Flag for Taxon: true sedges (Genus Carex)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bouteloua | true sedges (Genus Carex) |
Global Carex Group 2021 infrageneric updates |
Jun. 2, 2021 03:16:23 +0000 | rynxs |
done |
Comments
Here is the direct link to the supplement assigning species to their groups.
What would we do about all of the informally named clades?
I did everything but subg. Carex. I used complexes for the smaller clades, excluding those with single species.
I have to say, after running these changes these groups seem great. It's huge to have C. rosea, C. retroflexa, and C. radiata in their own group separated from Phaestoglochin sensu stricto.
This must have been a ton of work and thanks for doing it! Without knowing anything about how to curate and organize iNat's taxonomy, there are a couple things I found confusing on first sight (beside just learning the new proposed taxonomy!). Traditionally, species complexes are used to designate species that are hard to separate and for which the species limits may be unclear. Here, they are used to designate whole clades that contain clearly separated species for the most part. I recognize that clades designate monophyletic groups and do not correspond to anything in the traditional linnean hierarchy used on iNat, but I find it very confusing to have such large groups as species complexes. I don't necessarily have anything else to propose though, since there is no obvious category corresponding to what they have in the paper (and they use sections along with clades...). Subsections seem to be used in iNat so perhaps that could be a possibility? Also, for most clades/sections, they have a type species that they use to name the groups, but using it here to designate the complexes makes it very confusing and I suspect it will lead to many misIDs. Would it be possible to use/show the clade name first, for example "Hirta Clade Complex" or "Complex Hirta Clade" instead of complex Carex hirta? Finally, is there an efficient way to adapt my previous IDs to this change? I had a lot of section-level IDs and now I think a lot of them are messed up and concern other species.
@frousseu complexes are monophyletic groups of organisms not designated any other rank (section or subsection for the most part). The name that displays first depends on your setting for common/scientific names, for most users it will be the clade name followed by the complex name. I don't know what misIDs will happen, but the worst I can think of is a more broad ID when a more specific ID was intended.
These changes are still being run, I'm not done yet. Yesterday I got to around page 18 of the 20 pages of changes. When the old taxonomy is finished being sorted, the old sections (the ones that remain being non-monophyletic) will be merged into subg. Carex. Following the merge, you should be able to use a function on the taxon change that allows you to see your affected observations. If not, I'll provide some links that will help.
Indeed, the misIDs would be broader IDs than intended, so not too bad. For the names, I was not aware the appearance was changing depending on my settings so perhaps I just need to change it (though I prefer the scientific name of species to the common name). For the species complexes, I never came across complexes on iNat that were only used to designate a (monophyletic) group of unspecified rank and discussions such as these https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/more-on-species-complexes/30564/15 let me think that most complexes are used in the traditional way where closely related species that are hard to differentiate are grouped. Somehow, it feels like the complex category is used only because there is no other rank specified (and the use of sections in the paper limits the possibilities). Contrary to all other higher categories, complexes have some kind of meaning which does not fit well with this situation. Again, I don't really have a solution, I'm just wondering if there is a better way. Having a clade category that could be put at arbitrary locations in the traditional hierarchy would cover the situation, but that would probably make the whole iNat taxonomy a mess.
@frousseu complexes are largely a "problem-solver" taxon, helping where species need to be organized into small monophyletic groups, but are not explicitly labeled as subgenera/sections/subsections. They can be used a number of ways, but the most prevailing usage is as you say. I can edit the names/ranks of whatever taxa I make whenever I want, so this isn't a lasting issue if the community decides to deviate from the paper somehow, or if the clades are given formal names. That said, the clades currently don't have section/subsection names, so I would find it difficult to make them into sections/subsections.
I admit that there does not seem to be an easy way to implement these new changes. Anyway, as they say in the paper, this is an intermediate step toward a more comprehensive classification for Carex and thus all of this is probably subject to future changes. In the meantime, I hope that the new classification won't make it more difficult to ID carex...
@frousseu so far, there seem to be a lot of nice, logical groups.
For completeness I feel like it's worth mentioning on this flag that there's this downstream flag discussing the fallout of these changes with (I think?) the consensus that they were premature, not sure if the discussion has been entirely resolved though: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/623066#activity_comment_22402acb-be63-4919-b965-303a881bac4b
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jse.12722 see supplement