Flag for Taxon: European Earwig Complex (Complex Forficula auricularia)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| susanne-kasimir | European Earwig Complex (Complex Forficula auricularia) |
it is a species complex: DOI:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaa070 |
Apr. 21, 2021 10:36:58 +0000 | kitty12 |
All done now. |
Comments
sorry, this is my first time, maybe I don't understand the procedure. I can only speak for myself, not for the community.
@suzanne-kasimir Not a problem at all - thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Since I know next to nothing about this particular group of organisms, I'll be leaving it to others in the community to make the case (or not) for including this complex.
Our Curator Guide suggest that before adding a species complex, it needs to meet certain criteria. Some are pretty objective, but "necessary and helpful" are pretty subjective, and really should be determined by people familiar with the group. Here's the excerpt:
"Species Complexes
As of January 2019, "complex", a taxonomic rank between genus and species, may be used (more specifically, between subsection and species). Species sometimes intergrade and there are places on the tree of life where adding hard range map boundaries is arbitrary and/or identification to species level is often not possible. Species complex should be used sparingly (only when necessary and helpful) and with the following criteria:
Species complex is monophyletic (i.e. sibling groups of species)
Complex is recognized in the literature
A named subgenus, section, or series does not already exist for the group
If a "principal species name" is not established in the literature, use the earliest published species name for the name of the complex. Enter just the name ("Hyla versicolor") and not additional words ("Hyla versicolor species complex" or "Hyla versicolor group"), for consistency and because iNaturalist is an international database; these words do not translate into other languages.
Don't use compound names, such as Pantherophis alleghaniensis-spiloides, as there may be numerous species in the group."
Thank you for flagging this!
@brandonwoo @konstakal @szucsich @blazeclaw Please tag in others I should be including.
This wouldn't be too useful over in the US since we don't have any in the group, but it'd be good for the European folks.
Well we have one, but just the one I think
So no issues with it from me!
I am not a Dermaptera taxonomist.
Just as a small remark. From my side it is ok to flag the species as possible species complex, despite it is unclear, whether this is mainly a Mediterranean problem , but it might be strongly dependent on taxon sampling.
That aeolica is clearly distinct does not matter to much.
All the best
Nikola
I closed this related flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/505250 and tried to redirect the conversation here
FWIW these species are not yet in the Dermaptera Species File that we are currently using as a Taxon Framework
I made this flag to discuss whether Dermaptera Species File is a good enough fit to keep using as an external reference. Feedback appreciated there
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/531750
But while we are using Dermaptera Species File as a framework it means if we go wit this change we should make a deviation with these on the iNat side:
Complex Forficula auricularia
Species Forficula auricularia
Species Forficula aeolica
Species Forficula mediterranea
Species Forficula dentata
and on the Dermaptera SF side:
Species Forficula auricularia
Also we should avoid splitting Species Forficula auricularia since it has 13k observations.
We could make this change by changing the rank of the existing Species Forficula auricularia to Complex Forficula auricularia and then adding the new children species.
Alternatively we could just add the other taxa and manually sort out any observations with existing IDs of Forficula auricularia that aren't aligned with the new narrower interpretation
closing for now, please comment if action is needed
In my opinion
We could make this change by changing the rank of the existing Species Forficula auricularia to Complex Forficula auricularia and then adding the new children species.
But first It would be better OSF to do the same, so let's wait.
I also think changing the species to a complex would be good - even better if there were more papers that analyzed the species complex genetically in more regions of the world, but still okay.
I'm not sure about the children species tho, I'd have to read it again, but did Miguéns et al. provided enough information about differentiation between the species?
Afaik on iNaturalist it would be almost impossible to separate the different new species out of the existing F. auricularia observations. The geographic range of the complex itself should be enough for the first imo, but maybe it could be possible to add one new species after the other with more information. e.g. Forficula aeolica seems to occur just in a few areas, maybe starting with this species first could be a beginning...
In the paper is written some of the species can only be identified by genetic analysis, some other not. The main question is if we accept Forficula auricularia is a single species or not, if not then we should change the rank of the existing Species Forficula auricularia to Complex Forficula auricularia. The second important question is whether we can decide this or is it better to wait for an external organisation, like DSF.
Dermaptera Species File has updated its Forficula taxonomy—it now recognizes all the species in question and places them in species group Forficula (auricularia)—so a Forficula auricularia complex on iNat would no longer require a deviation from DSF. (I've gone ahead and reopened the flag accordingly)
We can make the change now, from my point of view.
We will try to find out at least the possible species present in Austria ;-)
All the best
Nikola
In my opinion changing Forficula auricularia to a species complex would be a good change.
I tried to sort all of F. auricularia into the species, even if people tried to just tag the genus because of the new species - so the data are in the current species F. auricularia. I did so in order to prepare for the change to a species complex.
I don't believe it's possible to ID the new species based on the informations we have (too less geographical informations, not possible to photo ID them), it will be done nonetheless, but that's another story...
I agree with the last 2 comments before.
Making the necessary changes now. Should the common names for the new species complex simply be transferred to the new species classification?
I've done the change to complex and grafted/ added what needs to be grafted/ added. But I can't seem to make a taxonomic framework relationship for F. auricularia (species) stick. And would appreciate opinions on my last comment.
Yes, in my opinion the common name for the old species can be applied for all the twin species.
@kitty12 re: the taxon framework relationship not sticking, it looks like you did create a relationship for the species Forficula auricularia, but accidentally deleted the internal iNat part of the relationship (so it listed a species Forficula auricularia descending from a Forficula auricularia complex as being present in DSF but not iNat), which is why no relationship showed up for iNat's species Forficula auricularia but a new relationship to to DSF's species Forficula auricularia couldn't be created for it. i've re-added the iNat taxon https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/642697
i guess now all that's left to do is review nearly all observations of the complex (including nearly 30,000 research grade) and either 1. ID them to a new narrower species (in regions known to have only one species present) or 2. vote that the ID is as good as it can be in the data quality assessment (in any unsampled areas or regions of overlap). (step 2 needs to be done where relevant even for observations currently displaying as research grade, since that status is just a holdover from before the rank was changed from species to complex a few hours ago, and whenever any of those observations are updated/reindexed/etc. they'll go back to needs ID if they don't have that vote [since only community IDs of species and below automatically become research grade without it])
Like, only small area has other species, here nothing new was found, now all obs are RG at complex, that doesn't sound great, why the split was done this way?
I think it was done the right way
the study provided too less specimens to be sure where which species occurs, that needs many many more phylogenetic studies...we either can say it's all F. auricularia as species or F. auricularia as complex in most regions and both are not "good" enough since the first one is wrong and the second one not on species level. At the moment, we remain on a level of too less information about the species complex imo.
There is nothing good on leaving observations as RG! With no notifications being done that splits even happen, there's no reason to do it this way and leave people uninformed, there's no evidence other species exist out of checked areas, no base at all to elevate ids but a guess.
Ah, now I see what happened - old IDs on RG are still on RG and new ones can't get there - I think it's in fact a problem that new ones can't get on RG now, but at least all the areas where F. auricularia (complex) occurs in higher population density (so not single exported specimens) are documented on iNaturalist and provided to GBIF - I think that's very beneficial.
@maxkirsch I'm not entirely sure what I did, but I know I was unsuccessful in fixing it. Thanks, Max!
Two additional things:
Firstly, all of the observations that were previously RG are still RG despite the fact that they shouldn't be - they're at the level of complex, not species. Is there a way to fix this?
Secondly, from the results of this paper and this paper it seems pretty certain that the only species present in Australia and New Zealand is F. dentata. Is there a way we can easily swap these without having to go through and ID every single observation (1000+)?
Complex observations can have RG, if I understand correctly: if the DQA is clicked NO for "Can Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?" for a complex observation with the required number of IDs, it will convert to RG status.
Yes that's correct, but in these cases nobody has touched the DQA at all, they have just inherited RG status from when they were at species-level. E.g. this one
Thanks for the links to the papers, but both say nothing about the species in Australia - the second one was released years before the paper by Miguéns et al. and the first one is said paper, but it only said that there are two lineages in Australia?
But I also think it's logical, that F. dentata also occurs in Australia - more research is needed as it is for most regions of the world
The whole species complex is indeed a mess, since the study is controversial and many people (also one of the reviewers of the paper, the Dermaptera expert Petr Kocárek, but also @konstakal or me) don't believe in those new species (and see it rather as genetic lineages that might be subspecies or just lineages) - iNaturalist decided to go with it, but without the data it's just messy. Since further research can easily bring light to the lineages of certain areas, like Australia etc. I think we shouldn't use the DQA for now - all the RG observations before the taxon change are still RG and they covered the whole F. auricularia complex area (I made sure of this). But I think it's valid to use DQA since atm we really can't say more and to have RG observations, it seems to be the only way - I also didn't know about this, so thanks for clarifying!
If it’s controversial it should have not been added at all.
Yes, I wasn't aware of it back when I said it would be a good change - but still, it's the most up to date status of science at the moment.
What would help is, if F. auricularia s. lato of every corner of the distribution areal are analyzed genetically
@koblmuel does this at the moment in a study (which also includes other taxa) for Austria, I collected specimens of western Germany too for the study - but we all can help to collect specimens and send them for analyzes or do it by ourselves if we have the possibility
edit: I also thought it would be good, because many people requested the change - especially people from Spain, where the study took place
sadly most of them didn't even update their observations after the change...
@stephankleinfelder so in the second paper I linked to, they sequenced 80+ Forficula specimens from across Australia and found that all of them belonged to Clade B. In the first paper, Clade B is formally recognised as the reinstated F. dentata. I agree that it's possible that another species could be found here as well, but to me the evidence strongly suggests that it's only F. dentata here.
RE whether or not to use these new names - the way I see it, we don't lose anything by using the new names on iNat if they are recognised and in the system. If further evidence validates them and we all become more accepting of the names, then the names are already in place and being used correctly. If further evidence decides that they're not actually valid (or they're just subspecies etc.), then they can very easily all just be merged back into F. auricularia and nobody needs to do any extra work to get the IDs back to the way they were. So if iNat recognises them, I think it would be beneficial to use them.
@matthew_connors the thing is there’s no names to use, they didn’t check local specimens (and all the nearest were Clade A), but all observations are now at complex because of the possibility there’re new species, imo it had no reason to swap all Eurasian records because there’re species found in a specific region.
Sorry @marina_gorbunova , I'm not sure what you mean. I don't have any opinions on whether or not the swap should have occurred, but given that it has occurred then surely we should either use the new names or swap everything back. Otherwise what was the point of swapping everything?
@matthew_connors sorry, but what exactly you are not sure about?
The closest tested specimens are still the original species, now our observations are swapped to a complex and ppl id them as a complex for some reason, instead of being RG at species they’re in need of id, I’m not sure why you talk about new names cause those species weren’t found here as I said, our specimens weren’t tested.
@matthew_connors ah okay - possible that F. dentata occurs in most of Australia, since it's more common in warmer regions e.g. South America, north american westcoast or southwestern and western Europe. And yes, we wouldn't lose anything by doing that, I just think it's better to update the complex to species level in regions, where genetic analyzes took place - as example I identified some specimens of southern Spain as F. aeolica and F. mediterranea since the specimens of this region were relatively dense in the original paper - also for westcoast and eastcoast in North America it should be valid. But the line in central Europe between F. auricularia and F. dentata is not known yet, also in central northern America etc. etc.
@marina_gorbunova of course people ID them as complex, as long as you don't have genetic evidence it's one of the species/lineages or not, it's just wrong to use a species - for some regions it seems to be recorded which species occur, so I didn't correct all of your F. auricularia sensu stricto of Russia, because in eastern Europe just F. auricularia was documented yet. But in some other regions I correct those wrong IDs
@stephankleinfelder it’s not wrong as long as you have no evidence of other species being presented, it makes sense for places where the complex was introduced, but in its original area you need no reason to make observations with no RG at normal level.
Authors looked at Western Palearctic, but had no problems checking some outside regions, I blame (softly) them for not looking for more samples, as if catching earwigs worldwide is hard, these guys are everywhere and the sequencing could be outsourced.
@marina_gorbunova it's been a long day and it's perfectly possible I'm just not reading things correctly 😅
What do you mean by "there’s no names to use" though? Surely we would just use the new species names. And what do you mean by "they didn’t check local specimens (and all the nearest were Clade A)"? In the paper I linked to above, they tested lots of samples from around Australia and all were in Clade B.
@stephankleinfelder I agree with you that we should only be identifying them in regions where they have been genetically tested. But with specimens tested from all across Australia all being F. dentata, I think it is pretty safe to ID all Australian specimens as F. dentata unless we find some evidence to the contrary.
@marina_gorbunova it might be wrong to declare species Forficula auricularia s. str. without further evidence - e.g. if you look in the original paper it looks like in Germany it's also F. auricularia s. str. - but new analyzes found out, there are actually two lineages - maybe the border of dentata/auricularia goes through central Europe, maybe both "species" live sympatric - either way, it could be the same for other regions aswell. But Austria just showed 1 lineage, so maybe in eastern Europe it's as I said F. auricularia s. str. - but how do you want to know it?
But I agree that the study should have used more specimens and more countries to cover a larger area, that would have helped a lot.
I started collecting F. auricularia from different places, you can also send me some if you want, in a few weeks I wanted to send them to @koblmuel
@matthew_connors no veto on that, I took a more detailled look on the second paper you linked and it seems that it's F. dentata in B1 and B2 in Australia - it looks like dentata also occurs in Denmark, so the border between dentata and auricularia might go from Sweden/Norway over Denmark and Germany to France/Italy as far as I know - might be that they are an east and west postglacial population that went northwards after the last ice age - that's very common for european arthropods
@matthew_connors I can add that there is also Forficula vilmi described from Victoria, Australia. It would be interesing to found out if it is also part of F. auricularia complex. I do not believe that it is native Australain species but may be synonym of F. dentata or separate species of F. auricularia complex.
That is very interesting, I was wondering what species that name referred to as I could never find any information on it
F. vilmi was described by Menozzi in 1929 from Australia as F. modesta and renamed by Steinmann to F. vilmi in 1989 and apparently is very similar to F. auricularia, just with very little difference in male forceps shape.
Hmmmm yes sounds like probably a synonym then - it would be good to find out more
I also believe F. vilmi is a synonym of F. auricularia s. lato, probably F. dentata then, if the australian specimens are dentata. But yes, DNA barcodes and a phylogenetic analysis with vilmi and oceanian specimens included would be good, also more specimens from central northern America and Ecuador could be helpful...
Does the community want to add this species complex (including F. auricularia, F. aeolica sp. nov., F. mediterranea sp. nov. and F. dentata sp. nov,?