alrededor de 2 años

I'll add that just because a new taxon goes into IPNI doesn't mean POWO will accept it. POWO might just add it as a synonym. IPNI tries to include all names whether accepted or not. What POWO does often has no references or justification and, often when it does have references, it references a checklist with no references or just says one random reference doesn't accept it. So, any deviation from POWO should be flagged as a deviation until POWO accepts it, assuming they ever accept it. If it isn't flagged as a deviation, someone may think it is a mistake and try to fix it.

Publicado por keirmorse hace alrededor de 2 años

@bouteloua Yep, I agree, elevation of a previous name at lower rank to a higher rank would be an unambiguous split for iNat. It's when there was no previous name at any rank that it can be more of a gray area. And sorry, couldn't find a non-paywalled version of the paper online (but can email one if you PM me).

Publicado por jdmore hace alrededor de 2 años

Is it possible to update this page ?
I have recently been told that species beginning with the letter P and ferns are not covered by the taxon framework for Tracheophytes, with a link to this page.
@loarie ?

Publicado por t_e_d hace alrededor de 2 meses

I added a update disclaimer to the top of the page

Publicado por loarie hace alrededor de 2 meses

@loarie : thank you !
Perhaps a new post would be helpful, explaining that, in case of disagreement, the first step is to send a feedback to POWO before deviating.

Publicado por t_e_d hace alrededor de 2 meses

Agregar un comentario

Acceder o Crear una cuenta para agregar comentarios.