Flag for Taxon: Funnel Weavers (Superfamily Agelenoidea)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nastos | loarie | Funnel Weavers (Superfamily Agelenoidea) |
Why does this superfamily exist when it only contains one family? Maybe add an additional family, or turn the superfamily into just the family? |
Jun. 29, 2020 22:24:51 +0000 | loarie |
Comments
The site is trying to follow the classifications used by the World Spider Catalogue which does not include some of these less official ranks. Unfortunately there is some residue stuff floating about.
@jdmore makes sense, but seems like it is unneeded. The entelegyne infraorder breaks down into 17 superfamilies and 7 families ... one of the superfamilies is this "Funnel Weavers and Amphinectids" which could just be removed and so the 17 and 7 subtaxa of entelegyne could break down to 16 superfamilies and 8 families. There may even be other redundant superfamilies - I don't know... I haven't checked them all.
@cmcheatle if there is a standard taxonomy that iNat follows, then it makes sense ... I will try to browse the World Catalogue and see how this compares. You mention some "residue stuff floating about" so is this superclass an example of that? Is there any action put towards cleaning up the "residue stuff" ? this is my first time flagging a taxon and I thought this would be the proper channel to make changes.
iNaturalist prefers to keep its classification tidy, and avoid having more than one kind of subordinate rank attached directly to the next higher rank. Those 7 unassigned families ideally need to be assigned to superfamilies if they can be. But sometimes the taxonomic knowledge just isn't available to determine those assignments.
Can we close this? As discussed our reference WSC doesn't include nodes between order and family. I linked to this flag from the deviation here https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/323122 for reference
but its up to curators to properly sort out these nodes. If there's a specific issue with how this clade on iNat is currently structures , e.g. family X needs to be moved to subfamily y etc. adding comments to that effect here would be very helpful
Looping in this related flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/596773
Thanks for following-up... I'm okay with closing this Flag ticket now. I understand the structure that iNat is trying to maintain
looping in this related flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/596772
looping in this related flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/553532
Same reason there is sometimes only one species in a genus, or one genus in a family. If the Superfamily rank is used at all, then every Family should ideally be assigned to a Superfamily. If all the other Families in this Suborder are more closely related to Families in other Superfamilies, then Agelenidae ends up by itself in its own Superfamily. Hope that makes sense...