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ellenjones6 Greater Fritillaries (Genus Speyeria)

it is premature to make this change until BAMONA and ITIS have adopted it

Mar. 10, 2023 18:24:24 +0000 treichard

No action needed.

Comments

Please see comments in the forum. I have reviewed the material this change was based on (including the moth photographers) and am still mystified as to why a "suggestion" has been adopted before authorities like BAMONA and ITIS have made the changes.

Posted by ellenjones6 about 1 year ago

Hi @ellenjones6,

Note that BAMONA and ITIS are not taxonomic authorities followed by iNat. BAMONA is a citizen science record site.

For North American butterflies, we follow primarily the Pelham butterfly catalog (http://butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat.htm) as well as Butterflies of America (http://butterfliesofamerica.com), which are maintained by the same team and have their taxonomy regularly updated after reviewing recent literature. The Pelham catalog adopted the change of rank of Speyeria awhile ago due to the work mentioned in the relevant taxon swap (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/124231) and maintained its adoption in the latest update from Feb. 2023. This change has had a few years of visibility before adoption in iNat.

Also, the Butterflies of America team, the Moth Photographers Group (https://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/Plates2.shtml) team, and a team of more Lepidoptera taxonomists are actively collaborating on the next peer-reviewed checklist of Lepidoptera of North American north of Mexico and syncing the taxonomy with those web sites. So that whole aggregate is effectively the Lepidoptera authority to follow for the region.

As for the merits argued in Zhang et al., if they are strong or weak, that can be settled in the scientific literature and updated in taxonomic authorities. I won't argue either way.

Tim

Posted by treichard about 1 year ago

@treichard Let me see if I understand you correctly. You acknowledge (indirectly) that sources conflict on the taxonomy for our fritillaries. You acknowledge (indirectly) there are authoritative sources that have not yet accepted the taxon change. But iNat has decided, in the case of disagreement, to ignore those sources. iNat has decided to follow Pelham, so there will be no further discussion. Do I understand you correctly?

Posted by ellenjones6 about 1 year ago

Two notes to add to your query in the iNat forum [1], @ellenjones6:

First: Per the ICZN, peer review isn't necessarily required [2,3], however The Taxonomic Report of The International Lepidoptera Survey [4] does claim to have include peer review, although it may not be anonymous, which is not surprising, given that anonymity probably isn't possible given the narrowness of the subject matter.

Second: ICZN requires, for works which are published electronically [5], that those works:

8.5.3. be registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank) (see Article 78.2.4) and contain evidence in the article itself that such registration has occurred.

And you can look this up for yourself in ZooBank and see that the work has been registered [6], although not for the name change in question as their work would not take precedence (as noted in the text it is concurring evidence). Additionally the journal has been cited many times in ZooBank [7] and is home to both contributions by amateur specialists as well as academic researchers thus widely regarded as a valid forum for publication and nomenclature.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxonomic-swap-124231-speyeria-is-out-argynnis-is-in-why/39951
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature
https://code.iczn.org/
http://lepsurvey.carolinanature.com/report.html
https://code.iczn.org/criteria-of-publication/article-8-what-constitutes-published-work/?frame=1#art-8-5
https://zoobank.org/References/9a8dcbc8-a9d5-4083-b640-ba5101827478
https://zoobank.org/References/0B379082-B75C-4C0B-BA87-B39DB8092D7F

Posted by murphyslab about 1 year ago

Thanks @murphyslab for the thorough explanation. I'll add that in the Taxonomic Report article in question, the reviewers are listed, and both are well known seasoned lepidopterists.

@ellenjones6, I acknowledge that the necessary distinction has been made between taxonomic authorities, like Pelham's catalog, and sources that are not taxonomic authorities, like BAMONA, a citizen science record site, and ITIS, also not a taxonomic authority, and which in the case of Speyeria, follows the 2008 version of Pelham's catalog, ignoring 15 years of recent scientific study.

Posted by treichard about 1 year ago

@treichard I am still unsure of your position. Are you saying that you have made a decision on this issue and are not open to discussion? Please clarify. Are you at least willing to share how you weighed the pros and cons of each course of action (retaining Speyeria until sites such as BAMONA have adopted the new taxonomy) vs jettisoning Speyeria in favor of Argynnis? I ask because I have a hunch (correct me if I am wrong about this) that we may be losing sight of the basic mission of iNaturalist, which is to help people “identify the plants and animals around you.” Names, clearly, are a key part of identifying plants and animals. Keeping names as consistent as possible (i.e., across various websites that citizen scientists will likely use to learn more about their target animal) is important to the citizen scientists who submit their observations on iNaturalist. This goal can sometimes come into conflict with the goal of taxonomists to continuously modify names to reflect their research. How are you attempting to balance the desires of taxonomists with the needs of citizen scientists who represent iNaturalist’s main contributors?

Posted by ellenjones6 about 1 year ago

@ellenjones6 I am not a taxonomist, but I appreciate the work done by @treichard and others. You can find iNaturalist's policy on taxononomic authorities over here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#authorities

The relevant part of the policy is:

"Unfortunately there are hardly any world authorities on any insect order, let alone all insects. When global authorities are missing, we refer to regional authorities such as BugGuide for North American insects or A Catalogue of the Butterflies of the United States and Canada [https://butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat.htm] or Illustrated Lists of American Butterflies (North and South America) [https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/Neotropical.htm]. The handful of authorities we follow are listed below. If you know of any others please feel free to bring them up on the forum."

Both butterfly sites in this policy consider Speyeria as a subgenus of Argynnis. So, given iNaturalist policy, Speyeria does need to be treated as a subgenus of Argynnis

I don't understand how this interferes with the basic mission of iNaturalist quoted in the previous comment. Most non-experts use common names which are unchanged. The Great Spangled Fritillary is still the Great Spangled Fritillary.

Posted by salmanabdulali about 1 year ago

Speyeria was downranked as an intact clade, not jettisoned. I've given my explanation for why this downranking occurred and how I followed iNat's curation policy and why Ellen's suggestion of deferring to ITIS or BAMONA does not follow it. It does not satisfy Ellen, and that is OK! I'm resolving this flag as there is no resulting action to take, though this does not halt further discussion here.

The broader question of the usefulness of more and less stable taxonomy is a big one. There are discussions in the forum about the encompassed issues that can be joined, so I recommend that discussion be continued there as desired.

Posted by treichard about 1 year ago

@salmanabdulali OK, let me give you an example. I am a non-expert. I hate to tell you this, but even non-experts like me use scientific names because they are necessary to do research on the plants and animals we follow.

I upload a photo of a critter I think is an Aphrodite Fritillary. iNaturalist responds by telling me: “We are pretty sure this is in this genus Greater Fritillaries (Genus Argynnis).” To which I mentally respond: “Wait a minute! I happen to know that the Aphrodite is in the genus Speyeria! Is this a completely different insect? I am confused! I thought I knew this butterfly, and now it seems I have been wrong all these years!” So, I spend the next hour or two going to the butterfly sites I trust (like BAMONA and BugGuide), and they still list the Greater Fritillaries as Speyeria. I compare this with the Wikipedia entry which tells me that: “Argynnis is a genus of butterflies in the family Nymphalidae, one of several groups known as "fritillaries". Its species are commonly found in Europe and Asia.” Wait, I respond, my butterfly was not found in Europe or Asia; I found it just outside of Lake Placid, Essex County, NY. What is going on? At this point, I give up in frustration and click the upload page off. iNaturalist asks whether I want to leave the site? Yes, I respond, of course, I want to leave the site; I don’t have time to sort this out at the moment.

Does this help you understand how changing either the non-scientific name OR the scientific name creates problems for the citizen scientists on whom iNaturalist relies?

Posted by ellenjones6 about 1 year ago

@treichard Yes, you will recall that I started this discussion in the forum and was told to come here. I will go back to the forum as you suggested, but I would still like an answer to my question as to how you weighed the pros and cons of making vs not making the taxon change.

Posted by ellenjones6 about 1 year ago

@ellenjones6, Your comments here seem to suggest that @treichard is the one "making" the change, but really he is just following the rules laid out by iNaturalist's policy as laid out as explained by @salmanabdulali. So there are zero "pros and cons of making vs not making the taxon change" to weigh. The catalogue which made the change (and to which iNaturalist defers) is the one which weighed whether the move was correct or not.

I'm not a taxonomy expert either, but I have been in the same situation before as you are in now. As a non-expert it is indeed confusing. And as humans we like stability and often bristle at change.

What helped me to understand was by reading one or more of the scientific nomenclature codes such as the ICZN (for the animal kingdom) or the ICN (for plants, algae, and fungi). The system of binomial names which we use is governed by rules, just like the policies which govern iNaturalist's curators.

When I became involved with iNaturalist, I was surprised to find that my plant ID books were out of date in several respects. But genetics has helped grow the body of scientific knowledge to understand species relationships better and faster than ever before. One of the first examples where I encountered this was with my local "Shooting Stars". Formerly they belonged to a genus known as Dodecatheon, a name given by Linnaeus himself! It's been that name for over 250 years! But suddenly, all of the plant names were found to be under a different genus, Primula. "What gives!?", I asked. I'll let Wikipedia explain:

Carl Linnaeus created the genus Dodecatheon in Species Plantarum in 1753. Dodecatheon could be distinguished by its buzz-pollinated flowers, with reflexed petals and projecting styles and anthers. Repeated molecular phylogenetic studies agreed with morphological and cytological evidence that Dodecatheon was most closely related to one of the subgenera of PrimulaP. subgen. Auriculastrum, so that if Dodecatheon is kept separate from Primula, then Primula is not monophyletic. Accordingly, in 2007, Austin R. Mast and James L. Reveal reduced the genus Dodecatheon to Primula sect. Dodecatheon of P. subgen. Auriculastrum, and provided names in Primula for all former Dodecatheon species

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primula_sect._Dodecatheon

TLDR: Genetic studies showed that Primula and Dodecatheon were all part of the same genetic group. Dodecatheon was just one branch within Primula.

That situation is exactly analogous to what happened with the former genus Speyeria. The groups represented by Argynnis and Speyeria have been shown to be the same group. Speyeria is a separate branch within Argynnis, so it has been made a subgenus. Zhang et al.'s work demonstrated that with genetic sequences. Prior work based on morphology also agreed.

Changes take time to be widely disseminated largely because it requires the efforts of humans: (1) to collect data, analyze it, and publish their findings, (2) to weigh and parse evidence so as to not blindly accept spurious changes, and (3) to update databases, references, and checklists to correspond to what is accepted by subject matter experts.

BugGuide, Wikipedia, and BAMONA will all implement the update sooner or later. But it takes time because it requires human work.

That change for Dodecatheon was first introduced in 2007. You can read the 2020 version of that Wikipedia article and still see it referring to Dodecatheon as a genus. Again, it takes human volunteers time and effort to update these things. So if you see other sources which you commonly use still referring to something by the old nomenclature, and you use that as your basis for disagreeing, then your argument really becomes "well, no one has bothered to update my preferred sources yet, therefore your newly up-to-date source must be wrong!" That's like suggesting that because your friend's comic-of-the-day calendar still shows March 9th means it isn't March 11th today!

No information is lost here, either. If I input Speyeria zerene on iNat, I will automatically be shown Argynnis zerene because the database retains the old name as a now-invalid synonym.

Posted by murphyslab about 1 year ago

@treichard if Speyeria was moved to a subgenus of Argynnis, which it appears to have been, then shouldn't genus Speyeria have been swapped into subgenus Speyeria instead?

Posted by rynxs about 1 year ago

@rynxs It would have been nice if that were the best way. iNat has implemented a mechanism to automatically update the names of species and subspecies when a genus is swapped into another genus, but they have not done so for swaps involving subgenera. So it is much less work to to swap the genera first and then move the species to the subgenus.

Posted by treichard about 1 year ago

@treichard would that have worked for 19 swaps (one for each species), then swapping the genus into the subgenus? I mostly just do individual swaps to make sure everything is done accurately, I haven't really worked up the bravery to experiment with that function outside of attempting to use it to correct genushybrid names (which failed).

Posted by rynxs about 1 year ago

@treichard @rynxs FYI, that auto-update of names when doing genus swaps is, if I recall correctly, rather crude and best used with reserve. I think it just transfers all the species epithets to the new genus unmodified, which is fine for Lepidoptera, but dangerous in the rest of the taxonomic tree, where people know what a declension is. :)

Posted by choess 7 months ago

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