From @carnifex:

I would like to have the taxon ‘Endopterygota’ for all holometabolous insects. Creating this in the current system has its difficulties, because its rank does not have a name - it would be integrated slightly above ‘Order’.
Why I think it would be useful to have that taxon: because many caterpillar-like larval stages (Flies, Beetles, Hymenopterans) are often mis-IDed as Lepidopterans, and when corrected by other users the level goes back to ‘Pterygota’. When IDing for others, I am generally filling out the annotations, but there is no common life stage when resetting it - because Hemimetabola with their nymphal stage are also included. With the new taxon, the life stage annotations would be saved.

@myelaphus, it does not at all necessitate creating supraordinal taxa for the others, and there's already an example of this with insects on inat. Pterygota is included as a subclass that includes all insect orders except Zygenotoma and Archaeognatha, which do not have their own subclasses.

All true, but the non-holometabolous orders do have super-ordinal taxa like Palaeoptera, Orthopteroidea, Blattopteroidea, etc. I think it's fine to leave these other orders as is, I was just saying that my taxonomic sensibilities would prefer they also get the same treatment as Endopterygota.

Some questions:

1) can I move this flag to Subclass Pterygota since it involves children of that taxon and not all insects?

2) to clarify you want to insert the node with the arrow as such?
Subclass Pterygota
Superorder Endopterygota {-
Order Coleoptera
Order Diptera
Order Hymenoptera
Order Lepidoptera
Order Mecoptera
Order Megaloptera
Order Neuroptera
Order Raphidioptera
Order Siphonaptera
Order Strepsiptera
Order Trichoptera

3) this would be a very load intensive taxon change as it would touch every observation of the most observose insect orders so it would be a lot of work to schedule and carry out. In my humble opinion probably not worth the trouble, but if folks feel strongly about it I'll help do it.

The main advantage, as pointed out above, would be in my opinion that life stage annotations ('larva') could be selected or would not get lost even with disagreeing IDs on the taxon level of Order.

Didn't know such an implementation would come along with a lot of work load. If it could be done - great! But I can understand if it is not worth the effort.

I also agree that adding superorder Endopterygota would be useful, particularly for observations of larvae where the order-level ID is unclear or contested. If it's impractical due to the large number of obs in subordinate taxa, that's understandable, but it would certainly be nice. (And yes, this flag should probably move to Pterygota)

While I'm not opposed to this change, ancestry changes effect every observation and they're not becoming feasible for nodes at the base of our two biggest clades (plants and insects) without some infrastructure changes.

There's an analogous flag to this about Dicots at the base of the plant clade https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/240790

I'm going to close this for now and I'll reopen it if/when we can figure out a way to make things more efficient so that changes that impact ancestries of about 1/3 of all obs doesn't create huge problems for the site.

Thanks for your understanding about this - its definitely a problem we're going to have to solve in the next year or two as the site continues to grow

I understand this is probably a long way off still, but if this change ever gets implemented it would be fantastic to have the other pterygote groups as well. Of the ranks listed on iNat, I think subterclass is probably the best fit. All the other rankings between class and order that iNat has are in use for other insect taxa (e.g. infraclass Neoptera and superorder Dictyoptera) but I cannot find any named insect subterclasses.

The arrangement I suggest is:

Subclass Pterygota
-Subterclass Palaeoptera
--Order Ephemeroptera
--Order Odonata
-Subterclass Polyneoptera
--Order Blattodea
--Order Dermaptera
--Order Embioptera
--Order Mantodea
--Order Notoptera
--Order Orthoptera
--Order Phasmida
--Order Plecoptera
--Order Zoraptera
-Subterclass Paraneoptera
--Order Hemiptera
--Order Psocodea
--Order Thysanoptera
-Subterclass Endopterygota
--Order Coleoptera
--Order Diptera
--Order Hymenoptera
--Order Lepidoptera
--Order Mecoptera
--Order Megaloptera
--Order Neuroptera
--Order Raphidioptera
--Order Siphonaptera
--Order Strepsiptera
--Order Trichoptera

The benefits to adding the others are similar to the benefits of adding Endopterygota - primarily, the annotations can stay with their sightings if they are moved between orders in the same group, and it will be much easier to find unidentified observations/observations with disagreeing IDs. At least in the group I work with (Polyneoptera), many taxa look similar and are easily confused (especially between Orthoptera, Mantodea, and Phasmatodea) so many iNat sightings get bumped back to Pterygota where it is much more difficult to find them. There are sometimes also confusing nymphs etc. that would benefit from these higher taxa.

@sylvainm_53 but if you have a larva in front of you then you know for sure that it is an endopterygote, so is a win-win having that taxonomic group.

@pdfuenteb, I realize I may have misinterpreted your message (I'm not an English speaker).

I understand that you are stressing the importance of adding this new taxonomic rank. I agree with the interest of adding it, and in my previous case, it would certainly solve the problem because Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera are indeed 2 Endopterygote.

But if it's structurally complicated for iNat, perhaps adding the "larva" stage for all insects would be simpler?

I think sylvainm_53's proposal would mean giving both the options "nymph" and "larva" at the level of Pterygota. That would have both upsides (unidentified larvae could appear in searches for the "larva" annotation) and downsides (if somebody incorrectly annotates a nymph as "larva", or vice versa, then there is no way for anybody else to replace it with the correct annotation).