Flag for Taxon: Ants, Bees, Wasps, and Sawflies (Order Hymenoptera)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bobby23 | Ants, Bees, Wasps, and Sawflies (Order Hymenoptera) |
I believe I have found a well-curated and up-to-date authority on Hymenopterans and I think we should use it on iNat |
Sep. 4, 2018 02:48:10 +0000 | stephen_thorpe |
HOL is incomplete and slow to update |
Comments
Just taking a quick peek at the genus Polistes and a couple of ichneumonid genera, there are a number of species missing entirely or filed incorrectly. While HOL may have some useful data, it seems quite far from the completeness that would be necessary for a taxonomic authority. There's even the rather direct note at the top stating that "a number of taxa still need work" with no notes as to which parts are considered to be complete versus incomplete. Their updates page also stops quite abruptly in 2011 after just 3 years of work while in an incomplete state.
Hi All,
So I work in the Museum of Biological Diversity in the Triplehorn Insect Collection. They are the ones who run HOL (I don't do anything with it yet). They are working on fixing parts of the database and have someone trying to migrate the database from one type of software to a new type. It has been up and down for a while, but they are working on it. We haven't been able to edit much of anything on it for a few months, but hopefully soon.
My labmate says to probably stick with Ant wiki for ants.
For context of the hymenoptera completeness, the Johnson lab focuses on micro parasitic hymenoptera, so that would be the most robust in their database. Of course, none of these would be identifiable on iNat given the average size of a period in 12 point font...
Of course, none of these would be identifiable on iNat given the average size of a period in 12 point font...<
Not necessarily so! You are overlooking the possibility of iNat observations taken in the lab under a microscope!
[following]
True, I was overstating. I meant most of the observations on iNat submitted by citizen scientists who likely won't have access to a scope or a lab. I'm not saying that it is impossible to find a few identifiable micro parasitic wasps, but the likelihood is much lower.
Also, HOL also includes lots of non-Hymenoptera, but the focus is Hymenoptera.
@jonathan142, @malisaspring I appreciate your 2¢ on the topic. It's a shame that HOL seems to be slow to update and is missing a number of species, but so do a few of our current authorities, such as the IUCN Red List (which we use for mammals) and Plants of the World Online (which is mostly complete but has not addressed most plant species under genera that begin with "P"). We make explicit deviations from our authorities when needed, as exemplified here. Could we not do the same with HOL, or are there too many issues for it to be practical?
Malisa, it would be great to know what families or genera specifically qualify as "micro parasitic hymenoptera" because @stephen_thorpe is right - just because they're small doesn't mean they'll never see observations attributed to them. We have observations of some very small animals on iNat, like this one.
I don't know. My job is Odonata and unrelated to most of the lab. We still don't have access to the database due to server issues, so we won't be updating things for a while.
It is called Hymenoptera Online (HOL). Its official description can be found on its homepage (https://hol.osu.edu/). In the long term, I hope it will enable us to eventually make Hymenoptera a complete taxon. In favor of consistency, I recommend retiring AntWiki as our ant authority unless others feel strongly about keeping it, but it may already be similar to the ant taxonomy on HOL as is. I recommend checking it out if interested.
I have tagged the relevant curators and users below as well as co-director @loarie. Please let me know what you think, and please tag other people you may feel would like to know about my suggestion. Let me know what you guys think about us implimenting the HOL!
@aguilita @alexwild @barthelemy @beeboy @bensmith2 @brianalindh @caseyborowskijr @cgritz @eliag @enricoschifani @gcsnelling @hadel @heatherholm @howarddc @jgibbs @johnascher @jonathan142 @kevinwilliams @malisaspring @mattiamenchetti @mdwarriner @peterslingsby @pfau_tarleton @phm8871 @richardmonteverdense @rjpretor @sambiology @stephen_thorpe @susanna_h @villu @wlmorin @winny88