Flag for Taxon: Humped Ancula Sea Slug (Ancula gibbosa)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| jeffgoddard | Humped Ancula Sea Slug (Ancula gibbosa) |
WoRMS now accepts Ancula Pacifica |
Mar. 7, 2023 11:50:29 +0000 | thomaseverest |
Split done |
Comments
@ jeffgoddard Thank you very much!
I have reactivated A. pacifica and mapped it. I leave it to the Mollusca curators to what extent we do a taxon split or the proposed taxon swap for California.
Thank you, @kai_schablewski!
Thank you @jeffgoddard (I’d been sitting on this one…)
FWIW, I don't advise activating a new taxon or reactivating one in advance of a potential split because people might start using it before the split gets committed. When the split is committed, this could result in unintended disagreements in regions of sympatry, and it seems like we're going to have such regions here.
IMO, this situation, where there is one taxon concept on iNat that needs to be divided on pretty clear morphological and geographic grounds, merits a split. That will update the relevant observations while providing a clear record of what happened and why.
Hmm, okay... That makes sense. I inactivate it again, sorry.
I have drafted a split based on the information provided by @jeffgoddard.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/124003
Currently, all IDs of A. gibbosa in California will be changed to A. pacfica. All other observations of A. gibbosa will remain as they are. If the ranges overlap, we would technically want to include Oregon and Washington with A. pacifica, and A. gibbosa with California, but that would bump everything in those states to genus. If the ranges are mostly distinct, that wouldn't be ideal if there are IDers who can go through and update the observations that will need it. I don't know the current situation of where what species are found in our observations. Should the dividing line be down the California coast somewhere?
@thomaseverest, thanks for asking.
I just checked and think that applying the change to all of CA from Mendocino Co. south will work best, as there are only a few observations of gibbosa in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties and only a few of pacifica in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and OR and WA. I am happy to update those after the change is implemented.
@jeffgoddard great. How does this look:
A. gibbosa
A. pacifica
All these observations will be transferred to A. pacifica. I don't think there are any observations that will be bumped to genus because they lie outside of standard places, but it would be good to check after the split.
Yes, let's do it!
Thanks.
Thanks @thomaseverest
@hsini_lin, @anudibranchmom, WoRMS now accepts Ancula pacifica, following Behrens et al. (2022).
Ancula pacifica MacFarland, 1905 applies only to Ancula in the NE Pacific with three orange lines on the body between the rhinophores and gills. , so this change on iNaturalist will not apply to all observations from the region currently referred to as A. gibbosa. Ancula pacifica usually ranges north to northern California, but in warm water years can be found as far north as Oregon and Washington, where it overlaps in distribution with A. gibbosa.
A taxon swap to A. pacifica could be made for all NE Pacific observations currently identified as A. gibbosa in California, and then I and others could then (1) manually change the few in northern CA that are indeed A. gibbosa (e.g., https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/126226956), and (2) manually change from A. gibbosa to A. pacifica those needing that change in OR and WA.