Taxonomic Swap 74197 (Committed on 2020-05-21)

https://doi.org/10.3852/14-166. While a valid and legitimate name, it is not clear which phylospecies this name is to be applied to, as it has been applied to several in the past decade alone. Thus, the name is essentially just a synonym of section Distantes, as many members may be IDed as Morchella elata in some sense. For clarity and simplicity, this name will be removed from the database until such a time as its application becomes clearer.

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Added by jameskm on March 31, 2020 03:21 AM | Committed by jameskm on May 21, 2020
replaced with

Comments

Is this not a bit drastic? Might some people justifiably not be a little peeved?
Might leaving it as Morchella elata "sensum latum" (until such a time as its sensum strictum application becomes clearer) not have served the same purpose?

Posted by tonyrebelo almost 4 years ago

Essentially, this is that. Section Distantes is Morchella elata sensu lato; it is the group that contains all the species people have referred to as Morchella elata. This has the added benefit of not having the IDs of M. elata conflict with identifications as other, more perfectly known species of Morchella. When the time comes that the name is clarified, one of those other, currently better known species will be swapped into it. It confers no benefit to maintain a species that is essentially a catch-all taxon for half a genus when we already have such a taxon, and when it will result (when M. elata is understood better) in a large number of incorrect identifications being maintained.

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

I tried to elicit opinions on this with a flag and this draft swap for about two months (https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/482696), and no one said anything for or against.

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

Another solution could have been to do a taxon split. There aren't any areas where there is only a single Morchella species, though, so it would have ended the same, with everything relabelled as Distantes.

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

We need a better way of getting attention for these things - one only discovers them when they are committed. There should also be a flag on the dashboards (a heads up) when the swap is created for all observations affected, with a notification of intention to disagree or agree.
((I have no opinion on this particular case: your reasoning is adequate for my needs))

Posted by tonyrebelo almost 4 years ago

Sheesh. Will Research Grade Morchella elata still be Research Grade as Distantes, if that is the best anyone can do?

Posted by eknuth almost 4 years ago

This taxon swap is based only on an article in scientific online paper Mycology and not any external taxonomy. Index Fungorum, EOL and Catalogue of Life still accept Morchella elata.

Posted by pihlaviita almost 4 years ago

I fully agree with Tony´s first comment!

Posted by pihlaviita almost 4 years ago

@eknuth it isn't the best anyone can do. People can and are identifying Morchella species in North America. The core of the issue here is that no one can agree on what Morchella elata is supposed to be. It was described from Europe, and it is definitely a "black morel," and maybe is Morchella importuna. The problem is that it was described from Sweden, and people haven't found Morchella importuna there, so it is unclear. Apart from the application by authors in the literature in the past ten years, it has been used widely to mean many black morels, like Morchella conica had. Locally they might be used to distinguish two species, but which?

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

@pihlaviita EOL and CoL aren't typically very up to date with fungal taxonomy, which is still very much in flux. As for Index and Species Fungorum, yes, they do list Morchella elata because it is a good name. It was validly published and clearly refers to a morel in section Distantes. The issue here is, as I said in the description and the previous comment, people can't agree on what species the name should apply to, so calling something "Morchella elata" is almost meaningless. Depending where you are and what reference you are using, you will mean a different species, or perhaps even more than one species. If there weren't other, more clarified names for most places in the world maybe that would be fine, but there are, particularly in Europe and North America, where the bulk of observations were.

Taxonomy on iNaturalist often follows the primary literature rather than adhering strictly to Species Fungorum or MycoBank since neither is a very reliable taxonomic authority. They can be, and are better in some places than others; often our taxonomy does follow them. Often it doesn't, though, if they are outdated.

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

We must remember, that most of our observes are not scientists. In Finland, where iNaturalistFI was released a couple of weeks ago and hundreds new users send photos to iNat for identifying. Many of them are not even familiar with normal scientific names, but section Distantes is far beyond their understanding. I think that iNat taxonomy should'nt be in scientific front line, but rather conservative and hold to settled terminology because of our obsevers motivation and joy.

Posted by pihlaviita almost 4 years ago

Another option that would have made more sense, would have been to make a "Morchella elata Complex" containing only those few species that are part of this problem, and not dumping them with all the other observations in the section Distantes that have not been identified.
However, the removal of Black Morel - Morchella elata from the dictionary is simply wrong no matter how confusing or problematic it is!

Posted by tonyrebelo almost 4 years ago

"Morchella elata Complex" is excellent transitory solution until the distribution of each species of the Complex is solved.

Posted by pihlaviita almost 4 years ago

It isn't a few species though, it is half the genus. That is what section Distantes is, the "Elata clade" or "Morchella elata sensu lato", the group of morels people were commonly calling Morchella elata (doi.org/10.1016/j.fgb.2010.09.006). That's the origin of the Mel-x numbers on the species, indicators that they are "Morchella elata" species x. The candidate species for being the true elata must be found in Europe, but those don't form a monophyletic clade; they are intermixed with the others. Additionally, they aren't really talked about in the literature as a species complex, but as a section. Introducing such a species complex would basically just duplicate section Distantes at a lower rank in the iNat taxonomic hierarchy

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

For what it is worth, I have left Morchella elata as a deprecated synonym of section Distantes, and left the common names. If people search for those, it should take the there. The listed common name is also "Elata Clade"

Posted by jameskm almost 4 years ago

@jameskm, you know what I mean. People are identifying Hyla species in North America too, even if two of them have overlapping ranges and are indistinguishable except when calling. In that way, the only identification of these two that can be made from a photo is the "complex." In the same way, I suggest, observations of black morels should mean something more than that the taxonomists aren't in 100% agreement. You might be interested in the forum discussion about the common dandelion. Taraxacum officinale is still allowed as a name, although some taxonomists think it should be split into many (even thousands) species. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/overlooked-dandelion-diversity-in-bc-and-everywhere-in-north-america/3808/26

Posted by eknuth almost 4 years ago

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