Flag for Taxon: Pulmonate Gastropods (Infraclass Pulmonata)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| susanhewitt | Pulmonate Gastropods (Infraclass Pulmonata) |
I still don't know what to do with this out-of-date and polyphyletic taxon. Should I use a "taxon drop" on it? |
Aug. 28, 2016 12:23:14 +0000 | loarie |
swapped |
Comments
We already have Stylommatophora, and have for quite a long while now. I think most families of land snails and slug are linking to Stylommatophora rather than to Pulmonata. I wish there was some way to visually inspect the whole Pulmonata branch of the taxonomy here, and see what it looks like.
I suspect that almost every place where it is used, it has been applied to an unknown species of Stylommatophoran, an unknown land snail or slug.
Another problem is that the up-to-date taxonomy of the Eupulmonata includes a clade and an informal group, and I don't know if the database can handle that.
Pulmonata "was" roughly what is now called Eupulmonata. Check how previous Pulmonata were integrated in the Panpulmonata.
... but I'd wait for further publications from researchers working on Sacoglossa.
Well the taxonomy is not going to remain stable, even after the Sacoglossa are supposedly sorted out. Things are changing very rapidly these days.
But I would like to talk to someone here on iNaturalist who has tackled a major re-working of a big taxonomic branch, in order to see how they went about it.
It's going to be a very great deal of work, and I will have to keep track of what I have done very carefully while I am doing it.
Taxonomy will hardly get stable... ever. I haven't done any "tackle" on any taxon here on iNaturalist (only a few "tickles" here and there with nudibranchs and mostly at species level). I wished I had the time to tackle the nudibranchs but even if I had it I think I'd go for a bottom-up approach (starting by sorting the genera, then the families, etc.).
A couple years late seeing this, but here would be my own thoughts. A decent portion of the subtaxa require grafting anyway. I definitely agree, it may be easiest to begin low at genera and work up (it may also be easier to save species for later and focus on grafting first). As far as invalid taxa, my thought would be to merge them up to the next valid taxon (as that should automatically move all subtaxa). At least a few subtaxa also have Flickr photos that need re-linking, which might could be addressed at the same time.
The (potential order, current clade) Panpulmonata was erected by Jörger et al. (2010), and "Pulmonata" is no longer considered to be valid at all. Rather regrettably, a decent portion of the higher taxonomy for gastropods in general is rather informal at present (insofar as I can tell, only clades currently exist between class Gastropoda and its superfamilies). Other recent work in Gastropoda as a whole include Wägele et al. (2014) and Kano et al. (2016), which are also clade-heavy.
Our present authority for Mollusca as a whole is MolluscaBase (note: WoRMS is a subset thereof). They do verify that Pulmonata is unaccepted as a taxon. My own thought would be to outline their taxonomy, compare it to the above works, and see if anything doesn't align. Then, of course, check our current taxonomy to see if we have anything that doesn't occur in either and isn't expressly noted as being invalid. Outlining could probably be done via Google Docs spreadsheets.
Alright, @susanhewitt, here's a bit of a pan-Gastropoda update. I've been working on grafting throughout this class recently. It's far from complete, and I'm generally going down to genus or family right now. A few gastropod taxa should appear noticeably more organized. Synonymy below family will be "fun" there as there's already been a handful just with what I've worked with.
Right now, Pulmonata and Opisthobranchia contain no subtaxa, which is good (and it looks like I'm not the only one who's been working on Gastropoda). My thought would be to stage swaps such as Pulmonata → Euthyneura and Opisthobranchia → Heterobranchia. I'm thinking we might as well look into sinking "Lower Heterobranchia" → Heterobranchia as well since it isn't even a proper taxon (this would just move the subtaxa to Heterobranchia). I'm thinking those swaps since the change in taxonomy wasn't 1:1, and those may be the lowest common taxa. These informal clades also appear to have some identifications at the clade level, so if we just did a drop that would end up inactivating those IDs.
Since these are infraclasses, we can't edit the taxon or commit a taxon swap apart from an admin.
Thanks for your update Jonathan. I am currently in California for three weeks and not really able to discuss this very difficult topic as I am busy with other stuff.
hi folks - we have a new feature called 'taxon framework'
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/taxon_frameworks
that makes it more explicit what taxonomy iNat is supposed to be following. There's now a taxon framework for mollusks sourced to MolluskBase. Right not it only covers down to rank family.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47115-Mollusca/taxonomy_details
bobby made another one for Cephalopods that goes all the way down to species https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47459-Cephalopoda/taxonomy_details eventually we can get mollusks sorted out to Molluskbase all the way to species, but lets start with sorting things out to family.
Everything should be sorted except there are 74 leftover taxa not in WoRMs like this one. You can see all 74 here:
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=22&unknown=1
advice on how to resolve these would be great. e.g. flag the taxon X and say taxon X needs to be swapped into taxon Y etc.
Also anyone else want to be curators for this framework? Only taxon curators can edit/swap taxa covered by a framework
I am totally delighted to hear that iNat is using a framework for mollusks taken from the current version of MolluscaBase! That's just great news.
Because of molecular work, the taxonomy is changing very rapidly these days, so even family-level taxa will probably not be stable over the next 5 or 10 years.
But this is an excellent start!
I'd certainly want to be a part of helping keep Mollusca in order - I'd been doing some work off-and-on with Bivalvia and Gastropoda already based on MolluskBase / WoRMS. I'm also at least a bit familiar with the literature being cited by our taxonomic authority so may have a few comments on some potential deviations (I believe I know one of the major inconsistencies within the Nudibranchia and Opisthobranchia to verify WoRMS in those cases). I could also check back through my molluscan swaps for any relevant sources.
We'll certainly have more updates over the next 5-10 years (which is great for Gastropoda given its taxonomic history!).
@jonathan142 I added you as a taxon curator for Mollusks https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47115/taxonomy_details - What should we do to inactivate Infraclass Pulmonata? Just swap it into its parent Subclass Heterobranchia? Or something more sophisticated?
We could probably swap Pulmonata into Euthyneura (that's the lowest common taxon in WoRMS).
The closest equivalent for Pulmonata is Panpulmonata Jörger et al., 2010, which hasn't been included in WoRMS, at least not yet (it seems to be supported through 2010-2017 revisions). The original descendants of Pulmonata have already been re-grafted prior to the framework, so observations to be moved are those that haven't been identified beyond Infraclass Pulmonata.
Rather than commit a one-to-one swap, I would suggest a taxon split of Pulmonata into Eupulmonata, Hygrophila, Pylopulmonata and Siphonarimorpha. (http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=103) The undesignated observations of "Pulmonates" would be moved to Heterobranchia.
I am warry of any one-to-one swap of such a large group. The sensu lato squid order Teuthida was swapped with the order Oegopsida ("pelagic squids") a long time ago even though the majority of the undesignated observations were of species in the order Myopsida ("reef squids"). This would not have happened if Teuthida was split between the two orders.
hi bobby - without atlases doing a split would have the identical outcome as a swap (ie 'undesignated observations' would be all observations), so I'd just recommend the swap to keep things simpler
Hi, @loarie. I have come to understand this situation better. All of the superorders I mentioned fall under the infraclass Euthyneura. I agree that swapping Pulmonata into Euthyneura is the best choice.
Ok I committed this swap here https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/43923
Presumably you can't remove it without disrupting all the groups below it, don't they have to be grafted in to a replacement structure first?