Flag for Taxon: scouring rush (Equisetum praealtum)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| erwin_pteridophilos | thenatureofvalerie | scouring rush (Equisetum praealtum) |
shall be inactivated as long as treated as synonym to E. hyemale affine |
Sep. 24, 2020 18:04:57 +0000 | loarie |
Comments
@choess
I have a very similar opinion on this topic; I agree with you !
: )
@choess and @radekwalkowiak some users do prefer E. praealtum causing IDs at genus level by that, thus i do suggest to swap it to E. hyemale ssp. affine. There is neither good evidence, nor any use to split E. hyemale at time. See Observations identified as E. praealtum
yes !
to clarify - you guys want to deviate from POWO by keeping calling the taxon as a ssp of E. hyemale (E. hyemale affine) rather than as Equisetum praealtum?
Looping in @valerietheblonde who authored this draft swap https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/64880 going in the other direction
for me, rather yes, in this particular case
I don't think it matters too much which name is used. The populations should be monophyletic so I don't see a problem with it being elevated to species level, although I can see why you wouldn't think this taxon warrants it. The only reason I see for changing it is that we're generally supposed to follow POWO, and I can think of some taxa that iNat follows POWO for even though they're pretty blatantly wrong. I don't think this is an example of that so it seems a bit odd that we'd deviate with this particular taxon but not others. But if the Equisetum experts on iNat prefer to have it as a subspecies, I agree that it should be swapped back.
IIRC, the phylogeny in the original paper suggests that E. hyemale s.s. would be paraphyletic were this accepted at species level.
The North American subspecies E. hyemale affine
may be treated as a separate species E. prealtum
/ Christenhusz et al. 2019
However, saying - may be, it is not the same as - you should, you must.
Based on the current state of scientific knowledge and the number of publications
in the field of molecular research, I must say that, in my opinion,
from a scientific point of view, a much more correct taxonomic name
is the name of the subspecies.
PS. Dear colleagues,
Let's not let the narrative be imposed on us - powo,
it's not an oracle and I really don't like this kind of dictatorship.
@radekwalkowiak I totally agree that powo isn't some kind of oracle. In my opinion powo is a bad taxonomic authority. I'm just questioning why we should deviate here but not elsewhere. Like iNat uses the name Persicaria amphibia var. emersa instead of Persicaria coccinea, even though it's extremely apparent that these are distinct entities.
presumably the push to deviate is because, as Chris stated, these are not shown to be monophyletic. reproductive isolation is quite a different matter from genealogical disjunction or distinctiveness.
since there is a one-to-one correspondence between E. hyemale subsp. affine and E. praealtum, this should be a vastly simpler move in either direction than any sort of splitting, but still needs actual resolution.
shouldn't this be unresolved since it was marked resolved with no reason given, and is still under active discussion?
I also advocate for a reversal of the change, the evidence provided in the referenced paper was not at all conclusive; there is no specimen from Asia included their sampling and one of the putative hybrid sampled it a cross between praeltatum and variegatum and was found in Finland! Things simply do not add up, there is nothing that suggest that E. hyemale hyemale (in the strict sense) would be monophyletic if praeltatum were to be recognized as a distinct species. More data needs to be gathered. This swap on INaturalist was prematured. POWO doesn't have all the definitive answers, it is still very much a work in progress and errors are continuously corrected, especially in taxonomic groups that are not in Sebastian Gebauer's field of expertise. POWO is not considered the definitive taxonomic resource for Pteridophytes, for example. See also flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/546001 @loarie
@radekwalkowiak POWO is not intended as dictatorship as we can deviate when there is agreement that we should. It is in cases like this where there is disagreement and contradictory science that the compromise should be to follow POWO until it is settled. And if they are polyphyletic as species, then they are also polyphyletic as subspecies, so that seems a very poor argument.
@mrostrowski POWO is not a taxonomic authority, it merely exposes the published science which you can find under the references:
https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:93005-2#publications
https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:92940-2#publications
where in both cases alternative taxonomies are documented. POWO follows the most recently published one.
Moreover, in my experience they are very responsive if you point out errors, citing published evidence.
Polyphyletic species do exist in nature, but scientists need careful investigations before recognizing as valid species such entities. My point is simply that elevating a taxon to the rank of species is in itself a stronger claim than to rank it as a subspecies of the same species. As such, it should require more compelling evidence, something that the article I feel was not able to provide.
The argument of promoting nomenclatural stability may also be evoked, as the frequent name changes impede in some way the mission of INaturalist to promote science to a broad audience. Backtracking on taxonomic decisions once additional evidence has been gathered is considered quite a normal thing in taxonomy, but that sort of process is usually frowned upon by the general public, and it can undermine the confidence of some people in our system of nomenclature.
For this reason, I think that for this site we should err on the cautious side, and only commit to taxonomic changes when there is strong evidence to back them up, even at the risk of not being up to date with the most recent body of literature.
/powo/ I definitely miss references to publications by such authorities on this topic as: PROF. RICHARD LOUIS HAUKE and PROF. JAMES LAURITZ REVEAL / I definitely agree with the reasoning of Étienne Lacroix-Carignan, which for me is strictly scientific and substantively correct in terms of the methodology of scientific research.
@elbourret Any opinion on this?
I have the same opinion as you @elacroix-carignan concerning changes in public databases: they should err on the side of caution, rather than blindly accepting whatever opinion was last published. However, I do not know the specifics of this particular case.
Please centralize all discussion here: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_swaps/142046
reverted - please always make a deviation as I've done here linking to the discussion if you want to signal curators not to curate in the direction of POWO https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/296868
curators aren't expected to notice flag disussions - but they are expected to notice deviations
I'm leaning toward doing the same. I'm sure Christenhusz et al. are right that that E. praealtum/E. hyemale ssp. affine is reproductively isolated from European E. hyemale s.l., but given that it's nested within that taxon in their phylogeny, I'm reluctant to bump it up to species level, especially as there's no clear morphological character to dissect the lineages in E. hyemale s.l.