Taxonomic Swap 11392
(Committed on 2015-05-25)
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Comments
Hi Jon, both taxa were active on iNat. Flora Europaea & Wikipedia had it as Hieracium pilosella, and I went with that. To the best of my knowledge, the latter is more widely used in Europe, where it's native.
Thanks for replying. Old names often remain more commonly used for a few years following a taxonomic revision.
See Braeutigam, S.; Greuter, W. 2007: A new treatment of Pilosella for the Euro-Mediterranean flora. Willdenowia 37: 123-137. (PDF here)
This name change is accepted by the Plant List (iNat's default plants source) plus the Catalogue of Life and GBIF. It's a widespread weed in New Zealand and the NZ Plant Names (the iNat default source for New Zealand plant names) also now uses Pilosella officinarum.
I recommend that we reverse the taxon swap and make Pilosella officinarum the active taxon on iNat.
Yeah, but in a community such as iNat there's a trade-off b/w people recognizing or knowing a species by a certain name on the one hand and following the latest taxonomies on the other hand.
The Plant List is but one taxonomic directory, especially if there are no better regional lists, and we're usually following Flora Europaea.
In any case, I don't have strong feelings here, the main purpose of my taxonomic change was having 1 rather than 2 available names of the same species on iNat.
PS: adding the link for further reference, yours was broken for some reason
www.bgbm.org/sites/default/files/documents/wi37-1Braeutigam%2BGreuter.pdf
Thanks. While I don't disagree in general, in this specific case I think we should keep up with the times. 2007 is not the cutting edge of taxonomic changes and this name change has been accepted by the established taxonomic authorities that iNaturalist follows (for plants, it's the International Plant Names Index and the Plant List according to the Curator Guide). If it's good enough for them, I reckon it should be good enough for us. Of course, as you point out, Flora Europaea hasn't caught up with this yet.
Regarding the trade-off between using the current name and using a name people know, you probably already know that iNat does a good job of handling synonyms. Both of these names will show up in any search and point to the one taxon and species page. (I typically still search on "Hieracium pilosella" since the new name isn't drummed into my head yet.)
Since you've got no strong feelings either way, I'll go ahead and see if I can reverse this taxon swap.
(Thanks for fixing the link. I've edit my comment to fix it there too.)
I had a quick and not very thorough look at the phylogenetic research that underlies this change. Pilosella appears to be sister to Hieracium. In other words both groups are monophyletic. In such a case, neither classification is misleading about relationships, but the less inclusive one is likely to be a bit more informative. It's a question of rank, not of circumscription, and thus similar to the division of Nothofagus in those respects. I followed Flora Europaea in writing Flora of NZ 4 (1988) because back then we had no phylogenetic information and at the time I suspected Pilosella could be nested within Hieracium. Now I think I'd prefer to treat Pilosella as a separate genus.
OK, well I just looked at the Braeutigam & Greuter paper and it looks like I over-simplified the phylogenetic situation a little, but I think the overall conclusion is the same.
Thanks Phil. I appreciate your thoughts on this. I went ahead and reversed this taxon swap.
What's your citation for reverting Pilosella officinarum back to its old name?
iNaturalist by default follows the Plant List, which has accepted the taxonomic update of Hieracium pilosella to Pilosella officinarum. Pilosella officinarum is now widely accepted and widely used.