Flag for Taxon: Billings' sedge (Variety Carex trisperma billingsii)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| radbackedsalamander | Billings' sedge (Variety Carex trisperma billingsii) |
potentially deserves species status? |
Jun. 8, 2023 00:41:08 +0000 | rynxs |
see comments |
Comments
I’d upgrade “potentially” to “definitely” in your reason. :) I’ve been meaning to add a flag for this, but you got to it first!
This sedge is extremely distinctive, and even in bogs where both C. billingsii and C. trisperma are abundant, no intermediates are seen. This is likely explained by bloom time, as the entire phenology of C. trisperma seems to be about a month earlier; it’s easy to find fruiting C. billingsii in good shape well into August and hard to find C. billingsii with fresh flowering material during mid/late June, when C. trisperma is at its peak. Morphologically these two are so distinct that it’s pretty odd that they were ever lumped, let alone still lumped by POWO after Kirschbaum’s work published in 2007, which also showed C. billingsii to be genetically distinct. The filiform & inrolled leaves, in addition to differences in spike #, perigynia #, and stature, are enough to see at a glance that this species and C. trisperma more distinct than many (dozens?) of other species pairs within Carex.
This is one of many instances where POWO is over a decade out of date and thumbs its nose at a widely accepted treatment for no discernible reason. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, I know, and I understand the need to tie iNat’s taxonomy to a framework like POWO. But I can’t see any advantage to following its treatment of this taxon.
I’ll tag some more people familiar with this species: @alexgraeff @bobcatbrad @rroutledge @sedge @marltrotter
I wrote this on my phone, so sorry if there are any typos.
Thank you! And yeah from my understanding they were fairly distinct. :^)
Here is the 2007 paper.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41971425
@natemartineau Do these drafts look good?
Move everything from Carex trisperma var. billingsii into Carex billingsii https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/126734
Move the remainder Carex trisperma obs to Carex Sect. Glareosae because at the current moment the roughly ~800 observations consist of both species. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/126733
Hmm, seems like the great majority of the C. trisperma observations would indeed be that taxon, so there might be a lot of unnecessary cleanup to do if they're all moved to sect. Glareosae. Maybe easier to leave those as is and sift through for C. billingsii?
alright!
@radbackedsalamander absolutely do not commit the second swap of C. trisperma into Glareosae. In fact, please delete it immediately. I'm not even sure what the utility of such a swap would be when taxon splits exist, but committing that would be enormously destructive.
Has anyone even tried to resolve this with POWO? You are obligated to inquire about this to POWO first before deviating. A majority of the time, they simply fix their treatment and everyone can move on peacefully, without a need for a permanent deviation.
Apologies! It's now fixed.
I have not reached out to POWO but I could when I have time. @rynxs
@radbackedsalamander Please do! bi@kew.org
Make sure you give them references to all the floras which accept it as distinct
Okay will do!
I could do it instead, seeing as I’m the one most up in arms about it lol. I did not realize reaching out to POWO directly was part of this process. I’m glad to know we can do that
Alright I would appreciate it!
I went ahead and contacted POWO (finally), so I expect that either POWO will be revising its treatment or we'll be committing a deviation somewhat soon
It is now Carex billingsii in POWO
https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:77093154-1
Nice!
@natemartineau typically turnaround for changes in POWO is a week or two. The page you linked is the same one listing C. billingsii as a synonym of C. trisperma var. billingsii.
Right you are, I didn’t look at the web page closely, but Rafael did let me know that he made the change
OK cool, POWO should update after the next refresh. I'm going to be in California next week, so I would prefer if the curation could wait until I'm back next weekend so multiple curators can oversee and check each others' work here, but the changes to implement once POWO updates are as follows:
Create a new instance of Carex billingsii
Link the new instance as a "match" through a taxon relationship to POWO
Swap Carex trisperma var. billingsii into the new instance of Carex billingsii
Here's where it gets a bit complex:
Create atlases for Carex trisperma and the new Carex billingsii (please start looking into range maps for these as soon as possible). These should be at state level, but if you find county-level maps that allow for their ranges to overlap as little as possible, that would be enormously helpful. There's a limit to how specific we can be, but reducing atlas overlap is extremely beneficial.
Identify as many observations in the shared ranges of these two species down to variety as possible.
Draft a split of C. trisperma into C. trisperma and C. billingsii
Commit split. This will force any observations of Carex trisperma in the shared range of the two species that are not identified to var. trisperma to the nearest shared taxon between C. trisperma and C. billingsii, which would be sect. Glareosae at the moment. Carex trisperma var. billingsii was pre-existing on iNat before C. billingsii was swapped into it, so this would have been necessary regardless.
Swap C. trisperma var. trisperma into C. trisperma.
@rynxs Alright! And I'll be away until July 6th too so I'll get onto it when I get back.
Thank you all for being so patient!
I'm afraid range maps will probably not be informative in the case of C. billingsii. They are generally very incomplete, given it's a recently named and relatively obscure/inconspicuous plant that occurs in infrequently botanized places. Although there may be some counties where C. billingsii is the only Carex trisperma sl to occur, C. billingsii occurs pretty much entirely within the northern/eastern portion of C. trisperma's range. Usually, if the habitat is good for C. billingsii, you will find C. trisperma as well. In fact, I don't think I've ever found billingsii without trisperma nearby. Incidentally, this is part of why they're so distinct, since they grow together so often, in the same habitats, with no intermediates. I'll start working on adding var. IDs within the range of C. billingsii; I'll probably do this at state level in all states where both are known to occur.
Ok, it is now Carex billingsii in POWO, but I have not had the time I thought I would to make variety level IDs. I know it's necessary to wait until this is done, but unfortunately I will not have the time for at least a month as I'm about to go on a pretty long road trip.
It's not strictly necessary to ID to variety prior to the split, but it will stop a lot of observations from being elevated to Glareosae. We can wait as long as needed.
Yes, this is what I meant, necessary to preserve finer scale IDs
I plan to add IDs at state/province level for Michigan, eastern Canada, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England. I found Wisconsin's first documented C, billingsii last year, and I will probably check through records in the northern tiers of counties there but I very much doubt the southern WI records need to be thoroughly checked.
Is C. trisperma s.s. what occurs in IL?
That's correct, and given C. billingsii's affinity for high, sunny sphagnum hummocks, it's nearly impossible that it would occur there.
Ok, identifying is almost done. I've done everything except Ontario, and I don't think I'll do the whole province, just the part that's known to have C. billingsii... unless that creates problems.
I also think it would be useful to make a little Carex trisperma complex that includes only C. trisperma and C. billingsii, as charlie and I started to discuss here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178613802
I've now added identifications to all possible observations in every state and province where both species occur. Should be safe to go ahead with the split now.
I realize I'm being a broken record, but I'm just looking to get confirmation that this split is still on people's radar. Everything is good to go on the identifying end.
I had thought @radbackedsalamander was going to take the lead on this, but if everyone is waiting on someone to do something I can go ahead and take the reins. I would like explicit confirmation from @radbackedsalamander, though. The worst thing that can happen during normal curation is multiple people taking the same actions simultaneously.
@rynxs I initially was going to take the reins, though recently due to my personal issues that have come up I have had a lot less time to spend doing online nature things. I also don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to plants as much, I'm more familiar with the process of adding taxon in the herpetology and fungus sector.
1.. Deleted taxon change 126734.
2.. Created Carex billingsii (1499350).
3.. Swapped Carex trisperma var. billingsii (1060334) into Carex billingsii (1499350). Note: 29 disagreeing IDs were generated.
4.. Atlased Carex billingsii (1499350) for Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward I., Québec, Rhode I., and Vermont, according to Plants of the World Online's range map. Added Vilas County, Wisconsin to atlas due to @natemartineau's finds there.
5.. Atlased Carex trisperma (130808) for Alberta, British Columbia, Connecticut, Delaware, Greenland, Illinois, Indiana, Labrador, Maine, Manitoba, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Newfoundland, Northwest Territorie, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward I., Québec, Rhode I., Saskatchewan, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin according to Plants of the World Online's range map. Left North Carolina and Virginia in the atlas (auto-atlased due to preexisting observations).
6.. Re-identified both misidentified observations in Virginia. Keeping Virginia in the atlas, as Weakley et al. (2023) maps it for the state.
7.. Created taxon split. Leaving as-is temporarily, minimum three days. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/130969
Important links:
List of observations now identified as Carex billingsii that are above species level (23 observations)
List of observations with Carex trisperma IDs outside of atlases (8 IDs)
List of observations with Carex trisperma IDs inside range of both atlases (1034 IDs)
I can't find a mention of a Carex trisperma/billingsii complex, closest I've found is mentions of a Glareosae complex (referring to the section). If you find a paper referencing such a complex, let me know.
I would highly recommend looking over the three important links (remember to re-review reviewed observations by selecting "Any" in the 'Identify' portal) to make sure the observations are satisfactorily identified prior to the split.
@rynxs Thank you! I’d like to leave this as is for a week or so - by then I should be able to check those links and post here when I’m done.
@natemartineau have you had a chance to look over the links?
Oh, yes I did. Forgot to mention it here. I just took another quick look at the first two links and I think everything's looking as good as one could reasonably hope
Committed. It will take some time to process, so it's probably best to come back and review the results tomorrow.
Okay, split seems to have finished. Remember to check your reviewed observations, if you decide to look through what's affected. There were ~1,369 affected IDs, visible here: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_identifications.html?is_change=true&observation_taxon_id=633201&per_page=200
To see affected IDs from these changes made by a specific user, append &user_id= followed by your username to the URL. Example: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_identifications.html?is_change=true&observation_taxon_id=633201&per_page=200&user_id=rynxs
I think another week to review these observations, and we should be good to swap var. trisperma into the species. If we do that now, it will add a bunch more IDs to the API list, which will make them harder to find. Please let me know when you're okay to proceed.
Given a month has passed, I'm going to assume everyone has had a chance to review observations, and I'm going to swap C. trisperma var. trisperma into C. trisperma now.
Excellent, and sorry for forgetting to add updates here.
Even though POWO says this is a subpecies/variety though many sources (GoBotany, Flora Novae Angliae, BONAP, etc) consider Carex trisperma and Carex billingsii to be distinct seperate species.
I'm not a plant expert by any means so I'd like some thoughts from people more knowledgable. @natemartineau @sedgequeen @elacroix-carignan ?