Flag for Taxon: Stone Kopieva (Bulbine mesembryanthoides)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| detlef | loarie | Stone Kopieva (Bulbine mesembryanthoides) |
This is the correct name |
Jul. 19, 2023 13:51:08 +0000 | wildskyflower |
Fixed |
Comments
POWO accepts no infraspecifics and does not even have the names, do you have a source for them? Also please merge discussion on the subspecies flags into just this one because all swaps must happen at the same time:
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/626545
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/626546
@tonyrebelo do you know anything about this it looks like you did the swap in the first place
@wildskyflower
Thank you for your message. I am not quite sure what you mean. The reactivation of the infraspecific name "mesembryanthoides" is a consequence of the swap back to the original epithet. I have given the reason for this above. Or am I mistaken?
I agree your spelling of "mesembryanthoides" is the one accepted by POWO. I am asking where "namaquensis" comes from.
Yes, we made the swap before POWO changed its mind and reverted to the original "variant"
Note well!! POWO is not the authority for subspecies and variety names. Do not use it to make any decisions based on subspecific taxa ever!
Both subspecies are valid.
If you need to check subspecies, then for southern Africa please use: http://posa.sanbi.org/sanbi/Explore
https://powo.science.kew.org/about
"Consequently, not all names in the WCVP database can currently be shown, in particular Old World infraspecific names from before 1971 are largely missing but we are working with IPNI to add the hundreds of thousands of missing names"
Ok I moved the species and subspecies back and created taxon framework deviations for the subspecies. Thanks for the link. I wouldn't ever inactivate a name that wasn't in POWO without further investigation. I think the situation is a little different from if they are in POWO but listed as synonymized.
Thank you, Tony and Matthew.
Heavens - we have thousands of subspecies not on POWO: if deviations are needed or all, curators will be doing nothing else until 2025.
The following question probably doesn't fit here, but I'll ask it anyway: :-)
What is actually the criterion for POSA, when intraspecifics are accepted and when they are not? Who decides? That is not clear to me. In this database, for example, all varieties of Euphorbia polygona are synonymised with the typical species. On the other hand, according to the online databases for scientific taxonomic names WCVP, IPNI, POWO and WFO, varieties of the species are accepted. This also applies to the recently published 2nd edition of Eggli and Nyffeler's book on Dicotyledons: Rosids.
Depends on your area. Our names are all loaded from BODATSA (2017 version), and their decisions at the time (there is a national committee overseeing names, esp. in some highly contested groups (Haworthia, Euhphorbia, Conophytum, etc.) where there is much pingponging between splitters and (yes - other) splitters).
POWO is not up to date with infraspecific names, so it cannot be used as a reference. So we tend to use BODATSA for southern Africa. But any changes since 2017 will only be checked against BODATSA if they are flagged on iNaturalist - we dont routinely check names like iNat does with POWO at species level. POWO is also mostly concerned with typification, and synonymy is not quite as up to date, but with conflicts between POWO and BODATSA at the species level, we usually notify both and have the heads thrash out the details one way or the other. POWO does not have the committee, so they tend to be latest literature (often with quite a lag for southern African local journals), whereas BODATSA is far faster with local content (and slower with international large-scale revisions, especially of alien species) and has the local committee decision, but they only differ in less than 0.5% of cases.
There is also a difference of opinion. Some authors list subspecies under the species without formally synonymizing it, but some authorities regard these as synonyms, when often it is not clear that this was actually intended. (and some taxonomists genuinely dismiss subspecies as variation and ignore them, but list them as published names under the species, without any reasons or justification, beyond the species being geographically variable). This means that treatment in different groups is often widely divergent, with some treatments typifying local variation, and others dismissing them.
At this stage for infraspecifics in southern Africa we disregard POWO and use BODATSA. http://posa.sanbi.org/sanbi/Explore
Thank you very much for your time and your detailed explanation, Tony.
Be careful: IPNI is only concerned with the validity of the name (i.e. is there a type, is there a description (& is it in Latin before), is the author correct,etc.), not if it is current or a synonym.
Also, it is often corrected to grammatical Latin, and some of those changes are not published anywhere, or even noted (they are getting better). A few names declared invalid are still in use and no one knows that KEW has declared them to be wrong.
Admittedly there are probably on a few handfuls of these.
Well you aren't wrong about adding infraspecific taxon framework relationships being a significant amount of work by I think the hope is we will add them eventually. Also lots of the ones without relationships are actual mistakes like homotypic synonyms with species that we also already have, or taxa have since been elevated to full species. Many or most of the missing taxon framework relationships are not African but it is good to know the source to use for the ones that are.
According to the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), the epithet cannot be corrected to "mesembryanthemoides" as Mesembryanthus is a variant spelling of Mesembryanthemum (see https://www.ipni.org/n/532194-1).