Taxonomic Merge 59718
(Committed on 2019-07-16)
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Comments
Thanks. I wrote a note to Bobby about this a few minutes ago. All of those subgenera are currently accepted by MolluscaBase as "alternate representations", so I think they should be left in place.
Arion has 94 very varied species, but it seems to me that they do fall quite neatly into those subgenera, and if you can't ID an Arion slug to species, it helps to be able to ID to subgenus rather than just leaving them all as one great mass of undifferentiated Arion.
@huzi0131 -- what do you think?
I will share here what I told Susan.
"I did subsume the Arion subgenera, but that was suppose to be temporary. MolluscaBase's terrestrial gastropod taxonomy and I just wanted to make sure our species list matched their's. It was easier for me to do this without the subgenera because they are not displayed on the species list for Arion (http://www.molluscabase.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=818149). But I know the subgenera are accepted and I originally was going to reinstate them. I just got preoccupied with other obligations for my iNat internship. Sorry about that! I will reinstate them today."
It has occurred to me how careless I was in doing this because I am sure many Arion observations were ID'd to subgenus, and Arion has so many observations underneath it... I am sorry @susanhewitt (and all other gastropod identifiers) for undoing so much work. I will be more careful and considerate going forward.
There are currently only a very few of us here on iNat who try to ID land slugs.
ID-ing land slugs from photos is in many cases very difficult, because although a few species are simple to ID, for many species of slugs, to ID them correctly we need detailed photos, and from several angles, including sometimes even a shot of the sole of the foot. And the observer often does not provide us with those photos, because they don't understand that they are necessary.
But anyway, once the Arion subgenera are up and running again I can look at the identifications I made over the days since you did the Merge and try to fix them. I will have to explain to people that the subgenera are back in the database.
It would be good if iNat had a "Work in Progress" label that could be attached to stuff like this.
Oh and can you drop me a line to let me know when the subgenera are working again?
Fixed! (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54582-Arion)
EDIT: I will pass along the "Work in Progress" suggestion. I think some sort of indicator that a portion of the tree is under construction would be helpful.
This change made all the IDs I suggested before fall back to the genus level. Fortunately, Have now reverted to the previous classification unit. Now I have to restore the ID one by one.
I just noticed that all of my Arion observations had gone back to genus level. I don't think I made a ton of subgenus identifications for other people but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort to refind the ones I did do.
I'm sorry that happened, @upupa-epops. At least the subgenera have been restored now.
Yes, thank you. It didn't take too long to fix mine.
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/387017
not sure why, @susanhewitt but here's the taxon change