Flag for Taxon: Honey Mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pinonbistro | Honey Mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) |
A. solidipes vs. A. ostoyae |
Jan. 18, 2023 22:53:50 +0000 | Not Resolved |
Comments
The paper you cited accepts the two names as synonymous-
'On the basis of the morphological and biological
species concepts, several Armillaria species, such as A.
mellea, A. solidipes (=A. ostoyae; Burdsall and Volk
2008; hereafter referred to as A. solidipes/ostoyae)'
It seems the two names referred to the same species, and this is widely accepted in the literature, notwithstanding the fact that there are differing species within that complex between the continents.
Actually, that's not true. Please read the entire paper. The section you're quoting is giving the historical background citing earlier works such as Burdsall and Volk 2008. According to the tef1 phylogenetic analysis of Klopfenstein et al. 2017 there is a European solidipes/ostoyae clade which is different than either of two North American solidipes/ostoyae clades so the names are not synonymous as suggested by Burdsall & Volk 2008. One of the North American sequences analyzed was from CO and likely represents A. solidipes; the other is from eastern North America and is likely novel.
I suppose we should tag @nschwab here too, as he's the one who made the taxon swap. Here's a publicly accessible version of the paper, for anyone who may need it: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/2017/rmrs_2017_klopfenstein_n001.pdf
Reading further they are still being very cautious, stating focused taxonomic study is needed to determine whether Armillaria solidipes is the appropriate name for the sequenced North American species.
From the paper:
" In the first major clade, A. solidipes/ostoyae (G13 – Eurasia) was basal and appears well separated from A. borealis clade 2
(G10—Eurasia), A. gemina (G14—eastern USA), and two sister clades of A. solidipes/ostoyae (G11—North America, G12—North America)."
Since ITS doesn't delimit taxa in this group tef1 was used instead. It was beyond the scope of this paper to definitively conclude that A. solidipes and A. ostoyae are separate taxa but I think it is premature to synonymize them without further study since they appear to be quite different genetically.
And from Guo et al. 2016:
"Based on morphological observations, Burdsall & Volk [3]
have proposed that A. solidipes Peck, originally described from North America, is an older
name for A. ostoyae, originally described from Europe. Our phylogenetic analysis indicated
that the North American A. solidipes was sister to its sympatric A. gemina rather than the Eurasian A. ostoyae. We thus provisionally assign the North American isolates to A. solidipes and the Eurasian isolates to A. ostoyae."
Fair enough, I can see why you'd take that view. Apologies for being too hasty in my initial response- I had honestly thought this was quite settled. I'm interested to hear what Jacob and Nicholas' take on it is.
@pinonbistro I have more important matter to handle at this moment but I will still respond. It is definitely easier for you to criticize things that others do than doing something yourself, judging by your swap history as a curator. You like to complain but doing something for this site wouldn't hurt you.
This paper says nothing about nomenclature. They only show that multiple clades exist in Armillaria ostoyae/solidipes superclade. They say nothing about nomenclature nor they distinguish the two species. They don't discuss nomenclatural options like using an infraspecific rank for it. Morphology is not even considered. Currently, they're nomenclaturally considered as identical until PROVEN wrong. If you think that's wrong you can make a paper about it and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal :)
Further reason to keep these separate, though not conclusive, is that neither Index Fungorum nor MycoBank show the two taxa as synonyms. MycoBank in particular does a pretty good job of keeping up with recent molecular work and probably should be consulted along with recent molecular studies before taxa are merged on iNat.
@nschwab I think you frequently go off the deep end in your comments. What I do or don't do as curator on iNat is none of your business and is beside the point which is what is the evidence for the merger of these two taxa? Kindly keep your remarks professional and your digs to yourself.
1. What do publications say?
Guo & al. 2016 "provisionally assign the North American isolates to A. solidipes and the Eurasian isolates to A. ostoyae"
Klopfenstein & al. 2017 note two North American clades and one Eurasian clade, but suggest "focused taxonomic studies are necessary to confirm whether Eurasian A. solidipes/ostoyae are indeed taxonomically and phylogenetically distinct from North American A. solidipes/ostoyae, and to determine whether North American A. solidipes/ostoyae comprises multiple phylogenetic species"
Coetzee & al. 2018 find that "strains of A. ostoyae reside in two paraphyletic lineages" (by this they seem to mean two non-sister clades), which they note suggests A. ostoyae represents a species complex with cryptic species. They mainly call it "A. solidipes/ostoyae".
(bold all mine)
All three publications are obviously noncommital. I think we can say the published consensus is that this issue is unresolved.
2. What do we say?
We can make a guess - the simplest phylogenetic situation that allows all three published analyses to be correct is that A. solidipes/ostoyae can be assigned to two (sister) NA clades and one Eurasian clade (more or less unrelated). North American collections would be called A. solidipes (and perhaps a second name); European collections would be called A. ostoyae. But we don't know either.
3. What should we do on iNat?
The lump was non-destructive - I assume nobody was distinguishing A. solidipes from A. ostoyae, other than perhaps by continent, which I assume is trivial to re-split with the "atlas" feature if necessary.
A split might have to be somewhat destructive. What ID should a post-split A. ostoyae obs (representing "either A. solidipes or A. ostoyae") be bumped to? We can't do an "A. solidipes complex" including just those two species, because officially species complexes on iNat are supposed to be monophyletic - it would also have to include A. gemina and A. borealis, per the above papers. All the observations would get bumped to a less-useful four-species taxon.
That rule might be bad enough that it's worth breaking sometimes. But what would it accomplish here? Differentiating the two species IDs would be a bit of extra effort and potential confusion. It wouldn't be giving any information besides continent, which is already blatantly evident on every observation. And we would know it was very possibly insufficient/incorrect, pending more research.
So (given my assumptions) I would vote for keeping the lump.
@pulk thanks for taking a look at this and for your thoughts. Did the name A. ostoyae get conserved? There was a proposal to do so if the two taxa were accepted as synonyms. If it was not conserved, then A. solidipes is the older name that should be used if we consider them synonyms.
Yes! A. ostoyae was conserved over A. solidipes (see https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/botany/codes-proposals/).
Great, thanks. I wouldn't be surprised if they are determined to be separate taxa at some point as they appear to be quite different genetically judging from the Guo and Klopfenstein papers. Just found the name conservation proposal and it seems the authors had doubts that they are conspecific as well based on Hunt & al. in Forest Pathol. 41: 253–254. 2011.
It has already been determined that A. ostoyae and A. solidipes are separate taxa.
Here is an excerpt from Guo et al 2016:
Samples of A. ostoyae from northeastern China, Japan and Europe were grouped
into a highly supported lineage. Based on morphological observations, Burdsall & Volk [3]
have proposed that A. solidipes Peck, originally described from North America, is an older
name for A. ostoyae, originally described from Europe. Our phylogenetic analysis indicated
that the North American A. solidipes was sister to its sympatric A. gemina rather than the Eurasian
A. ostoyae. We thus provisionally assign the North American isolates to A. solidipes and
the Eurasian isolates to A. ostoyae.
Yes, A. ostoyae was conserved over A. solidipes for Europe and Asia because A. solidipes in North America has been determined to be a separate species.
Here is an excerpt from an e-mail from Ned Klopfenstein dated January 4, 2023 about this subject.
"I concur with John that Armillaria solidipes is the correct name for “North American A. ostoyae.” Years ago, I corresponded with Scott Redhead, who was lead author on the proposal to conserve the name Armillaria ostoyae, which was approved. Scott conveyed that their proposal to conserve the name A. ostoyae for the North American species applies only if the North American and Eurasian species are the same. He and many others have concluded that ample evidence demonstrates that the North American and Eurasian species are not the same, and they should not be treated as synonyms (e.g., Guo et al 2016 and multiple other papers), thus, A. solidipes is the appropriate name for what was formerly called North American A. ostoyae. In fact, we have been chastised by multiple reviewers for even suggesting that A. solidipes is sometimes referred to as A. ostoyae.
Although it is not technically needed, I am still encouraging Vladimir Antonin and Jane Stewart to resume their work on the epitypification of Armillaria solidipes, based on fruiting bodies that Jim Worrall collected near Gunnison, CO, close to where Peck originally collected the type specimen for A. solidipes in 1899. Establishing a new epitype for A. solidipes is useful because DNA sequencing could not be obtained from the old herbarium sample that currently serves as the holotype for A. solidipes. Sadly, Tom Volk, has passed away, and he was a co-author on Burdsall and Volk (2008) that resurrected the name A. solidipes for “North American A. ostoyae.” It is my understanding that most of the work has been done that conclusively determines the species description for A. solidipes, but I suspect it will be awhile before this work is submitted for publication.
Yes, we all struggle with taxonomic name changes, especially when the name changes are not appropriate; however, A. solidipes is the appropriate name for the North American species."
@johnwalterhanna Thanks so much for passing that on! That definitely helps me lean toward splitting them. We wouldn't really have to worry about ambiguous cases because almost all observations are in Europe/West Asia or North America.
@leptonia can you help out with this? Most of us on this flag agree that A. solidipes and A. ostoyae should be split--see most recent comments from @johnwalterhanna above. I know how to create a new taxon, but in this case the two taxa were merged and I'm not sure how to split them.
Tagging @nschwab who certainly has a better handle on how to de-merge
@leptonia I will look at this tomorrow. I was away for the week-end so I wasn't able to respond.
Done. There were a few observations not included in these atlases but I re-identified them on the fly as all of them were incorrect. You can see the distribution of these two species by clicking on the green "Atlased" button.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/124942
Thanks @nschwab!
All of my observations that were changed from A. solidipes to A. ostoyae when the merge was made are still A. ostoyae so I assume that is true of observations by others as well. So I guess there is no way to de-merge? We have to review all of the western North American postings of A. ostoyae?
It's normal they're still A. ostoyae, the swap hasn't been committed.
I see. I thought it had been committed when you said "done" above. When will it be committed? Also, when the swap is committed will the double tag be removed from A. ostoyae--now it says A. ostoyae (A. solidipes)?
I'm waiting on feedback about the swap before committing. I don't understand what you mean by "double tag".
Go to an observation and start to ID it as Armillaria solidipes you will get two choices: Armillaria solidipes or Armillaria ostoyae (Armillaria solidipes)
Oh, this is what you mean. Sure, I can fix that right now.
Why were these synonymized on iNat? From Klopfenstein et al. 2017 the North American A. solidipes is genetically different from the Eurasian A. oytoyae