Taxonomic Swap 139735
(Committed on 2024-02-24)
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Comments
'not all species in Hirpicium went to Gorteria!'
That's true, but that's not what I said and that's not what this taxon change means.
The type species of Hirpicium belongs to Gorteria, so the genus is a synonym of Gorteria: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:9376-1
Strictly speaking, it is not correct to enter Hirpicum as a synonym of the other genera. In the paper and on POWO Hirpicium is therefore only given as a synonym of Gorteria.
The individual species of the former paraphyletic genus Hirpicium are of course synonyms of species that belong to different genera.
However, all of the species I have worked on can be found under all their synonyms.
Of course, for practical reasons on iNaturalist we could also add the name Hirpicium as a synonym of Berkheyopsis and Roessleria.
However, if you do this for every genus then some large genera like Senecio would soon be synonyms of dozens of other genera that were separated from them at some point. If you then entered the Senecio example into iNaturalist, dozens of different genera would be suggested just because individual former Senecio species were once counted as belonging to this genus.
I think we should keep it simple and not cause any additional confusion.
But this is causing additional confusion.
Taxonomy is one thing, but reality is another.
SO:
On iNaturalist people made generic IDs to Hirpicium, when they could not identify between species that are now in Berkheyopsis or Roessleria or Gorteria.
So this swap - while taxonomically perfect - has now incorrectly dumped these generic IDs into Gorteria.
Instead the change should have moved these observations to the Subtribe Gorteriinae
So despite the taxonomy, the correct thing to have done on iNaturalist is either of:
(1)
Add the synonym to Gorteria manually.
Make this a swap of Hirpicium to Subtribe Gorteriinae
OR
(2)
Make this a swap of Hirpicium to Berkheyopsis and Roessleria and Gorteria.
Delete the synonyms of Hirpicium under Berkheyopsis and Roessleria (if I was a purist)
Taking your Senecio example
large genera like Senecio would soon be synonyms of dozens of other genera that were separated from them at some point
That is correct it should be. All genera that used to be called Senecio historically are de facto synonyms pro parte of Senecio.
However putting them all on iNaturalist will be pointless, except in two cases:
.* The case above where confusion may arise because of splits (e.g. new genera carved out of Senecio).
.* Where there are still fieldguides where these species in these new genera are to be found under the original genus (e.g. Senecio).
However, Note: you would in these cases never entertain the option of moving the entire genus of observations at generic rank into the subtribe/family. The collateral damage would be far too large.
But it might be the better option where a genus has been split, and the original genus is now small, with rare species, and the new genera are much larger and contain common species, relatively well represented on iNaturalist. Then moving the identifications at generic level to subtribe/family may make perfect sense.
[We even had a case where it made sense to move all the generic IDs from the original genus, into one of the new genera, because most of the species and almost all of the observations on iNat where for that new genus - simply the strict taxonomic approach would require individually posting 420 new IDs versus a simple pragmatic swap which made 422 automatic swaps - with 2 "retractions"].
It is simply that taxonomy and curation are not the same thing. Curation requires careful interpretation of the taxonomy to be efficient.
But no - please excuse me if I refrain from discussing this in the forums: curators advocating strict taxonomy are intractable
What about species in Berkheyopsis and Roessleria? - not all species in Hirpicium went to Gorteria!