Journal archives for April 2018

12 April, 2018

Pulmonata and Opisthobranchia... and WoRMS

Hi Mollusk Curators/Taxonomy Experts,

We've been called upon to make a group decision! :-O

As curators, our standing orders for iNaturalist mollusk curation are to "follow WoRMS." So today in the interests of keeping iNat tidy, I took a look -- and I noticed that WoRMS has changed the taxonomy for Opisthobranchia and Pulmonata, which are no longer accepted concepts.

So OK, that means it is time to update iNat to align it with WoRMS, right? Or maybe not? Ken-ichi has asked me to ask you what WE want to do, since this is above Order level (and thus off limits to humble curators), and would require some iNat resources to sort out all the observations. How much resources? Well, as of this minute we have 38,000 Opisthobranchia observations (of which 33,000 are Nudibranchs). That's somewhere between Buteos (hawks) at ~34,000 and Larinae (gulls) at ~43,000. So not huge by other Life standards, but according to Ken-ichi, still some processing time as well as the human time would be involved.

The task: We'd have to start with subclass Heterobranchia - still accepted, and 88,000 observations on iNat - and work down, aligning everything with WoRMS. But even the first step seems to get messy, at least to my uneducated eye; take a look at WoRMS and there's terms like 'unassigned' and 'Lower Heterobranchia' -- ?? http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=14712 And so it goes, on down to our more familiar Nudibranchia-level territory.

Now, not being a trained biologist myself, I'm opinionless - but willing to compile your replies into a document that iNat can either 1) act upon as per WoRMS; or 2) do a few tweaks; or 3) do nothing, and at least have an expert opinion/reason or two for doing so until something else changes in the future.

And of course, at least we'll all know what's going on.

So -- please reply! And thank you for your time!

In no particular order, and feel please free to forward to other curators/experts: @kueda @mcduck @tgosliner @jeffgoddard @bernardpicton @jpsilva @v_s_ @lemurdillo @allisonjgong @rebeccafay @kestrel @susanhewitt @pliffgrieff @sluglust @maractwin @erwinkoehler @johnturnbull

Posted on 12 April, 2018 06:10 by anudibranchmom anudibranchmom | 11 comments | Leave a comment