Flag for Taxon: Limonia triocellata
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| steve432king | Limonia triocellata |
Taxon name is Metalimnobia triocellata |
Aug. 12, 2023 01:07:31 +0000 | borisb |
Comments
Suspect this should be done. But BugGuide still has it as Limonia triocellata. Although we only rely on them for N. American species, I suspect that we might get objections to the change. Thoughts on the matter @stephenluk @treegrow @ogrady @edanko @aispinsects ?
INaturalist is a world wide depository of what is being seen, unlike BugGuide which is just the USA, therefor iNaturalist should use the same taxons that Crane flies of the World and Catalog of Life use so we don't have species under two different names as has now been allowed to happen.
I agree. But an awful lot of people are attached to BugGuide, and I want to solicit their input.
The Curator Guide says " 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 or Illustrated Lists of American Butterflies (North and South America). 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. (See this forum post for taxonomic resources for additional insect groups.)"
The forum post reference above includes
Ants (Formicidae): AntWeb
Dragonflies and Damselflies (Odonata): The World Odonata List (WOL) as a global reference with explicit deviations described here. This authority applies to all Odonate taxa between class and subspecies level.
Grasshoppers, Crickets, and Katydids (Orthoptera): Orthoptera Species File Online
Mantises (Mantodea): Mantodea Species File Online. @mantodea is a taxon curator for this group.
Stick Insects (Phasmida): Phasmida Species File Online. @loarie is a taxon curator for this group."
The forum post https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxonomic-resources-for-insects-wiki/11584 does list Crane Flies of the World, but again, people in N. America are attached to BugGuide, thus my outreach to other users on the matter. We're in sort of uncharted territory.
You are so wrong! "Crane flies of the World" is the official site for information on crane flies and has been in existence for a long time. "Catalog of Life has" the same identical taxon names. Please get the Curator up to date with what is going on in the world regarding Crane flies. One of the better authorities is the Crane fly scientist and researcher Jon Gelhaus, who is also on iNaturalist, so I would suggest you contact him.
"Official" doesn't mean that it has automatic acceptance on iNaturalist. We make decisions as a community here, and if you would like to have Crane Flies of the World accepted as a taxon reference, you are welcome to make the case here, with the assistance of whatever experts you may be able to muster, and to the staff by contacting help@inaturalist.org.
Please refrain from making disparaging comments about curators.
Chipping in a few observations and thoughts, without claiming expertise in tipulomorphs (as a dipterist I am only keenly interested in them):
Most of the BugGuide pages for limoniids have not been updated in a long time and some of the taxonomy is likely to be out-of-date.
The BugGuide page for Limonia does acknowledge the genus status for several of its subgenera as recognized by the European classification: https://bugguide.net/node/view/24823
A quick literature search pertaining to the subject taxon reveals that much of the recent revisionary work for Metalimnobia in the Palaearctic and Oriental realms at least, also recognize it at genus level. As does the leading North American periodical on Diptera, Fly Times, where mentioned in its issues going back at least ten years.
I am uncertain as to what is the overall community consensus on this although it seems to lean towards Metalimnobia as a genus. Among North American authorities, Chen Young is no longer active but Jon Gelhaus is so I agree it is best if he is consulted on this.
@jongelhaus Jon Gelhaus
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/115734
It would be great to have your insights about the direction of curation for the nomenclature here, in particular in relation to the specific issues mentioned above.
Else - Who is able and willing to try to co-ordinate and or some push to update agreement on the scheme used by Bugguide?
Since I have been flagged on this, I will weigh in with my thoughts. The Catalogue of the Craneflies of the World (CCW) https://ccw.naturalis.nl/ is the world authority catalog for Tipuloidea and all crane fly researchers I am familiar with use it regularly and value you its accuracy, resources (such as available literature online), and ability to stay up to date with the taxonomic literature (papers published are posted there within a few days of being received by the cataloger, Pjotr Osoterbroek). Oosterbroek himself is one of the world taxonomic authorities on crane flies and has a long distinguished set of research publications on crane flies so is an ideal person to be the lead on this effort. The CCW adopts the 4 family approach to crane flies, and so many of the formerly larger genera like Limonia have had subgenera elevated to generic rank. Metalimnobia is a prime example. Perhaps the delay in adopting it by Bugguide and iNaturalist is that it necessitates changes in the family and generic status of many taxa. It doesnt require expertise or decisions to do the transition as one would just follow the CCW. Hope my thoughts help.
Since there hasn't been any discussion on this flag for a while and I recently created a similar flag, I wanted to follow up and see if some consensus could be reached.
From my understanding of staff comments under the forum post listed by @kitty12 above, there should be a flag created for Tipuloidea proposing CCW be the taxonomic authority and, if there is general agreement, a forum post linking the flag thread should be made to get it added to the official list of taxonomic authorities. I would be happy to create the flag for Tipuloidea unless someone else wants to do so instead.
For what it's worth, I agree that CCW should be the authority for names for all the reasons listed by others above. BugGuide often lags in implementing taxonomic changes, particularly when publications detailing the changes are difficult to access online. On iNaturalist, several species have already been duplicated for Limonia and their current (formerly subgeneric) genera (e.g. Rhipidia domestica|Limonia domestica; R. atomaria|L. atomaria; R. fidelis|L. fidelis). Moving these species to their new genera would still make them searchable under their Limonia counterparts. The alternative would be incredibly convoluted, as American species would be retained under Limonia, while species from other parts of the world would be sorted into their currently accepted genera.
@okbirdman Have you contacted BugGuide about these discrepancies?
I haven't. I refer to BugGuide frequently for ID help, but I am not a regular contributor. I am not intimately familiar with the process for proposing changes to BugGuide taxonomy, but from reading BugGuide forum posts, it appears that BugGuide itself does not follow particular taxonomic authorities, e.g.:
Editors follow their preferred taxonomy and respond as they see fit to the literature and whatever feedback they receive from editors and other contributors.
One forum post suggests a number of taxonomic references for BugGuide editors to use, but it does not list CCW, and for the overall reference for Diptera it lists Systema Dipterorum, which is itself quite outdated.
The current taxon name in Catalog of Life and Catalog of Craneflies is Metalimnobia triocellata, so please make the update