Flag for Taxon: Plains Longear Sunfish (Lepomis aquilensis)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| operculum_ben | prickly_sculpin | Plains Longear Sunfish (Lepomis aquilensis) |
a bunch of "Longear sunfish" observations have been moved to Genus |
Apr. 9, 2024 04:27:11 +0000 | Not Resolved |
Comments
Yes, what you ask is possible on the curation end. I would agree megalotis should go through a split to correct IDs aquilensis since a formal split didnt take place when aquilensis was added. Originally it was added before ECoF accepted it if i recall correctly. Then ECoF accepted it but a taxon split never actually took place. Also now that Lepomis solis, has been accepted by ECoF just recently it should be added to iNat and split from megalotis. Would be able to include it in the same split you are asking for.
After seeing the mess that salmoides/nigricans is in the intergrade zone, it seems like there should probably be a Lepomis megalotis complex added that way in the areas of confusion for the various longear due to overlapping ranges or intergrades there would be the option to ID to complex if needed. This would be same as the Etheostoma spectabile complex that is used on iNat. I could be wrong with that idea and open to the various options, I just don't like seeing two species in a complex causing an ID to get bumped to genus and lost among many observations from that genus that are not very similar species
Everything above sounds good and reasonable to me @riverrat09 as an additional question would that split/swap make longear sunfish x northern sunfish hybrids swap into the complex as well? I'm on the side of assigning those to a longear complex after the largemouth thing.
Can you provide a link to the split you mention?
https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/71/2/273/6263850
It has been adopted by COF
I noticed many longear sunfish (L. megalotis) observations, especially in Texas, have been pushed back to Genus ever since this taxon was split. Is there a curation action to make all L. megalotis observations within the known range of L. aquilensis switch over to the correct scientific name? There's at least 1,500 observations that would benefit from this sort of swap, if it is possible on the iNaturalist curation end.
I'm assuming you could use the range map presented in the publication (https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/71/2/273/6263850) to add the species range if its not available elsewhere.