Flag for Taxon: Resurrection Fern (Variety Pleopeltis polypodioides michauxiana)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sedge | Resurrection Fern (Variety Pleopeltis polypodioides michauxiana) |
Should be elevated to species status based on the publication by Sprunt et al. 2011. http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1600/036364411X604886 |
Mar. 7, 2018 19:49:17 +0000 | rfoster |
Done - see additional comments |
Comments
This may have to wait until iNat's taxonomy authorities catch up. It's iNat policy not to change names based on primary sources but rather wait until they become generally accepted and appear in the secondary taxonomy lists such as The Plant List. Unfortunately some of these can lag years behind currently accepted wisdom. This taxon has me bemused because The Plant List has it in the genus Polypodium so I'm not sure why iNat has it as Pleopeltis
http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/tro-26602411
I will dig around in some of the other taxonomy lists and see if any of them are more up to date than The Plant List.
Actually IPNI have a recent update so I can make the change you requested
http://www.ipni.org/ipni/idPlantNameSearch.do;jsessionid=C953D29697C98739335F650986CF2693?id=77147389-1&back_page=
Thank @rfoster This one is already being used widely, for example in Weakley's Flora of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic States. Glad you could make the change.
@sedge the change seems justified to me but I'm taking flak for making it because the regional floras have not yet adopted the new taxonomy. I have sent the problem on up to more experienced curators for arbitration but, be warned, I suspect the change will likely be reversed for the time being. I find it quite annoying that some of the taxonomic authorities that iNat relies on are very slow to update but iNat isn't the place to argue about whether a taxon is a subspecies or a full species. For iNat the key necessity is that the taxon is unambiguously identified. The names need to be recognisable to users who refer to regional names lists rather than up to date with the latest research.
Additional information from Weakley 2015, "Although traditionally treated as a variety of P. polypodioides, recent study suggests that this taxon warrants specific status (Sprunt 2010; Sprunt et al. 2011; Vincent & Hickey 2014). P. polypodioides (in the strict sense) is essentially Caribbean in distribution: in s. FL, the West Indies, Central America, and n. South America. Six additional taxa in the complex are tropical in Mexico, Central America, South America, and Africa".