Taxonomic Swap 31391
(Committed on 2018-03-24)
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Comments
Comment continued..
As there was no explanation given as to why this taxon swap was conducted I have to assume it was done because 'The Plant List' (often cited by curators as the basis for making taxonomic decisions in iNaturalist) was used. Assuming this is the case then...
The decision in the Plant List to treat var. incanum as a synonym of L. scoparium is not merited (see http://www.theplantlist./tpl/search?q=Leptospermum+scoparium&_csv=on) and it is not followed by New Zealand taxonomists (see for example, https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/default.aspx?selected=NameDetails&TabNum=0&NameId=D23EAE69-1980-408F-BC04-8B6A9FCB1587 and http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_search.aspx?scfSubmit=1&scfLatin_Common_Name=Leptospermum+scoparium). No purpose is served to merge var incanum, which is widely recognized in Aotearoa / New Zealand as a valid endemic (Cockayne 1917; Allan 1961; Eagle 2006; Schönberger 2017; de Lange 2018), and which is listed as threatened (de Lange et al. 2013; de Lange et al. in press) simply because The Plant List fails to recognize it. Indeed in terms of contribution to global biodiversity and the threat the recent (May 2017) arrival of myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii) places Aotearoa / New Zealand indigenous / endemic Myrtaceae under - the merger undertaken here means that one of many genetically distinct and formally described members of the L. scoparium complex would be treated as a single species endemic to Australasia and the Cook Islands - thus rendering the ongoing conservation actions to prevent the extinction of New Zealand Leptospermum (let alone our Myrtaceae) difficult to justify to politicians and 'end users' befuddled by a global list that does not accurately reflect the taxonomy of Leptospermum used in Australasia and New Zealand. Indeed if this logic were to be consistently applied then most of our endemic flora would cease to exist simply because 'The Plant List' fails to recognize them, treats them as 'synonyms' or 'unresolved' - presumably because those running the 'The Plant List' are unaware of current taxonomic literature in Aotearoa / New Zealand, and - from my own experience, largely because they ignore emails sent to them to query the decisions they have reached about our endemic flora (a consistent complaint I hear also from many of the worlds taxonomists). When I joined this organization (2015) and became a curator it was explained to me that where there are endemic taxa the views of the region to which those taxa are endemic outweigh those of a global listing (unless there is a very persuasive reason to see otherwise) - @jon_sullivan @meurkc @cooperj comments welcome - even if I have this wrong it is very unhelpful to conduct taxon swaps / mergers without explaining the reasons for these decisions. So what are your reasons for this making this merger?
References
Allan, H.H. 1961: Flora of New Zealand. Vol. I. Indigenous Tracheophyta: Psilopsida, Lycopsida, Filicopsida, Gymnospermae, Dicotyledones.Wellington, Government Printer.
Cockayne, L. 1917[1916] : Notes on New Zealand Floristic Botany, including Descriptions of New Species &c. (No. 2). Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 49: 56-65.
de Lange, P.J. (2018): Leptospermum var. incanum Fact Sheet (content continuously updated). New Zealand Plant Conservation Network. http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=2186 (Accessed 26 March 2018)
de Lange PJ, Rolfe JR, Champion PD, Courtney SP, Heenan PB, Barkla JW, Cameron EK, Norton DA, Hitchmough DA. 2013. Conservation status of New Zealand indigenous vascular plants, 2012. Wellington: Department of Conservation, 70 pp.
de Lange PJ, Rolfe JR, Barkla JW, Champion PD, Courtney SP, Beadel S, Perrie LR, Ford KA, Schönberger I, Breitwieser I, et al. inpress. Conservation status of New Zealand vascular plants, 2018. New Zealand Threat Classification Series. Wellington: Department of Conservation. http://www.doc.govt.nz/about-us/science-publications/series/new-zealand-threat-classificationseries/
Eagle A. 2006. Eagle’s complete trees and shrubs of New Zealand. Wellington: Te Papa Press, 1000 pp.
Schönberger I. et al., 2017: Checklist of the New Zealand Flora - Seed Plants. Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research New Zealand Ltd. II. Allan Herbarium - available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319326681_Checklist_of_the_New_Zealand_Flora_-_Seed_Plants
I agree with Peter. Here's my view ...
Curators hopefully have at least some understanding of taxonomy and nomenclature. They also have a responsibility to consider the consequences of changes they make, and to justify those changes with source references. That is particularly true of taxon mergers where reversing them is not straightforward. In this case the consequence of 'taxon swapping' the autonym with the parent binomial implies the remaining non-autonymic trinomials at the same rank are also synonyms of the binomial which they are not. Just to be clear ... from a circumscription perspective, if L. scoparium var. incanum is considered a good taxon then use of the name L. scoparium is not the same as L. scoparium var. scoparium. The former potentially includes L. scoparium var. incanum whilst the latter specifically excludes it. I wonder if that was understood.
In making changes to taxonomy the Curators Guide is quite clear ...
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide
L. scoparium was described from New Zealand, and, as the vascular plant section of the guide says "We try to follow regional floras as they tend to be more useful and up-to-date." and for New Zealand plants that is ...
https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/
Thanks Jerry - in the interim I have had to recreate the rejected names L. scoparium var. incanum and var. scoparium and trawl through all the records to put them back to what they were - a very time consuming exercise. This may not seem important to people on a Global Scale but when we are trying to map the distributions of these two taxa to aid people with urgent seed banking as a last resort conservation measure to secure these taxa whilst Austropuccinia psidii takes hold in New Zealand it really doesn't help having unexplained 'taxonomic decisions' made which ruins the Citizen Science data others have so carefully recorded and put on this website.
@alexiz can you un-do this taxon swap at all? Or at least explain why you have created this taxon swap?
I see on your profile you are from Mexico, which is a long way from New Zealand where the endemic Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum is. It is not Leptospermum scoparium which is differerent - see the comments of @pjd1 above as to why. I also think he was the one who described it.
@kueda - is there a way that there can be a safeguard in the system so that taxon changes can not be made to endemic plants / critters unless approved by a curator scientist from the country involved? Having someone who is not from our country come along and make a sweeping change to one of our endemics like this without an explanation is not on. And unless the taxon swap can be undone I have to go through and manually change all of mine (I am the top observer for Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum) and then hope that the other person who agreed with me will come back and agree again.
@tangatawhenua - thank you for taking the time to reverse all those Leptospermum. Certainly saves me a whole lot of work. A minor clarification - Leonard Cockayne described var. incanum not me. I agree and endorse you and Jerry's suggestion that taxonomic changes should only be made by those prepared to outline the reasons why the decision was taken.
I was going to wait and see if it could be undone @pjd1 but it annoyed me which is why I went through and changed mine - now all you have to do is agree so I can get them back to research grade LOL Kia ora for correcting who described kahikatoa - which I can not add as the name for Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum - I know it can be done but can not seem to find how so now I have to remember the proper name LOL
Aue! Whaea I have reinstated 'kahikatoa' now we have the right scientific name and the right Te Reo Maori name for it as well.
I'm glad this is resolved,it seems very strange for someone in Mexico doing taxon changes to our flora.
Gazie @pdj1 - now I can revert to my own reo when looking for this - it is nice to see it back to what it is :)
Now for some strange reason when I go to add a default photo I get all of the obs for all species - just think, I could put a mushroom and the default photo then say it is tricky - maybe @tony_wills can help us sort out the default photos for this one? :)
Yes I don't know why that has happened - I tried to fix it this morning - I can onyl assume NWNZ has pulled in all those observations that mention Kahikatoa (?) If someone can fix this that would be great
Sadly this is not fully resolved @johnvandenhoeven as there were a few other obs for Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum that were not mine, so those ones will now be under Leptospermum scoparium and if we can not remember who did them or they realise that there was this muck up and change theirs back, those obs will stay in the wrong place :( But I did remember one person who had Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum obs and have found theirs and changed it back, but of course it still needs to be agreed to so it can become research grade - again!
@ tangatawhenua I think we need some advice on how to wind things back, the current method is not quite right.
If it is primarily incanum that we are interested in, I think we should be on the page /taxon_changes/31390.
It appears we now have a new taxon entry created for Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum, but the old one still exists at /taxa/412754-Leptospermum-scoparium-incanum, now 'inactive'. I think we have to delete the new taxon Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum first, then reactivate the old one. But I think we need advice as to whether other things need to be done to reverse a taxon change as I don't have any experience in doing so (@ jon_sullivan). But deleteing the new taxon and re-activating the old taxon will need to be done to undo the confusion the system now has which shows up when looking for taxon photos and no doubt will cause lots of other problems.
@tony_wills - thanks Tony - I was not sure how to fix this error - so made new entries for the 'in active' taxa so that's my bad. Be interested how to correct this as I have the same issue with the New Zealand Doodia - which show as 'in active' taxa and which need resurrecting
Ok, from the description listed at /pages/curator+guide#changes : " Identifications of the input taxon get marked as not current and new identifications of the output taxon are added", "Listed Taxa get changed in place to use the output taxon". I don't know what the second part means, but it sounds as though the primary thing done is inactivating the taxon and automatically adding a new ID. And nothing strange is done under the bonnet so to speak, within the database that needs to be fixed.
I have tagged all the observations with the new taxon /observations.json?field:xlost=kahikatoa so that we can find them again.
I propose that we delete the new taxon and reactivate the old one. The IDs for your new taxon will then disappear. You will then need to delete the automatically added IDs for the wrongly swapped taxon (to delete an ID, rather than withdraw it, you need to go into 'edit' for each wrong ID then 'delete') , might be easier just to withdraw each one. Or wait to we re-activate the old ID, then add it again.
So after deletion of the new taxon, we just reactivate the old taxon. Then clean up any synonyms of Leptospermum-scoparium-incanum to Leptospermum-scoparium. And double check photos etc etc etc.
Though I am not sure whether we can just "delete" a taxon. We might have to do it using a "taxon drop", though I'm not sure that actually totally removes it.
What would probably work is if we rename the new taxon to something like Leptospermum scoparium var temporary, then "swap" it back into the original Leptospermum scoparium incanum after re-activating it. But if there is no urgency I think we should await advice :-)
Que tal señores, para comenzar, les aclaro a todos los involucrados en este apartado que el unificar los nombres en comento fue por una simple y sencilla razón, al teclearlos en TPL los marcó como sinonimias y no investigue más, acepto que fue un error y no volverá a repetirse.
Por otro lado, la unificación de L. scoparium y L. scoparium var. scoparium, la consideré porque para las subespecies nominotipicas o especies nominales, no existen diferencias, es decir: son lo mismo por lo que no veo el caso ambos taxones estén dados de alta por separado pero bueno, no soy nadie para dar esa orden, simplemente lo comento. Para el caso de Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum ya ni discuto porque tienen toda la razón.
Por cierto, no es que me metiera a imponer cambios taxonómicos en la flora de sus país, simplemente me encontré con que eran sinonimias. Nuevamente una disculpa por moverles la sabana botánica, saludos a todos y una disculpa por apenas responder.
As I suspected (if Google translate is doing justice), I believe there is the common misunderstanding here that because the autonym and the binomial are homotypic that they represent the same taxon, and they do not. Nomenclaturally they have the same anchor but the 'taxon concepts', as delineated by the relevant cisrumscriptions, differ (although the binomial concept necessarily includes the autonymic concept).
Indeed - and I must find the time to reply in Te Reo............
I have to put this reply in - sections - as it is too long otherwise for NWNZ / iNaturalist to handle...
Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum Cockayne is a distinct taxon endemic to the far North of Aotearoa / New Zealand (Cockayne 1917; Allan 1961; Eagle 2006; de Lange 2018). It is distinguished from other Australasian members of L. scoparium complex - and specifically L. scoparium var. scoparium (described from New Zealand and most likely endemic to it) by the longer, broadly lanceolate leaves (rather than short, broadly ovate sharply mucronate leaves), which are usually (but not always) darker green (rather than yellow-green to glaucous green) and covered in long persistent sericeous hairs (rather than shorter, finer, caducous, sericeous hairs which are confined to the leaf margins and base), larger capsules (up to 20 mm diameter c.f 10 mm diameter), and larger flowers (up to 25 mm diameter c.f 15 mm diameter) - for images and a popular account of this variety see de Lange (2018). The flowers are mostly pink to pink-tinged, rarely red, whereas those of L. scoparium var. scoparium are white (very rarely faintly tinged pink (one instance of a red-flowered 'sport' known). Furthermore L. scoparium var. incanum has larger seeds and pollen (GNS unpubl. data). An ongoing revision of the genus in Aotearoa / New Zealand suggests that var. incanum merits species rank - for example, on the basis of a Next Generation Sequencing study it consistently forms its own clade (Buys et al. unpubl. data). Furthermore, Leptospermum scoparium var. incanum is broadly sympatric / syntopic with other members of the L. scoparium complex from which it remains distinct.