Flagger Content Author Content Reason Flag Created Resolved by Resolution
maxkirsch zroskoph Northern Greater Glider (Petauroides minor)

split from P. volans in MDD (along with P. armillatus), requires mammal curator

Mar. 12, 2021 03:56:17 +0000 Not Resolved

Comments

Given the iNaturalist data from Australia is transferred to https://www.ala.org.au/, what is their approach to this split - which is not undisputed I think. Input from the Aussies? @chuditch @sea-kangaroo @thebeachcomber

Posted by vmoser about 3 years ago

yep all good to split based on this paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76364-z

Posted by thebeachcomber about 3 years ago

I am also in support of the split, although it is not currently recognised by the ALA from what I can see.

Posted by chuditch about 3 years ago

ALA is very slow to pick up changes, and indeed is entirely missing many esoteric species (as well as still using the wrong names for a number of things). Don't trust it as a taxonomic resource/authority (which it isn't meant to be anyway, it's purely a databasing tool)

Posted by thebeachcomber about 3 years ago

The biggest issue holding back this split is that the paper doing the analysis had no samples from NSW and if we make no assumptions about which way observations in that area should go, it means bumping ~70 observations up to genus. Generally speaking, people don't like having their already RG obs bumped up to genus, so we should probably tag in some of the observers who will be affected and make sure they're on board.

Posted by jwidness over 2 years ago

I'd like to either make this split, or move the existing armillatus IDs back into volans and revisit sometime in the future when we have more information about species boundaries.

Map from McGregor et al., red added by me

Here's the full story:

Up north, we have 3 iNat observations from an area where 2 out of 18 individuals sampled were hybrids according to McGregor et al. If someone feels strongly about not marking possible hybrids to species, we should move those IDs to genus, otherwise we'll assume they're P. minor and move the IDs there.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19162816
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1117689
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1079636

From Redcliffe Vale to MS08 (mid and southern QLD), all observations would go to P. armillatus.

There is no genetic or morphological information from NSW in McGregor et al. Previously, Jackson stated (without any published data supporting it) that volans went as far north as Bundaberg in QLD. Based on the data in McGregor et al., this is false -- all their southern QLD samples are armillatus. So we can either move all the iNat NSW obs up to genus, based on the lack of data from McGregor et al., or we can keep them in volans, following Jackson's statement about the distribution of volans. If we did leave them in volans, it would be possible to reassign them to armillatus automatically using atlases in the future, but if we move them to genus, they would need to be manually reidentified once we know for sure where the species boundary is. There are currently 86 obs that would be affected: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?ident_taxon_id=42783&place_id=6825,12986&subview=map&verifiable=any

iNat obs in VIC would stay volans.

tagging people who may have thoughts/opinions:

@chuditch @sea-kangaroo @thebeachcomber @torhek @rushecology @brettvercoe @brittbrockers @r_shofner @wmary @melomysbris @pamday4 @bobby23

again, the options are:

sink armillatus and keep everything in volans until we know more
split armillatus, moving NSW obs to genus
split armillatus, leaving NSW obs in volans

Posted by jwidness over 2 years ago

for the NSW stuff at least, I think I'm probably in favour of keeping as volans given we can automatically reassign if needed in future as you say

Posted by thebeachcomber over 2 years ago

Note: I'm not a mammologist that studies Greater Gliders, but I do work in Conservation Genetics on bettongs/eastern quolls.

Having had a quick look at the Macgregor paper, I don't think that we can reassign NSW species based on a paper that doesn't contain sufficient NSW samples - if it would be simplest to keep all NSW samples as volans (which would also keep iNat in line with ALA) for now and reassign in future when we have better evidence to go off - I think we do that. We really need to understand that potential hybrid zone better before we change things.

Posted by brittbrockers over 2 years ago

I was thinking about what I wrote above about needing to manually reassign genus IDs later, and that's not really correct. It would be possible to assign a genus ID to species with a taxon change, I'm just not sure I feel comfortable doing it because some genus IDs may have intentionally not been at the species level and I don't like the idea of changing the rank of someone's ID.
Anyway, that shouldn't be the deciding factor, I just wanted to clarify.

Posted by jwidness over 2 years ago

just a little bump after noticing there are 7 obs of this ungrafted taxon https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1202976-Petauroides-armillatus

Posted by bouteloua about 2 years ago

I swapped Petauroides armillatus into volans for now https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/107864
there should be some resolution here before acting, and if we proceed with the split we should deal with all parts of this including P. minor, making a split, removing the deviation

Posted by loarie about 2 years ago

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