"endemic in North America"?

[Charlie Hohn]

Someone tagged a bunch of things as 'endemic in North America'. Is something on that broad of a scale even considered 'endemic'? Most plant species and probably also most animal species are 'endemic' to one continent, and all to Earth as far as we know. I think it waters down the value of the little endemic flag to apply it to anything larger than a state, provence, or small country. Is it possible to wipe the 'endemic' tags from the continent places or at least make them not display?

[tony rebelo]

Agreed.  Some appeared on Africa today as well.  Looks weird having something endemic to the continent.  We have 12 000 endemic plants to South Africa - might as well make all the plants endemic then: only handful from southern Africa are not endemic to Africa (Phragmites, Dodonaea, etc. ), unless they are invasive aliens.

Please: country or less ....

[Tony Iwane]

Hey guys, can you provide some examples of these taxa? Maybe we can track down what happened here...

Tony

[Upupa epops]

American Robin is endemic to North America, so there is a star besides its name: http://inaturalist.ca/observations/4883769

[paloma]

Anna's Hummingbird--same https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8355902

[paloma]

Red-shouldered Hawk--same https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8355898

On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 7:59:02 PM UTC-8, Tony Iwane wrote:

[paloma]

Cooper's Hawk--same https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8305905

On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 7:59:02 PM UTC-8, Tony Iwane wrote:

[Tony Iwane]

OK. That's enough. Thanks.

[Charlie Hohn]

There are a bunch of plants too. Like eastern white pine iirc, which has a huge range

[Ian Toal]

Technically the term is correct if the organism is confined to NA or wherever, but it is an odd way to use it (and the robin goes down into Central America so in that case at least it's not correct). It's mostly commonly associated with diseases, though, along with pandemic and epidemic. 

[Charlie Hohn]

i've never heard the term referring to diseases, it's a common word in ecology, but it is usually applied to a smaller area such as one mountain range or ecoregion (endemic to California, new England, the Santa Monica Mountains, whatever). The word is nonsensical when applied to a continent.

[Ian Toal]

That's interesting! I did not formally take ecology, but did do parasitology and tropical diseases (followed up by a long spell in health). A disease like Chagas Disease is endemic to parts of South America, but it will never become an epidemic or a pandemic (insect host restrictions). The flu is endemic to SE Asia, occasionally it becomes an epidemic in some parts of the world, and even more rare is when it becomes a pandemic and affects most of the globe. Odd how different disciplines use the same words, but they connote different things. And I agree that using endemic for a whole continent is nonsensical. 

[Charlie Hohn]

Totally! I think it's more a lack of my exposure to that discipline than anything, but interesting because I hear epidemic and pandemic all the time

[AfriBats]

Hi everyone, agree that highlighting iNat observations as being endemic to a continent  is not very informative. In biogeography and ecology, the terms "endemism" and "endemic" only make sense with reference to a specific area, which can be anything from a single mountain, a continent or even larger areas. Nearly all life is endemic to our earth (with the arguable exception of humans and tardigrades).

Wiki has useful articles on the use in ecology and epidemiology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_%28epidemiology%29

Cheers, Jakob

[Scott Loarie]

I don't have an opinion about marking species endemic to continents,
but I personally value being able to mark species as endemic to
countries

Scott

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[AfriBats]

Oh, no offence to any extraterrestrial life intended. Which would be endemic to the respective planet and galaxy.

[James Bailey]

I agree with restricting endemism "stars" to country level or lower.

[Charlie Hohn]

i guess there might be tracking-related reasons to saying white pine is endemic to North America (so anywhere else it pops up as introduced for instance) but mostly i don't want the star popping up. It makes it impossible to tell when something is actually a neat endemic to a smaller area, such as California.

[tony rebelo]

There is an error involved here.  Terms such as "alien", "indigenous" and "endemic" are meaningless on their own.  They are only valid when the "to x" is specified.   This could be solved by including with the star the area under consideration - such as * North America  or ! Africa - 

Then there will not be issues with endemism such as * Western Cape or * Cape Town or * Cape Peninsula.   

Note though that aliens are a little more complicated.   So we have lots of cases of the same species being * WC and ! WC (i.e. Endemic to the Western Cape and Alien in the Western Cape: such as the Blue Sugarbush which is endemic to the Cape Flora, but an alien invasive in the Cape Peninsula portion of the Cape Flora.

What happens when the species occurs (either in captivity or wild) outside of its range?  Does the * still display - I presume not?  (although for Pinus radiata the IUCN Red List status of "Endangered" still displays in southern Africa even though these are either plantation trees or else alien invasives into Fynbos.- although at least the localities are not hidden).

Ta

T

[Charlie Hohn]

If you hover the cursor over the star it tells you what it is endemic to. Though yeah there are other issues which complicate things for sure.

[Alison Sheehey]

Quick question, does the endemism at the continent, country, or other large region cause the smaller regions to no longer be recognized. For instance, Mimulus shevockii is endemic to an extremely small area, I don't know that it is extant anywhere else via planting. Sure would hate to lose small populations of individual species to magna endemic lumping.
Ali

[bouteloua]

Taxa usually have multiple "establishment means" statuses. You can view them all at the taxon page>status tab.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/78065-Mimulus-shevockii

Listed as endemic to Kern Cty, California, Sierra Nevada, and the US.

So if I posted a Mimulus shevockii in Illinois it would show up as endemic in the US, and if you posted one in Kern County, it would show up as endemic in Kern County.

cassi

[Ian Toal]

My sense from reading all this is that perhaps endemic is too broad a word. I've also learned that it is an ecological term as well as an epidemiological term. Perhaps species found in small areas could be classified as "restricted" to one area, where something like a robin would be endemic to NA. Not being an ecologist, I don't know if there are 'finer' terms within the endemic umbrella.

On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 10:42:48 AM UTC-6, Alison Sheehey wrote:

[Charlie Hohn]

In ecology it's really the other way around. Endemic is a well-used and well understood (within the community) word used to refer to species with very small ranges. I've never seen it applied to anywhere bigger than say, California, USA or New Zealand. MAYBE Australia since it's got so many unique things but that's kind of pushing it. Never North America, Africa, etc. 'Restricted to' could work for continents without issues, though of course things are also naturalized outside their natural range. As far as I know if an endemic becomes invasive somewhere else it is still considered endemic to its original range...

[tony rebelo]

The term "endemic" is well defined both within the ecological community and the medical community.  Unfortunately, laymen are mostly exposed to the medical use, such as Malaria being "endemic" to tropical Africa.  Every traveller has heard the medical term, but only keen biologists and conservationists are well versed with the ecological term.

"Restricted" unfortunately has other connotations, including legal ones.  So dangerous predators and large mammals have to be "restricted" to (itso: contained, fenced, prevented from escaping)  designated game farms or camps.   In fact, the common parlance associates 'restricted' far more with prevention and prohibition and containment than a natural phenomenon such as the unconstrained natural range of an organism.

[Ian Toal]

An interesting thing happened. I ID'd  a Canada Goose, and someone confirmed it. The page is now marked as "endemic" even though the Canada goose is found in Europe now. http://inaturalist.ca/observations/9092879 

Ian

[tony rebelo]

"in Europe now": is that a natural range extension, or is it a human translocation?

If it is a human assisted movement, then the species is still considered "Endemic" to its natural range.

if it is an expansion due to climate or a natural founder population, then it would no longer be Endemic to N Am, but its Endemic to (N Am + Europe): i.e. no longer a N Am endemic.

[Chris Cheatle]

Canada Goose is in between the 2. Natural migration in low numbers does occur to Europe, as proven by the recovery of banded birds, and to extreme northeast Asia. However the large numbers are human introduction driven. So I don't know which category that makes it.

[tony rebelo]

We use "near endemic" in such cases.   We have lots of cases in the Cape Flora of plant species where 95% of the populations, or the individuals, or the extent occur(s) in one area with outliers elsewhere, often inexplicably 'far' (for known dispersal agents) away.  Especially as one gets to smaller and smaller areas, one finds odd outliers in the near-endemics which mess up the stats.

( A similar case is "extinct".  it takes one individual to prevent a species from being labelled extinct, when in reality the species has been effectively extinct in the wild for decades as this survivor/clone/unviable population hangs on to existence as "the living dead": Zombie species!. )