iNaturalist Vascular Plant Working Group's Journal

The common ex-species Mimulus aurantiacus that occurs in California and Baja California was split into several species of Diplacus under the new taxonomy. However, all of the many M. aurantiacus observations are now classified as D. aurantiacus when in reality most of them are one of the other species. See this post: https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/18612-observation-of-the-month-red-sticky-monkeyflower-diplacus-puniceus-phrymaceae as well as this paper: http://www.phytoneuron.net/PhytoN-sectDiplacus.pdf and other references linked in the post above. While some may know i am an unapologetic lumper when it comes to plant taxonomy, i don't have a problem with these species divisions, but am worried about how we deal with them.

I may have missed out on some of the procedure here, in terms of sensu latu vs sensu stricta but I'm concerned about cases where a large 'species' is split, in that i don't think we should just be lumping all on the observations into one species. Tossing them back to genus is very problematic as well, though. I am wondering... is there a way to move the previous M. aurantiacus into a separate place until the community can review them, either 'D. aurantiacus sensu latu' or else a grab bag subgenus? Otherwise... we've created a huge slug of wrong IDs, and because of how community ID works it's a huge slog requiring multiple people to get these swapped over to the correct ID, especially in cases of multiple IDs by no longer active users.

Thoughts? @loarie ? I am not sure who else is working on California taxonomy? @bouteloua I know this isn't your geographic area of expertise but you've been pretty involved with this process. Anyone else? @jdmore ? Is the policy to toss the splits into one species like this? Or are there just very few of them so it's a special case? Apologies if this was already addressed, i haven't had as much time to devote to this as I'd like...

iNaturalist current policy/guidelines currently inform us that genera that start with the letter P and ferns are not quite complete on Plants of the World Online, iNat's taxonomic authority for vascular plants. Here's one that fits both those categories.

Proposal:
Split Pleopeltis polypodiodes (sensu lato) into --->

1. P. polypodioides (sensu stricto)
2. P. michauxiana

3. P. ecklonii
   (see drafted taxon change)

This also includes first merging P. polypodioides subsp. ecklonii into P. ecklonii.
(see drafted taxon change)

The split is in accordance with the following references and per the discussion recently taking place on this flag:

• Plants of the World Online,
• Weakley 2018,
• Sprunt 2010 ("A revision of the Pleopeltis polypodioides species complex (Polypodiaceae)"),
• Smith 2014 ("Pleopeltis (Polypodiaceae), a redifinition of the genus and nomenclatural notes")

Pleopeltis polypodioides (sensu lato) is a widespread species, occurring in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and southern Africa. P. polypodioides (sensu stricto) in in the proposal here is a taxon with distribution in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, but excluding most of the United States--excepting extreme southern Florida--and southern Africa. See Sprunt 2010 above for more information about this split, which was proposed on the basis of limited overlapping ranges, phylogenetic, and morphological analyses; of the latter,

Even though no single morphological character can be used to distinguish among all taxa, a combination of characters can be used to identify each taxon. The most important characters include the presence or absence of scales on the adaxial surface, the location of the gland (or hydathode) on the laminar surface (Fig. 3.3), the presence and length of the sclerotic band in the rhizome scale (Fig. 3.5), leaf venation (Fig.3.4), and rhizome scale margin.

The resurrection fern covering the southern United States, eastern Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean has been elevated to species status as P. michauxiana and the southern African species is P. ecklonii. See the atlases below for rough ranges. Mainly, there are several hundred observations of resurrection ferns in the southern United States on iNaturalist that will be reassigned to P. michauxiana once this split is committed. Note that in Sprunt's 2010 dissertation there are several additional taxa raised to species level. At this time, this split only includes the elevation of P. michauxiana and P. ecklonii based on the published names and recognition in regional authorities as well as Plants of the World Online.

Review the output taxa atlases prepared by myself, @coreyjlange, and @choess. Identifications of P. polypodioides (sensu lato) will be automatically reassigned to one of the three output taxa based on these atlases. Where atlases overlap, identifications of P. polypodioides (sensu lato) will be reassigned to genus.

1. Atlas for P. polypodioides (sensu stricto)
2. Atlas for P. michauxiana
3. Atlas for P. ecklonii

The purpose of this journal post is to gain rough consensus on going through with the split despite the current policy. If there is anyone that disagrees with it, please do include the basis of the disagreement. See also previous discussions in which everyone seemed on board with accepting P. michauxiana, which was accepted by the then-iNaturalist regional authority Weakley 2015: a flag and taxon change from ~7 months ago.

Pleopeltis michauxiana in Mississippi, US

Tagging in some of the most active curators, members of this project, and top Pleopeltis and Polypodium observers and identifiers. My apologies if I missed tagging you here. If you're not tagged, please do include yourself in the discussion. :) @aaronliston @ajwright @alexiz @americorp_jeffrey @aztekium_tutor @berkshirenaturalist @bobby23 @bodofzt @borisb @boschniakia @brownsbay @charlie @choess @cmcheatle @coreyjlange @cosmiccat @crothfels @dgreenberger @duarte @efmer @erikamitchell @erwin_pteridophilos @graysquirrel @grnleaf @gwark @hfabian @hkmoths @jakob @jasonrgrant @jdmore @jonathan142 @jrebman @juancarloslopezdominguez @jwalewski @kai_schablewski @kevinhintsa @kokhuitan @kueda @leonperrie @loarie @mangum @marykeim @mateohernandezschmidt @maxkirsch @mikepatterson @milliebasden @monifern @mrfish33 @nathantaylor7583 @norm_shea @philjrenner @reallifeecology @rfoster @robertarcher397 @ryan84 @ryancooke @sea-kangaroo @sedge @stevejones @tiggrx @tonyrebelo @treichard @tsn @valerietheblonde @wdvanhem @whiteoak @wisel

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