Flag for Taxon: Gray Buckeye (Junonia grisea)
| Content Author | Object | Flagger | Flag Created | Reason | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nlblock | Gray Buckeye (Junonia grisea) | graysquirrel | Thu, 20 Feb 2020 02:20:49 AM UTC |
All of the top photos gallery are pictures that are actually from observations IDed as Junonia coenia, I'm not sure why they're showing up for this species. |
nlblock |
Photos corrected |
Comments
yes (cc @nlblock) this is what I call a 'swing-split' here https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/how+taxon+changes+work
where a ssp is swung out as a new sibling. In these cases you need to swap the ssp with the new sp (as was done with 70073) but you also need to split the ssp parent (Junonia coenia)
That said, because (a) Junonia coenia has over 20k observations and any split would be extremely disruptive and (b) we have no taxonomic reference for butterflies to prevent people curating back and forth forever between Junonia coenia (sensu stricto) and Junonia coenia (sensu lato) forever
Its really important that we come up with some process for discussing disruptive changes like this before we make them.
if its OK with you guys, my preference would be to reverse 70073 (e.g. treat Junonia coenia sensu lato) and come up with some process for what we're going to do about butterfly taxonomy.
Thoughts?
I’m guessing there’s no way of locking all taxa with >n observations?
Reversing is fine with me. I clearly wasn't aware of the swing-split process, and I apologize. I'll just stop updating butterfly taxonomy, to be honest. When the Pelham catalogue was removed as an official authority, it made it harder to justify the changes anyway.
FWIW, I think the split itself is valid and should remain, as it's based on solid published research and was accepted by the Pelham catalogue. I just completely messed up how it was handled in the iNat database, and I would love an opportunity to fix it if given the ability to create atlases (and I misread and thought the reason for the reversal would be to fix that screw-up). I know I'm just one opinion on this very subjective matter, though. :-)
This split should resolve this flag, yes?
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/72690
I’m confused - just looked at Pelham online and it treats grisea as a subspecies?
The BOA site might because it hasn't been updated too recently to keep up with Pelham. The catalogue itself shows the change: http://butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat.htm
Thanks
I thought the split was actually fixing the problem I created in the first place by doing a swap only.
In theory the split is fine. But in practice, since it has 23,568 observations committing it will have a bit impact on the site. We've been trying to catch the bugs they're revealing and otherwise make them have a leaner impact on the site. Ideally I could make this split so that I could monitor for any of these bugs we've been seeing and hopefully catch them
these issues are on our end - they're just scaling issues.
This is part of the reason I've ben so eager to get some clarity around Lep taxonomy. Of the 30 species on iNat with >10k observations that don't have taxon frameworks to lock down on the amount of changes, 3 are bees, 3 are fungi, 2 are beetles, 2 are bugs, 1 is a snail, and 1 is a woodlouse - but the remaining 18 are Lepidoptera:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&view=species&without_taxon_id=355675,211194,47792,47118
Gotcha. I'll bow out and leave it up to you! I maintain that it's a good split, though. :-)
I'll move the children of J. coenia back to the active taxon for now.
I didn't get to the Junonia coenia split - and since its going to be so disruptive and will take time I rolled back this change. Lets stick with Junonia coenia sensu lato for now and split off Junonia grisea all at once ASAP
and to avoid duplication here's a swap to put J. grisea back under J. coenia for now
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/72825
If one of the concerns is future mis-identifications or IDs swapping back & forth between a split J. coenia s.s. & J. grisea, might I suggest a new common name for the narrower J. coenia? This could achieve a few things:
1) Prevent people in areas where only J. grisea should occur from inputting the familiar 'Common Buckeye' without realizing that name now refers to a different taxon concept than it did before, &
2) Raise awareness of the split so that people seeing IDs of 'Gray Buckeye' won't be running through and tagging them all as 'Common Buckeye'.
If this is done, I believe the name 'Eastern Common Buckeye' was already in use in some sources for J. coenia coenia. Perhaps 'Eastern Buckeye' might therefore be a good common name for the split species.
I agree a new common name would be best. I've always thought it was a poor idea to keep the old common name for a split species (e.g., Winter Wren). I'm not sure what the best practice might be for choosing one here, though. Eastern Common Buckeye was not an "official" name anywhere before iNat, as far as I know - just one that made sense. I'd be fine just coining "Eastern Buckeye" as a new common name here on iNat. Maybe the inevitable changes to future field guides would then use our name. :-D
looking back at this now that I'm back in town. My concern is that Junonia coenia grisea hasn't been elevated to species in either https://butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat-1-30-2011.htm or https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/All.htm which I thought were the references we were supposed to be curating in the direction of. What't the justification for departing from this reference given that it will be hard to alert curators attempting to bring things in line with Pelham not just to swap it back ?
I also noticed these differences in Junonia from whats in iNat vs. whats in https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/All.htm
Junonia neildi vs. Junonia genoveva neildi
Junonia nigrosuffusa vs. Junonia evarete fuscescens
Junonia zonalis vs. Junonia evarete zonalis
Note that a paper came out recently on Junonia, with Nick Grishin as a co-author: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/syen.12428
My guess is that BoA will soon be updated, and that we should update iNat accordingly, but leave things as they are for the moment. Haven't had time to read the rest of the thread above and digest it, but as I said, looks like some major changes will be coming soon to BoA.
I'm very supportive of trying to get these updates into BoA first and then making them on iNat second. Otherwise it gets hard to communicate to iNat curators not to curate in the direction of BoA for these specific cases. Whats the best way to get BoA to make these updates ASAP?
I just emailed Nick Grishin to ask him about updating BoA and what his plans are. Minimally, I can make sure that the changes that we've agreed to do here get made, plus some other additions that need to be done, whenever he is next ready to make an update. I'm really not sure how easy or difficult it is for him to make updates, whether we can just do a few at a time quite frequently, or whether it's better to save them up and do then every 6 months or so. I'll try to confirm with him. Otherwise I am happy to keep a log of changes needed and pass them on to Nick as frequently as he is happy to accept them.
that sounds great
As mentioned on another discussion, Nick Grishin told me he is intending to get updates to BoA made in the next few months.
Wait, another buckeye phylogenetics paper?? Oy. :-)
The flag here was the pictures on J. grisea.
Junonia grisea is a synonym of Junonia coenia -- so they almost have to be the same pictures.
Nothing more to do here.
Can I close this flag?: taxonomic issues can be flagged as such, but his picture flag is done and dusted. And presumably the updates mentioned 11 months ago are done or wont be soon.
But the pics remain OK on this inactive taxon?
I fixed the default taxon photos.
This may be a result of how this taxon was created - there doesn’t seem to have been a split implemented, so a larger problem is that there are 1000s of Common Buckeye observations that have not been transferred to the new species. This assumes that iNat actually recognises the split? @loarie ?