Flag for Taxon: Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis carolina)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bouteloua | Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) |
discussion of split |
Oct. 23, 2020 15:45:53 +0000 | loarie |
see comments |
Comments
is this the split? https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/84106 yes it seems deviating should have been discussed first and altalses should have been made
yep that split
I think @kueda is reverting
Pinging @i_fox in case they have comments about this. It seems like the best course of action would be to revert the split (if that isn't too difficult or disruptive), then discuss whether a taxon split is actually warranted yet, and if so create atlases for the two new taxons. My personal opinion is that iNaturalist should stick with established taxon authorities where possible and not react to every taxon change proposed in a paper (with all due respect to @mantodea who wrote the paper in question), especially when it comes to well-established well-known species. Over in the spiders, we usually wait for changes to come in through the World Spider Catalog rather than making taxon changes as they are published. For example, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7054524 was described as a new species back in September, but we're fine with leaving it at genus level until the WSC accepts the new species.
copying comment from Ken-ichi on the split from 23 October 2020:
I'm in the process of reverting this split b/c it contradicts the authority for mantids we've listed in the Curator's Guide, specifically because Stagmomantis conspurcata isn't listed in Mantodea Species File. If iNat needs to diverge from the authority we're following, that divergence should be registered in the form of a "deviation" from that authority (see https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/taxon_frameworks) before being used in a split.
The lack of atlases here also meant that all observations of S. carolina got re-identified at the genus level, so atlases for output taxa are also an important pre-req for a good split.
The recommendation of several curators at https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/507649 and https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/problematic-stagmomantis-carolina-taxon-split/17500 was to revert, with the possibility of re-committing this in the future after the deviation has been registered and atlases made, so I've executed the reversion part of that.
I'm hoping the reversion will be complete some time today.
(reversion has since completed)
For what it's worth, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344211369_Revalidation_of_Stagmomantis_Stagmomantis_conspurcata_Serville_1839
Edit: I see the link was already discussed.
As mentioned on the forum, a split was recently committed of S. carolina into S. carolina (sensu stricto) + S. conspurcata.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/problematic-stagmomantis-carolina-taxon-split/17500/10
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/84106
No atlases were defined, causing all the IDs of S. carolina to be bumped to genus. A rough map of the US-only distribution is provided on page 12 of the PDF in the recent publication in Volume 1, Issue 1 of "Soothsayer" a (self-published?) journal.
That said, S. conspurcata is still listed as a synonym in Mantodea Species File (http://mantodea.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1183456), the designated taxon authority on iNaturalist for this group.
I’m not sure how or if it’s possible for me to search for IDs that were withdrawn due to a taxon change, but there are currently 27,000 withdrawn IDs of S. carolina, 456 obs of S. carolina, and 226 obs of S. conspurcata.
Is there a discussion somewhere about deviating from the taxon authority for this group?
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/48112-Mantodea/taxonomy_details
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#policies