Flag for Taxon: Carnivorans (Order Carnivora)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| loarie | Carnivorans (Order Carnivora) |
need to make decisions about when to deviate from MDD |
Jan. 8, 2019 20:11:13 +0000 | loarie |
see comments |
Comments
After an intial review, I would be in favor of using the classifications for nearly all of the MDD entries. The one exception would be to keep the iNaturalist nomenclature for domestic dog, which it appears is missing entirely from MDD. I'm happy to take a more in-depth look if anyone wants to flag any other entries.
thanks max! thanks for the input. I bet MDD considers domestic dog a ssp of Canis lupus. We've kept them separate on iNat so its easier to keep filter out domestic dogs and keep them from getting mixed in with legit wolves (which would be harder if dogs were a subset of wolves).
It's a little inconsistent. The domestic cat is recognized as a distinct species. I largely agree with Max, but I am still reviewing the material and will post a more thorough comment later.
Personally, beyond the benefits of keeping wolves separate from dog observations on iNat, I think there is genetically sound justification for keeping C. familiaris separate from C. lupus because they do not descend from any living wolf clade (Freedman et al. 2014, Fan et al. 2016). I'm not sure why the dog is not recognized on the MDD when the domestic cat (F. catus) is when there is just as much justification for the former as the latter.
(Well, this was faster then expected.)
I would prefer that we don’t split Leopardus tigrinus (lato) into L. tigrinus (stricto) and L. emiliae. The justification for this split is largely based on morphology, and while the research behind it is very robust (Nascimento & Feijó, 2017), the phylogenetic work is not there to justify a split at this time (unlike L. guttulus).
There isn’t any good reason to get rid of Pinnipedia.
The hybrid Felis catus × silvestris cafra wouldn’t make sense with the new taxonomic arrangement of Felidae. It should be swapped with Felis catus × lybicus cafra.
Again, I agree that C. familiaris should be retained. This is unrelated to the MDD, but I think it would be better to swap C. lupus dingo with C. familaris dingo.
Everything else is fine with me! Let me know if you would like help committing any changes.
the tricky ones are the 16 splits/lumps - it would be much preferable to not loose taxon ranges and atlases (e.g. make sure output have taxon ranges and atlases like this). But its a lot of work to curate taxon ranges, especially when that means manually altering the IUCN range maps as in these cases. If you'd like to help with that it would be hugely.
I was in the process of writing up a new how-to for editing taxon ranges, would that be useful to get finished soon?
that would be great is the old one outdated?
It's a little outdated -- QGIS 3.4 is different in a few ways from the version in the tutorial. But it also wasn't finished: parts 2 and 3 just say "not yet written".
I've made some decent progress on my draft, if you'd like to see where it's going before I get too far into it, I can send you a link to the document.
That would be incredibly helpful, Jane (or at least for me - I’ve been wanting to refine taxon ranges for awhile, but I wasn’t sure what to do because the directions were incomplete).
Small step: I have created taxon ranges for Canis anthus (which is acknowledged by the MDD and exists on iNaturalist as an inactive taxon currently) and for Canis aureus sensu stricto (which is currently undesignated due to a lack of curatorial status). I would suggest splitting Canis aureus sensu lato into these two taxa.
I think this took me longer than necessary due to unfamiliarity with the software, but I'm become comfortable with it and will work on creating range maps for the species involved in the other 15 splits soon.
Hi bobby,
looks good. as for Canis aureus (sensu stricto) - looks like you created a new ungrafted active taxon:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/851014-Canis-aureus
Can you rather make it a grafted inactive taxon?
Then:
1) Canis aureus (sensu stricto) needs a range
2) Canis aureus (sensu stricto) and Canis anthus need atlases
3) make a draft split from Canis aureus (sensu lato) into Canis aureus (sensu stricto) & Canis aureus (sensu stricto)
then:
4) commit the change
5) update the taxon framework references
I'll do 4 & 5 for now, but I'm working on making it so taxon curators can do these aswell so we can divide up this work
Sounds good! But users who aren't taxon curators cannot graft taxa into complete groups, even when inactive, or create taxon change drafts. I can definitely make atlases for these two, however. Canis aureus (sensu stricto) should already have a range. It's at least viewable on my end.
users who aren't taxon curators cannot graft taxa into complete groups, even when inactive, or create taxon change drafts
ugh - thats a bug, let me investigate
it should be:
users who aren't taxon curators cannot graft active taxa into complete groups, or commit taxon change drafts
I've finished a draft of my range editing guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LyavoWDxsZ5ObwjDDMbThoLZ3ZZf4_ciC2h19Vebyt0
@loarie how should I credit the sections you wrote to you?
just requested access - no need to credit me
Oops! I just turned on sharing, it should work for anyone following the link now.
looks great!
@loarie I've given it another full read through and while I'm sure there are more mistakes (60+ pages is a lot to proof-read), it might be ready for more eyes. Do you want to replace your old document with this material so that old links (like from https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#ranges) will point to the new stuff? I could also post it to the google group?
that sounds great - I can give it a 'try' tonight which might help catch any errors -
Here are the maps I have done so far:
Meles canescens/meles
Arctogalidia stigmatica/trivirgata
Mustela nivalis (with tokinensis and russelliana)
Nyctereutes viverrinus/procyonoides
Felis lybicus/silvestris
Prionailurus javanensis/bengalensis
I'll just keep going through the list unless someone wants to call dibs on any.
Progress on the maps has slowed due to personal matters.
I have only done Canis aureus/anthus thus far. I have started work on Canis lycaon/lupus, but the map for those two proves complicated and I will likely need help with it, but in the meantime I will work on the viverrids (Arctogalidia trivirgata, Genetta genetta, Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) starting tomorrow.
@loarie have you looked into those issued I mentioned with atlases and taxon changes yet? (Not to pressure you: just curious.)
@bobby23 I listed Arctogalidia as done, so you can skip that one.
I looked over the rest of the list and quickly knocked off all the Conepatus changes.
The two from Madagascar (Mungotictis and Salanoia) actually don't need work, they were synonymized, not split. (We're still working on a consistent way to mark synonyms in the MDD.)
The Genetta split will be hard, the cited source doesn't have a map and G. felina is sympatric with G. genetta in some places.
I know one of the authors on Martes, I've asked if there's a shapefile we can use so we don't have to do the edits ourselves.
So that just leaves Paradoxurus, which doesn't have a map in the cited source, but with the listed localities I think it will be pretty straightforward.
And Galerella, which does have a map in the cited source.
I can work on Galerella tomorrow.
Sigh, Galerella nigrata has a problem. I made a flag over at flavescens in case the discussion goes a while.
Okay, so I was able to create a taxon change proposal for locked taxa, (using Canis aureus and Canis anthus), but trying to view it brings up the "I ate iNaturalist" shark.
looks like a bug from the banner that describes the common ancestor of the split children. I'll fix and also make it so you can graft Canis aureus
I made a sheet to keep track of what's been done and who's doing what on the splits/merges.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XFnhXTJyEL3pyQojxZMmfbwV5FOt7SaKS8imrDwvRxk/edit?usp=sharing
If you don't find it helpful, we don't have to use it.
The spreadsheet is helpful, Jane. Thank you!
I have "refined" (really recreated) the range map for Canis lycaon, basing the map off of Kyle et al. 2006. (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Approximate-present-day-geographic-distribution-of-eastern-North-American-wolves-with-a_fig4_227190179).
The one I previously uploaded was sloppily done: I was eyeballing it because the Georeferencer and QuickMapServices were not working, and displaying the map of Canis lupus (lato) "squished" North America, which made it difficult to reference the map in Kyle et al.'s paper. Everything is working fine now!
Carnivora is now in a place I feel more comfortable with. 13 deviations were left as is: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships?alternate_position=1&many_to_many=1&many_to_one=1¬_external=1¬_internal=1&one_to_many=1&one_to_one=1&taxon_framework_id=54
I agree Carnivora look very well curated! nice work Bobby - closing this
As part of efforts to update iNat taxonomy to follow ASM's Mammal Diversity Database discussed here, we need to decide where we want to continue deviating from MDD, and where we want to sync iNat up with MDD.
As displayed here There are currently 42 deviations we're making from MDD within Carnivora. Which (if any) of these deviations do we want to keep and which should we eliminate (by changing the iNaturalist taxonomy to conform with MDD)?