Flag for Taxon: Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tom-kirschey | Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier) | Mar. 16, 2020 17:17:03 +0000 | jwidness |
split committed |
Comments
Thanks jwidness for all the hard work. tom-kirschey-nabu remember that iNat's intention isn't to track the primary literature for mammal taxonomy - its to follow our reference the Mammal Diversity Database. But jwidness reports that there's some issues with MDD at the moment so I defer to her on when to make changes
@loarie Tarsius taxonomy was quite dynamic in the last years. There is another species from the Togean Islands previously considered to be part of Tarsius tarsier - T. niemitzi - http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1200343/28238438/1578090999767/PC33_Shekelle_New_tarsier_species.pdf?token=jEbllimfId8wgIsLqVNpLVpNqGM%3D
However IUCN Primate Specialist Group is not up to date with Red List Assessments on them, despite prominent members are part of the taxonomic research. So from my perspective Tarsius niemitzi, T. supriatai and T. spectrumguskyae should be ranked as valid species now.
I have no problem with the validity of the Tarsius species you listed, the problem is in how to complete the split from a practicality point of view. The map from Shekelle 2019 shows the issues:
There is both a large unsurveyed area, and T. tarsier sensu stricto and sensu lato are used in the same map. We have a few options, but there isn't one that is clearly correct.
Leave everything as is until there are better maps of the unsurveyed area and a name for the sensu lato area.
Split T. niemitzi, T. supriatnai and T. spectrumgurskyae from T. tarsier, leaving all the remaining range to T. tarsier (which is basically what IUCN did for T. dentatus and T. lariang).
Split T. niemitzi, T. supriatnai, T. spectrumgurskyae, and T. fuscus, leaving all the remaining range to T. tarsier (i.e. the unsurveyed area and both T. tarsier sensu stricto and sensu lato).
Split T. niemitzi, T. supriatnai, T. spectrumgurskyae, and T. fuscus, but only leave the T. tarsier sensu stricto range assigned to that name and the unsurveyed and sensu lato range are not assigned to any name.
I guess if I had to pick I'd go with either 2 or 3, but I could be talked into the other options.
@bobby23 any thoughts?
I set up taxa for T. niemitzi, T. supriatnai, and T. spectrumgurskyae. We'll need to decide what to do about T. fuscus and T. tarsier.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1047734-Tarsius-niemitzi
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1047732-Tarsius-supriatnai
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1047733-Tarsius-spectrumgurskyae
I agree that options 2 and 3 seem like the best way to go, but do you have reservations on option 4? I feel like it may better reflect the information in the distribution maps. When we committed the split affecting Paradoxurus hermaphroditus sensu lato, a large island known to have civets but was left unsurveyed by the authors was omitted in the distributions of the output taxa.
Eh, I don't feel that strongly about it. @tom-kirschey-nabu do you have any further thoughts?
I went with option 3 because that aligns us with MDD, is equivalent to how IUCN treated lariang and dentatus, is unlikely to affect many/any iNat observations (vs option 4) since there are none in the sensu lato/unsurveyed areas now, and is simpler to implement than option 4. Here's the draft split: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/74351
Unless anyone sees any issues, I think it's ready to commit.
@tom-kirschey-nabu this change was committed. IDs of Tarsius tarsier sensu lato were reassigned to the new split species, but since you were using genus level IDs to disagree with our taxonomic concept, your IDs were not reassigned, for example https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38052007. This URL: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&taxon_id=43685&ident_user_id=tom-kirschey-nabu should return all the observations you put genus IDs on if you'd like to go to species now.
There are still some unresolved problem in the group. But thank you for curation and solvng the current problems.
No problem. Feel free to flag other issues in the future.
From @tom-kirschey-nabu on https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26539473:
There is a map in the cited paper clearly indicating and explaining that the tarsiers follow the same distributional patterns as other vertebrates o Sulawesi. The Gorontalo fault is the border. Everything east of a line between Limboto Lake and Nantu National Park is spectrumgurskyae.
All observations uploaded on inaturalist so far are clustered very nicely and could be ID to species level without exception.