Flag for Taxon: Field Parsley Piert (Alchemilla arvensis)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| peterzika | loarie | Field Parsley Piert (Alchemilla arvensis) |
Our native Aphanes occidentalis is not a synonym |
Apr. 14, 2022 23:47:59 +0000 | aaronliston |
Alchemilla occidentalis is now accepted by POWO |
Comments
It would not be added under Aphanes, as it's nested within Alchemilla. It would be added as Alchemilla occidentalis instead.
I will add that I have gone over the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria (CPNWH) herbaria records for what CPNWH treats as "Aphanes occidentalis". I have long taken a keen interest in whether or not each species found wild in my local lower Georgia - Puget Trough area is native to this area (the area roughly being the lowlands, under 2,500' between the Cascade, and Olympic Mts of Washington, and the lowlands of SE Vancouver Island and the surrounding lowlands to the Cascade Mts of British Columbia and the Olympic Mts to the south). I have therefore analyzed herbaria records for all wild vascular plants of this area to determine if they did, or didn't, seem native to my local area. If a species has 3 or more records in the Puget Trough prior to 1900, that aren't in weedy habitats, I will at least tend to accept it as a Puget Trough native. Similarly, if there are more than 3 records in the Pacific Northwest, that aren't in weedy habitats, and not with non-natives relatively dominant among any listed associated species, I will tend to accept it as a Pacific Northwest Native. Aphanes occidentalis, alternately treated as Alchemilla occidentalis, has 15 herbaria records spread throughout the Pacific Northwest prior to 1900, which is more than most of our "native" species. The records being spread through the PNW that early makes it improbable that the species was introduced. I will add that, in part because of a shortage of habitat notes, and associated species notes, in herbaria records, I look beyond my 1900 date, and Puget Trough area, to check for species that are found in natural habitats, or disturbed habitats and with a high percentage of non-native associates, and find that the majority of records of A. occidentalis are in natural habitats, among primarily native species. So by my analysis for whether a species is indeed "native" that is a long-standing member of PNW natural communities, Aphanes / Alchemilla occidentalis scored better than most.
Here is the link to the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria records for Aphanes / Alchemilla occidentalis if anyone wants to examine them:
https://www.pnwherbaria.org/data/results.php?ExcludeCultivated=Y&SearchAllHerbaria=Y&QueryCount=1&IncludeSynonyms1=Y&SciName1=Aphanes%20occidentalis&Zoom=4&Lat=55&Lng=-135&PolygonCount=0&GroupBy=ungrouped&SortBy=Year&SortOrder=ASC
I don't really care what name it's given, but designating it as a non-native species is definitely an issue! It's absolutely native, and based on morphological differences alone it should probably be at least designated as a different subspecies to the European one.
Side note, it seems there's no way to change the native/nonnative designations for a species without individually editing every single checklist it appears on? There's a few species that are (correctly) marked native on state-level checklists but still designated as introduced in county-level lists that I don't seem to have edit ability on.
Lets separate this native taxon from the introduced one. They may be closely related, but there are morphological differences.
There are several nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (nrDNA ITS) sequences for Alchemilla arvensis, A. australis, and A. occidentalis in Genbank. I downloaded, aligned, and ran a RAxML phylogenetic analysis:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tmnxt0xilc50f3y/Aphanes_raxml.pdf?dl=0
The results show that the three species are distinct, with phylogenetic structure within A. occidentalis. This is consistent with it being a native species, and contrasts with the absence of sequence variation in the other 2 species. There is also one accession of A. australis that is apparently misidentified as A. arvensis. Note that Genbank's taxonomy is inconsistent, with two of the species retained in Aphanes.
@torsten @beritgehrke
I agree strongly with Peter and others in this thread; whichever genus these belong in they should remain separate species.
Whether Aphanes should actually be treated as Alchemilla or not, I have read the description of Aphanes occidentalis and it does not match with A. arvensis as its flowers are too small. If ever, it could be closer to the small-flowered species.
@rynxs About a month ago, after you had lumped the 2 taxa , and I indicated my disagreement, you said: "If you would like for a deviation, you are more than welcome to flag Alchemilla and propose the isolation of Alchemilla occidentalis. Should a number of users agree that the A. occidentalis should be distinct, then A. arvensis can be split."
Yes? Given the hasty swap, I clearly I don't know enough about the taxon to make a decision either way. I stepped back so that the many other curators involved in this discussion could take over and treat Alchemilla occidentalis in a way that best suits iNaturalist. The sole reason for my involvement was handling another flag requesting that the Aphanes swap into Alchemilla be completed to stop confusion with genus-level IDs. I don't have enough specific knowledge about this taxon to deviate from POWO.
If you want someone to go through and correct IDs of all affected Alchemilla occidentalis observations afterwards, I can do that according to the Jepson key.
I think the CNC stop on taxon changes may have been implemented today, so we will probably have to wait until May 10 to actually split A. arvensis.
@rynx Thank you.
@aaronliston I see you are a curator, and you seem to know more about the distinctions between the 2 species more than most. While, according to what rynxs just said, a taxon change might need to wait until May 10th, might you be able to make the split back again into 2 species? Regarding the objections to the split, I don't expect it matters much which genus each species ends up in. I see there are other curators in the group that either commented in this flag dialogue, or in the split dialogue:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_swaps/107443#activity_comment_410d10e6-2b7a-4542-9a59-5040c018ac9d
So if you would rather not be the one to make the split, I expect we could ask another curator could do it.
@stewartwechsler I am not a very active curator, and haven't merged or split taxa. I will defer to someone else. POWO sinks Aphanes into Alchemilla so that should be followed.
@silversea_starsong was active in the other discussion.
Thank you @aaronliston
Yes, I don't agree with the lump of this, and hope it can be reverted without issues.
It had been indicated that there was a "CNC stop on taxon changes" and that "it may have to wait until May 10 to actually split A. arvensis". It is now after May 10th, so I see no reason that Alchemilla arvensis, shouldn't now be split into Alchemilla arvensis and Alchemilla occidentalis. Having A. occidentalis in Alchemilla, rather than Aphanes, should take care of the desire not to deviate from POWO. @silversea_starsong The 3 other curators wanted to defer to someone else on this, but no one seems to object to the 2 taxa being split, into arvensis and occidentalis as long as they follow POWO at the genus level, keeping them both in Alchemilla. If you were to split them now I expect they would be reverted to 2 taxa with no issues.
Question is whether it can automatically return all the observations back to their correct designation, or whether that requires some additional input from staff to correct easily.
I would only guess that it might first need to be split to "Alchemilla arvensis" and "Aphanes occidentalis" for iNaturalist to recognize the former identifications of "Aphanes occidentalis" to return those observations to the "occidentalis" ID. One might then lump the Aphanes into Alchemilla, to get A. occidentalis into Alchemilla.
I just wanted to bump this thread because 10 months later and no reversion has been made. Has there been a technical hiccup which has prevented the proposed action of splitting the two taxa, or merely slipped through the cracks?
To me just seems there isn't really anyone with enough motivation and consent to make the changes to go ahead and do so.
I went ahead and split the taxon - but there is still work to do with plants that now need to be re-identified as Alchemilla occidentalis
I would have preferred that the staff stepped in and just reverted the merge back to the prior state, but this is one option I suppose.
I was hoping that would happen, too. But with the field season starting, seemed like it was time to make the change.
We now have 4 total observations of A. occidentalis, and 7 total observations of A. arvensis. I am only guessing that earlier ID's of each species were lost due to first lumping the 2 species, then splitting the lumped species, the observations of which were no longer identified as either of the 2 previous species that were lumped into the one species. Would it have been possible to have staff revert the merge back into the 2 species, retaining all of the older identifications of each species? Would that still be possible?
@loarie sorry to drag you into another taxon conundrum, can we revert this taxon lump and retain the prior IDs?
which change do you want me to revert? this one https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/122986?
The idea was to revert to a state before this taxon change here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/107443
This lumped occidentalis into arvensis, which is obviously a problem now we have so many observations stuck under arvensis that require manual care (they can't be atlased to solve it).
Folks here are still wanting this fixed, and because no updates have happened in a while, Aaron above just made this taxon change you linked here, in order to at least kickstart some progress: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/122986
But that would require fixing everything from scratch. Frankly, we need all the old IDs of occidentalis back to "fix" everything because it's a large task.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/107443 was reverted
looks like layers of changes though such as https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/122988 so I'm not sure if this is revertable or I just made it worse
reverts only really work for changes that just happened, I see now that change I reverted was from a year ago so I probably made things worse.
I'd recommend curating forward from wherever we are. Also since this is not in the direction of POWO please:
1) reach out to POWO and see if you can get them to make this change of recognizing Aphanes occidentalis on their end
2) make sure you make a deviation to signal curators not to curate in the direction of POWO and synonymize Aphanes occidentalis
I think the issue here was it came rather without warning. I wasn't aware this change was even being made until it was too late. Solutions like creating a deviation have only come into thought post-merge.
I thought it was possible to revert the taxon change, so that all observations with the IDs before said merge would be restored to that state. But instead it's just turned all of the observations to tribe level, which has indeed made things considerably worse.
Argh. Can we go back to the point before I tagged you in this??? Lol.
Surely there's something that can just delete all the taxon change IDs and restore the original ones...
@aaronliston's split was the action that elevated all the observations to tribe (split Alchemilla arvensis into Aphanes occidentalis and Alchemilla arvensis, when it should have been Alchemilla arvensis into Alchemilla occidentalis and Alchemilla arvensis). You probably want to revert that, if possible @loarie. Also, the fact that it was un-atlased pushed every observation of Alchemilla arvensis to tribe, not just those in the range of A. occidentalis.
I think at this point recommitting that change I reverted would make things even more complex/opaque.
Re: came without warning, remember whenever there's a taxon framework with a reference in place (as we have with vascular plants and POWO) curators instructions are to curate in the direction of the reference unless there's a deviation or flag in place.
So if you are worried about any taxa not in POWO disappearing, please add flags or deviations proactively
for example, just within Tribe Potentilleae, all the ~150 of these without flags could be swapped away at any point https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_frameworks/10/relationship_unknown?utf8=%E2%9C%93&filters%5Btaxon_name%5D=Strawberries%2C+Cinquefoils%2C+and+Allies&filters%5Btaxon_id%5D=885411&filters%5Brank%5D=
I'd recommend taking a look.
Reverting is a ton of work and doesn't work well (it leaves lots of loose ends) so should be avoided. Also we don't want to have to make and maintain deviations from POWO so if you can contact them and sort out taxonomic issues with them thats better than iNat trying to be a primary source for a taxonomy rather than just following a global reference like POWO thats already trying to do that
ok reverting https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/122986
might take a while
@aaronliston - when you split a taxon into outputs with a common ancestor at rank tribe without atlases it will roll all IDs of that taxon back to rank tribe. Please make sure thats what you want to do and check with people before committing a split like that.
Again my strong preference here is just to follow POWO. Its hard enough to keep iNat in sync with a taxonomic reference (we're hopelessly behind POWO because of a lack of volunteer curators) without also trying to figure out when we're supposed to be deviating from the reference and dealing with confusion around those deviations. POWO is already trying to solve the one global compromise vascular plant taxonomy problem which is the same problem we'd have if we were trying to do this ourselves so no need to reinvent the wheel here rather than take taxonomic issues up directly with POWO. They update weekly
but if you do curate in a direction away from POWO - please document what happened in deviations - otherwise its impossible for curators to know that they're not supposed to curate back in the direction of POWO
@loarie - thank you very much for reverting my poorly executed taxon split. I will also write to Rafaël and make an argument to recognize Alchemilla occidentalis
thanks very much aaronliston - appreciate the help!
How should people contact POWO to appeal their decision to lump these 2?
If one of our native species is being treated as a non-native one, because POWO lumped our native species with a non-native one, I think that is a BIG problem. We at least need a solution to that. Additionally it sounds like there are sufficient genetic differences and morphological differences that POWO had it wrong in lumping the 2.
I now see that I may not have read all of the dialogue since I read it last, a bit after my last comment.
you can find the contact information for the reference on the taxon framework page, e.g. here
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/211194-Tracheophyta/taxonomy_details
you'll see: "Please contact bi@kew.org to ask any questions about their taxonomic decision or to raise out errors or suggestions." in the description
I've found Rafael/POWO to be very responsive and helpful even when I've contacted them anonymously (e.g. here https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/584016) but I can only speak from my own experience
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/122986 now reverted
Thank you @loarie !
@loarie Very responsive indeed! I already heard back, and Rafael Govaerts said he will change Alchemilla occidentalis to an accepted name in POWO. The last step is to swap Aphanes occidentalis to Alchemilla occidentalis. There are 3 different entries for this name - is the one I created yesterday the correct one to use?
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1452907-Alchemilla-occidentalis
great news - yes please swap
Aphanes occidentalis to that Alchemilla occidentalis
I made a deviation until POWO catches up
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/321970
nice work all
Alchemilla occidentalis is now accepted in POWO. Is it OK to delete the deviation?
yes please
done
Current POW treats the European species, with green foliage and hidden flowers, as the same as a Pacific Northwest native with blue-green leaves and exserted flowers (among other differences). Thus one of our native plants in WA/OR./BC/ CA is automatically classified as an introduced weed when we enter records in iNat. Resolution is to follow local floras (Flora of North America, and Flora of Pacific Northwest, and California Flora) and recognize Aphanes occidentalis and Aphanes arvensis as distinct, each native to a different continent.