I'm keen to make taxon swap(s) in next days on this USA harvestman. Basically one supposedly 'widespread' species is now two - the two new names being in another genus.

I.e. "Vonones sayi" -> Libitioides sayi /Libitioides albolineata

The change was effected in Medrano, Kury, and Mendes 2022, but i was waiting for this followup by Kury & Medrano 2023 to give detail: pdf here
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371733034_Once_upon_a_time_in_America_recognition_of_the_species_of_Libitioides_from_USA_with_comments_on_other_American_Cosmetidae_Opiliones_Laniatores

In that, Fig. 13 distribution map of species is likely be most informative for this task, but also see other maps for how markings vary by location.

So,
"Vonones sayi", 1549 observations.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/296763-Vonones-sayi

-> https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1494046-Libitioides-sayi
For most Western ones, Kansas, Oklahoma and much of Texas (perhaps except coast)

-> https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1494042-Libitioides-albolineata
For the Eastern ones, most other USA states, but also gulf Texas.

If any other curator is willing to help me do this the right way, then please input. I ask that others do not enact this - i'd like to practically learn to do this myself.
I think it's possible for to get help from other well informed identifiers to first manually kick across some, such as putting the gulf Texan "albolineata" into Libitioides albolineata, so then leaving Texas with just 'V. sayi' -> 'L. sayi',
But then to also say, on the border states of Arkansas and Missouri there is a some which i'd suggest should go to "albolineata" others to "sayi"

Link to read!
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/atlases

@adrik29
Hey - I only saw your swap just now on Libitioides, so i'd then tried asking @loarie if we can rework this other way i was intending. The change you made was essentially final part to get the cosmetids inline with WCO, but i had paused on this final issue as felt this step could be done effectively in a different way than a swap like that. I just had doubts on how to implement the other way - as an atlased split. I'd tried to ask for support from other curators with this flag, but that had fallen on deaf ears.

As we can see from your paper, perhaps about 80% of the iNaturalist observations formerly grouped under Vonones sayi should instead become the alternative Libitioides-albolineata, while only a fraction (something like 20%) should get direct recombination of Libitioides-sayi

Uh... sorry for the crazy swap -- I promise I won't spoil Stu's efforts, hahahahahahaha....

Glad you like it... Decades getting literature and reading it to make sense of all the crazy harvestmen taxonomy...

Hi all.

Taxonomy = the only scientific field that can make me smile and cry at same time!

@sclerobunus. Hello Shahan. Then glad you found this flag/thread so that informed decisions can be made. Well, thanks in large part to your efforts and voice on the observations of many USA ones, key issues about broader sorting are long over. I feel sure we are all inline to build upon that with informed refinement. In the current setup, It's just thankfully about the naming of (what seem a well defined grouping of observations), rather than e.g. arguing over pure chaos of 'assorted mis-identified Cosmetidae".

Let's then try to be clear, Shahan, is this what you would support as next step on iNaturalist?
"Vonones sayi" -> Libitioides sayi (Simon, 1879) [as senior to Libitioides albolineata (Sørensen, 1884)].
If so, then i could fall inline and with hindsight see Adriano's "crazy swap" as perhaps the way to go (i.e. keeping all with the single older name 'sayi' and just swapping genus, even though the current published status would be to have them going into two species instead). I'm hopeful for example that you've done a bunch of genetic data or such which leads you to different, yet unpublished conclusions. We've all of course regularly heard about cool unpublished findings that never see light of day in the end, but i'd personally trust your intent and perspective on the best direction here. My only concern then about making genus changed with them all still lumped together would be how the existing published evidence does really seem to show phenotypic east-west division, be that through adaptive divergence, incipient speciation etc, plus some problematic zones of phenotype overlap (i.e introgression, frequency dependant selection etc). If these were butterflies or such, there would be arguments over how many subspecies these are!

(Here, as a secondary point, Shahan can i just ask if you'd agree with "Vonones ornatus -> Libitioides ornata (Say, 1821) on here. Hopefully none of us are doubting as a distinct species from those above, and we all can agree needs kicking out of Vonones - as per Medrano, Kury, and Mendes 2022. Whether it's truely congeneric with the above after further revision is a different question, and if any indications, i'd say those absolutely must wait until published - i just wonder if some of that is on your mind as Libitioides ornata Roewer, 1912 is the type species of Libitioides).

Big thanks to @adrik29, your swap has got this rolling again, away from where i think we can all firmly agree, that these various ones need kicking out of "Vonones" on the system here.

Big thanks to @loarie for the reversion - and apologies if wasted your time if in hindsight. I see no harm to public end right now to have gone for this reversion back as the outdated "Vonones sayi" allowing this pause and mutual understanding here!

--
Perhaps it's now irrelevant:
For the Alases, i had these two, both still inactive so unrecognised by any swap/split at this moment. I'll just note the in the second one (for sayi), the taxon swap then reversal seems to have deselected several of the places i had added, notably the entire states of Kansas, Oklahoma, but also several of the counties of the others, presumably those were all places where some observation record was added then removed. Anyway that second atlas needs re-edit IF to be used .

For 'albolineata' - https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/95572
For 'sayi' now with several places removed - https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/93219

@sjl197 yes it took a huge effort to get sayi and ornatus observations identified correctly, and even more effort to make sure people understood the difference. Now it’s a well-oiled machine and I’ve only had to make a handful of corrections over the past few years.

Changing the US Vonones to Libitioides will be confusing for many people in the US, since Vonones is what they have known for a long time. I was always very hesitant to change the genus name here because of this, but maybe it is time to rip the bandage off. So yes, we can change them to L. sayi and L. ornatus. But do not add in albolineata. I’d even remove that name from the taxonomy here if possible to avoid confusion. I already see one observation that has been changed to L. albolineata and I’m hoping it doesn’t spread.

I agree there is a lot of phenotypic variation in sayi. I would say that what is happening is perhaps incipient speciation, but we are not at the point where they can be separated according to any species concept/criteria. Genetically they do mostly fall into separate groups, but there are clear albolineata in the sayi clade. Plus all the intermediate forms in the “hybrid zone”, and direct evidence they are able to reproduce.

@adrik29 What do you mean by the “numerous Vonones ornatus misidentifications”? Every ornatus observation has been confirmed by me. Genetic data supports two separate species. ornatus just has a much wider distribution that originally known, occurring much farther north along the coast.

I was also able to sequence a specimen from Cuba and it clearly falls deep within with the rest of sayi. I think it is a recent dispersal to Cuba and not a separate species.

Anyway, thank you both for being receptive to this. I know it’s unpublished data. I’ve unfortunately been sitting on this data set for three years now. The paper is near complete. Hopefully we will have it submitted this year. When I have it submitted, I’ll pass it along to both of you.

@adrik29 Ah, okay. That makes sense about ornatA in other places on the internet. I've stopped looking anywhere else, even bugguide (which I find clunky and annoying). I do remember seeing this issue there and I decided it wasn't my problem. I only have time to focus on iNat.

The sayi and albolineatus distinction is a hard one, to be honest. I want to agree with two species, but when you look at the actual data, no species concepts are technically supported. So we can talk about them as genetic lineages that mostly hold with morphology, but they are not reproductively isolated, or genetically distinct, etc. It may be that the pigmentation differences are due to differences in climate, ecology, or something west to east. It will be a Laniatores species with an unusually large distribution in the US.

Yes, taking from WCO-Lite works best. In the case of this Libitioides issue now, I think this was an unusual example only because there were two separate groups of us apparently working on it at the same time, which almost never happens in Opiliones! Because there are so many observations, I figured it would be best to talk about it now, instead of having tow change everything a second time, and causing more confusion here.

I think Cosmetidae in general could use with some modern genetic analyses. In my opinion it looks to be the most difficult family of Opiliones!

Hi guys, sorry i went quiet, life got unexpectedly hectic.

@sclerobunus -
I've just remade this proposed direct swap from Vonones sayi -> Libitioides sayi
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/132351
Please just press the 'Commit' button there when you're ready to get about 1500 notifications!
If it's still not committed in about a week, i'll aim to execute it.

I've just made the swap for V.ornatus -> L. ornata, and to limit use of L. albolineata that's now inactivated