subspecies common names

[Jane Widness]

I have a question sort of related to the previous discussion about subspecies common names, but with the reverse issue.  That is, the question there was about using a species common name for a subspecies, and I have a question about using a subspecies name as a species common name.  (If this has also already been discussed, please point me to the discussion!)

The curator guide says "try to add names at the taxonomic level where they describe all members of that taxon and only members of that taxon", but I've found places where the common name for a subspecies is added at the species level.  For example, Cercopithecus ascanius has two English common names (Schmidt's Guenon and Schmidt's Red-tailed Monkey) which really belong to the subspecies Cercopithecus ascanius schmidti.  In some cases, there are subspecies that are not in the iNat database that have their subspecies common names added at the species level (like Black-cheeked White-nosed Monkey, which belongs to the iNat-absent C.a. ascanius).

What's the appropriate action here?  Should all common names that are particular to a subspecies (even when that subspecies isn't in iNat) get removed from the species level?

[Jane Widness]

Since it seems like no one has strong preferences here, I'm going to remove common names for subspecies that are applied at the species level, but for now I'll only do it for subspecies that iNat has in its database.  In this example, that means removing Schmidt's and leaving Black-cheeked White-nosed.  I'll make sure the common names I remove are listed at the subspecies level, so here I'll add the Schimdt's common names to C. a. schmidti.

[bouteloua]

If there are other recognized subspecies on iNat, the nominotypical one should probably be too. Otherwise, makes sense to me!

cassi

[Charlie Hohn]

What i have done in the past is attach the word 'nominate' to the nominate subspecies. We definitely don't want the name to be the same as the species because otherwise people accidentally identify it to subspecies without meaning to.But if we want to do something other than add 'nominate' i'm fine with that

[Jane Widness]

I understand that's a problem for other species, but the nominate subspecies here has another common name, so I put that in.

Somewhat unrelated, does anyone know why Cercopithecus ascanius schmidti is listed as a crossed-out scientific name for Decticus verrucivorus crassus?  Can/should that be removed?

[Riviera S]

We have many users that rely on common names and they often select the wrong taxon when this occurs.

For instance:

California buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum

California buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum fasciculatum

I would recommend removing common names from most subspecies, as they should only be selected by users that read the scientific names. The only case where a subspecies deserves a common name is when that taxon is well recognized, obviously different, or is unlikely to be confused. For instance, the yellow-rumped warbler, as follows:

Yellow-rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata

Myrtle warbler, Setophaga coronata coronata

Audubon's warbler, Setophaga coronata auduboni

In the case of the plant, there is not really a reason to give the subspecies a common name, not even "nominate California buckwheat", in my opinion. I think I started the "nominate" trend so that may be my fault, but looking back I don't think I agree they (plants in this case) need names.

[cassi saari]

Many infraspecific plant taxa have common names that should continue to be represented on iNaturalist... I personally can't support removing valid, specific, in-use common names from iNaturalist regardless of whether or not those names are used for multiple taxa.

As you say, the scientific name is displayed directly next to the common name, and should be read prior to selection. If a user clicks/chooses the incorrect one, a misclick should be treated like any other misidentification on iNat. In my experience, for taxa with the same name, the species level taxon always appears above the infraspecific taxon in the drop-down, so it's hard for me to understand how these misidentifications/misclicks would occur.

Though specifically, I'm not seeing any issue with Eriogonum fasciculatum (see attached).

cassi

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[Charlie Hohn]

hmm, i'm not sure why the mistakes occur either but i see them often including among veteran long time users. The other issue with newbies is they just don't know.  They may know something is California buckwheat but they don't know Eriogonum fasciculatum v fasciculatum from any of the other subspecies. Often they don't even know they chose the subspecies (sometimes they don't even know what a subspecies is). so yeah i don't see any reason to have duplicate names on the subspecies. I don't feel strongly about the nominate tag versus not having a common name, but i do feel pretty strongly that we should not have duplicate common names between a species and one of its subspecies. I see a lot of downsides and i don't see any upsides. are there some I am missing? It seems a pretty niche audience who both understands subspecies enough to want the common name there, but doesn't understand them enough to not be able to get by with just the scientific name for subspecies.  Or we could just not use subspecies at all, but i'm sure that would make some people mad.  I don't care for them on iNat as in my observation they are often just identified by location without looking at the trivial things that tell them apart, so it's just a circular case of 'Coastal California Buckwheat occurs in Ventura County, because all the buckwheats we enter in Ventura County we call Coastal California Buckwheat' or whatever. but i will concede they do have value for conservation of genetic diversity within a species, if they are actually identified properly.

( i use CA buckwheat as an example but i already removed the offending common name, thus there not being a problem :)  )

cassi

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[Riviera S]

Hi Cassi,

I agree if there is reason to provide a common name for a subspecies. In many cases there is not, I believe...for instance, a plant species with 3 subspecies that are nearly identical, or have no characters that need representing in a common name. I would also argue against [new adjective] + [original common name] combinations. For instance, "coastal woolly California buckwheat". If there is no way to give it a unique name, there shouldn't be one forced. But that might just be me. Those then contribute to Charlie's example where users know a common name and select the wrong one. 

Common names should be reserved for clearly distinct subspecies and preferably avoid confusion with the base taxon name, in my opinion. If users are confused by common names and select the wrong taxon then that defeats the point of adding the common names to begin with, I think...

cassi

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[Riviera S]

What I am happy with is an alternative is where the necessary adjective for the subspecies is given in parenthesis, as so:

(note these are fictional examples)

California buckwheat - Eriogonum fasciculatum

California buckwheat (coastal) - Eriogonum fasciculatum marinus

Northern flycatcher - Empidonax borealis

Northern flycatcher (island) - Empidonax borealis nesiotica

This would make it clear that it is a modification of the main species taxon, right?

[Charlie Hohn]

Yeah, I think we definitely need to standardize it, anything like that is fine, California buckwheat (subspecies) even. I am pretty sure iNat admin was on board with the idea that we shouldn't have duplicate subspecies names, though it is possible i am just remembering wrong. And maybe there is some backside programming way to deal with it too. 

On an organization note about the board in general, this board needs some sort of way of finalizing these discussions, at least in the short term.  Like, have admin or someone come in and stamp it as the current methodology (and if people want to debate it that's fine but we use whatever until it changes again).  Not sure how that would work though. 

[tony rebelo]

Sorry Common names are names in use.  Who gives anyone the right to decide that I am using the "wrong" common name, or that I should not be using a some other  common name for a subspecies - or  that I am not allowed to use common names for subspecies?

The tail is wagging the dog!

[Riviera S]

Tony, in the name of the site's best interest, we have to pick a side and go with it. Your argument would be great if there was already consistency. There isn't, so we have to find a compromise that suits all groups.

And also, if a name is already well-founded for a subspecies, there is no need to remove it...we are just talking about subspecies with no real common name or a "forced" one that is not used anywhere.

James

[tony rebelo]

if only it were so simple.  So if only one subspecies occurs in a country, does their common name refer to the species or the subspecies?  Especially if it is different to names used in other parts of the species range.  But also if it is the same.

The issue of a Common name at species name being used for subspecies is trivial: of course it is.  

So if I search for "Owl" iNat should show me all Owl taxa, with the Order at top, then Family, then Tribes, then Genera, then Species, then Subspecies (of course only the top 10 matches will actually display in the ID dropdown menu).  Similarly Barn Owl should return the Species (singular or many - depending on any ambiguities), then all the Subspecies of those Species.  If iNat did that, then the "need" to duplicate the vernaculars under subspecies would vanish, and no one would bother doing it, even in instances when it is pertinent.  

[Riviera S]

Well, you've got me there. My opinion would be, if only one subspecies occurs and it is not locally distinctive, that local name should then apply directly to the species. But I can see why others would disagree here.

[rjq]

Consistency and clear guidelines for subspecies common names would be very useful, currently it's confusing for curators and observers. 

I agree that the parenthesis format is the clearest, and could be applied to any subspecies by including the subspecies name if there is no obvious English modifier:

Northern Flycatcher - Empidonax borealis

Northern Flycatcher (Island) - Empidonax borealis nesiotica

Northern Flycatcher (borealis) - Empidonax borealis borealis [or (ssp borealis)]

This is the Clements/eBird format for birds. However, it is clear that others disagree with this format.

The alternative is to create complex common names (Island Northern Flycatcher), but this gets confusing when there is no obvious modifier, and there are now an increasing number of bird names that appear to have been created de novo for iNat - clearly these aren't actually 'common' names. For example, a Google search for Southeastern Yellow-shafted Flicker returns only iNat pages.

[Riviera S]

Honestly I think it would make everything easier if we could just pick one name for the species per country, and then have the extra terms/adjectives in parenthesis. And then do this for every species.

Yellow-rumped warbler [Audubon's]

Northern flicker [southeastern yellow]

Pacific-slope flycatcher [Island]

To avoid messy name entering, what if the subspecies name was added in addition to the species name? Example: a species is named "Northern flicker". In the subspecies, the entered name will be "red-shafted". In display, it will combine them into "Northern flicker [red-shafted]". So in that way, subspecies names are secondary.

I know some disagree with this, but this seems like the only way that we can fix this situation, while making sure everything is consistent. Maybe we can all agree that this is the most efficient solution, even if it doesn't match everyone's preferences?

[Chris Cheatle]

One common name per species per country does not work well given many nations are bilingual or even multilingual.

[Upupa epops]

I don't know if this is helpful because iNat has a very different format from eBird, but maybe it's something we can learn from:

EBird used to name all subspecies in the format Riviera described, but people started identifying birds based off of the subspecies name rather than the features of the organism itself. As a result, they change some of the subspecies names in parentheses from English to Latin.

For example, Red-tailed Hawk has several subspecies that are usually named based on their geographical location, but they also have physical differences: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=red-tailed+hawk

Here in Ontario, we usually get the "Eastern" subspecies, but in the winter we'll also get the "Northern" subspecies. When the labels were Red-tailed Hawk (Northern) and Red-tailed Hawk (Eastern), people would choose the subspecies just based on location rather than physical differences. That causes problems when we get both subspecies and we're in *north*eastern* North America, so eBird changed it to Red-tailed Hawk (borealis) and Red-tailed Hawk (abieticola) to minimize that problem.
I think that only applies to situations where there is likely to be confusion though; they still have Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) rather than Yellow-rumped Warbler (coronata) since people are much less likely to be identifying that species solely based on the name. And Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) might be fine since that feature is actually how the subspecies should be separated (although eBird apparently doesn't separate the two yellow-shafted subspecies).

[bobby23]

Not all subspecies share the same basal name as the species they fall under. For example, under Damaliscus pygargus there is the blesbok (Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi) and the bontebok (Damaliscus pygargus pygargus). Neither name is prioritized here. That's why D. pygrargus is dubbed Bontebok/Blesbok on iNat. With your proposed scheme, each subspecies would be "Bontebok/Blesbok [blesbok]" and "Bontebok/Blesbok [bontebok]". If I saw that for a taxon, without knowing the thought process behind it, I would be immediately confused, and I believe the common names exist to mitigate confusion.

On Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 8:17:43 PM UTC-4, Riviera S wrote: