Mammal Taxonomy Help Wanted (Again)

[bobby23]

Hello, everyone.

It has become apparent that not everyone is fully satisfied with relying on the IUCN Red List as our mammal authority (myself included). While the people involved with the IUCN do great work, their database is a conservation tool, not a taxonomic one. They sometimes lag behind taxonomic changes, or exclude taxa because they haven't provided conservation assessments for them yet (particularly among rodents and bats).

The American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) recently released their own taxonomic checklist on mammals - the Mammal Diversity Database (MDD). The MDD could potentially succeed the IUCN as our primary mammal authority for iNaturalist. However, in order to see if the MDD is a right fit for us, we need to map the differences between the IUCN and MDD. Carrie Seltzer has kindly provided us with this Google spreadsheet that will allow us to compare-and-contrast the databases. I have already mapped Afrosoricida, Artiodactyla (+ Cetacea), Carnivora, and few other orders - with the MDD's explicit deviations from the IUCN highlighted in a light yellow - but this process will go a lot faster if other people participated. The IUCN mammals are already on the spreadsheet - we just need the ones on MDD. You can download their full database here. It would be great if others could help out, even with just a few taxa!

Nate Upham - the lead on the ASM Mammal Diversity Database - has kindly offered to serve as a mediator who will help explain deviations between the two databases. If you have any questions about the MDD, please direct your them to him. Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, we can formally retire the IUCN and adopt the MDD.

To stay in the know on all future developments, please follow the iNaturalist Mammal Working Group (MWG). Thanks in advance!