Taxonomic Swap 25982 (Committed on 2017-10-24)

Seems to be an oversight - this subspecies Ovis orientalis aries is already treated as a distinct species on the site (as the Domestic Sheep Ovis aries) and has been for a longtime. This follows suite with iNat's primary mammal reference, the IUCN Red List, which explicitly states:

"The Domestic Sheep and its wild ancestor the Urial are treated here as separate species, called Ovis aries and Ovis orientalis respectively. These taxa are sometimes considered to be conspecific, in which case the name Ovis orientalis has generally been used to refer to the wild species and its domesticated form, although some authors use the name Ovis aries for both the wild species and its domestic descendants." (http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/15739/0)

There are actual several dichotomies within the genus Ovis on iNat, such as having the Mouflon treated as a a subspecies of Domestic Sheep, instead of a subspecies of Urial.

IUCN Red List: Ovis orientalis (Citation)
Yes
Added by bobby23 on October 25, 2017 01:53 AM | Committed by bobby23 on October 24, 2017
replaced with

Comments

Hi Bobby, that's a complicated issue - I'm aware that there is a taxonomy sheep / mouflon / urial mess floating around on iNat, but this partly reflects the ambiguous taxonomic status and affiliation of some of the members of this group. @lancillotto wanted to look into that, and come up with a solution, so I hope he'll chime in here.

Posted by jakob over 6 years ago

I probably should have waited a bit before commuting this taxon change instead of committing to it. In the future I will be more precautious. That being said, I am aware of some of the ambiguity among Ovis. It reminds me of Bos. I just assumed iNaturalist kept domestic organisms separate from their wild predecessors for organizational purposes, similar to the IUCN (ex. keeping Canis familiaris separate from Canis lupus, Equus caballus from Equus ferus.

Posted by bobby23 over 6 years ago

We're currently discussing the way forward regarding a mammal taxonomy for iNat. Until then, please tag us into the drafts (as you've done before). But keep up the good work, this is not meant to discourage you!

Posted by jakob over 6 years ago

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments