Taxonomic Swap 122481 (Committed on 03-03-2023)

notice this swap was originally to Labridae but was reverted and recommitted to Scarini see comments below

Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes has lumped Parrotfish into Wrasses

Added by loarie on 14 February, 2023 03:24 | Committed by loarie on 03 March, 2023
replaced with

Comments

@markmcg maybe worth making a journal post in Aus Fishes about this

Posted by thebeachcomber about 1 year ago

That's a huge change!

Posted by islandnaturespotter about 1 year ago

yeah - Sort of annoying that the higher taxonomy in Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes is so dynamic - but I guess good that they're making progress?

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

Good suggestion @thebeachcomber. This taxonomic change came out some time back, but I agree that it would be worthwhile informing the Australasian Fishes Project community. Thank you.

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

This caught me off guard. I know it has been discussed for some time, but I haven't followed those arguments too closely.
I wish the subfamilies had been left in. There is no longer a way to tag a field observation as being an unknown parrotfish (or several other distinctive groups, such as razorfishes, etc). This is where a strict adherence to phylogenetics makes things more difficult rather than clarifying things.

Posted by maractwin about 1 year ago

Changing Scaridae to Labridae is fine with me but I do agree with @maractwin that keeping the parrotfishes under subfamily Scarinae would be helpful. Currently when you search on Scarinae it defaults to Labridae (Scarinae) which retrieves both the wrasses and parrotfishes.

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

@loarie I've been contacted by another parrotfish expert who is disapointed that this taxonomic swap means he can no longer search for Parrotfishes. He'd like us to add the subfamily Scarinae under Labridae. Can I add 'Scarinae' to the subfamily for all parrotfishes?

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

We used to have:

Scaridae

Sparisomatinae
Scarinae


do you mean 'Scarinae' as Scaridae treated as a subfamily or as Scarinae (sister to Sparisomatinae)?

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

Thank you for your quick reply @loarie.
Both scarinae and sparisomatinae should be subfamilies under Family Labridae.
Being able to query on the subfamilies will make the parrotfish experts happy.
Thanks again,
Mark

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

OK I reverted the change that swapped the subfamilies into the wrass family and set up this deviation
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/635999
should be sorted

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

You're a champion @loarie! Thank you.
I'll let the parrotfish dudes know that they are back in business.

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

Hi @loarie. Apologies, I though we had nailed the parrotfish probem but it is more complex than I thought.

As explained by parrotfish expert Kendall Clements -

"I don't care if you use "Scarinae" or Bellwood's "Scarini" for the overall parrotfish tribe. As Bellwood points out, the term Scarinae was used in the past for the sub-tribe that includes Bolbometopon, Cetoscarus, Hipposcarus, Chlorurus and Scarus. I think he's suggesting using Scarini for the whole parrotfish group, i.e. Scarina + Sparisomatina, to avoid this historical confusion. The main point is that we need a single name for the parrotfish tribe. This tribe contains two sub-tribes:

Scarina = Bolbometopon, Cetoscarus, Hipposcarus, Chlorurus + Scarus
Sparisomatina = Cryptotomus, Nicholsina, Leptoscarus, Calotomus + Sparisoma.

Is that clear?

Sparisominae (or phylogenetic equivalent) must sit within whatever you end up calling the parrotfish tribe.

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

not super clear. Here's what we have:

Family Labridae

Subfamily Scarinae

Genus Bolbometopon
Genus Cetoscarus
Genus Chlorurus
Genus Hipposcarus
Genus Scarus

Subfamily Sparisomatinae

Genus Calotomus
Genus Cryptotomus
Genus Leptoscarus
Genus Nicholsina
Genus Sparisoma



can you lay out what you want similarly?

Let me know and I can make the change. But if its possible to have Kendall Clements convince Ronald Fricke at Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (ronfricke@web.de) to make this change it would be great to keep in sync to avoid confusion

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

Thank you @loarie. Probably best if @kendallclements sees your comment and I stop being a go-between.
Again, my apologies for stuffing you around.

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

happy to help just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

I really don't think this is that complex! Although iNaturalist should recognise that the parrotfishes sit within Labridae there are two problems with having the two parrotfish clades (i.e. what you call Scarinae and Sparisomatinae) as subfamilies within Labridae. First, these two "subfamilies" are then of equal rank to other groups of Labridae such as Hypsigenyini, Julidini, Pseudolabrini, etc. This is incorrect. The parrotfish clade as a whole should be taxonomically equivalent to these other clades of Labridae, not the two sub-groups of parrotfishes. Second, by separating these two sub-clades of parrotfishes iNaturalist won't have all the parrotfish under one name. Parrotfish are monophyletic, and iNaturalist should recognise that.
For the purposes of iNaturalist I think it's much more important to have all the parrotfishes under one name than worry about distinguishing clades of parrotfishes. Is it possible to put all the parrotfishes in a single group within Labridae? You could use Bellwood's term Scarini for this, or if you don't like that you could use Scarinae. Bellwood and colleagues (Bellwood et al. Ann. Naturhist. Mus. Wien, Serie A 121: 125-193 2019) say:

"Given the need to recognize the parrotfishes as a distinct group (it is monophyletic with a
broad suite of morphological synapomorphies and a distinct ecology [Bellwood 1994;
Bonaldo et al. 2014]) we recognize the parrotfishes as a separate tribe, the Scarini
(scarines), that lies as the sister clade to the Cheilini (following Gomon & Russell [in
(Bellwood 1994)] and Gomon 1997). The term Scarini was first applied to parrotfishes
by Bonaparte, 1831. Together, the Scarini and Cheilini are sister to the Atlantic wrasses
in the clade Labrini (Fig. 2). There is also distinct phylogenetic structure within the parrotfishes
that reflects ecological and biogeographic trends (Cowman et al. 2009; Bonaldo
et al. 2014). The tribe Scarini is, therefore, further divided into two subtribes, the
Sparisomatina (previously recognized as the subfamily Sparisomatinae) and the Scarina
(previously the subfamily Scarinae)."

So I think the best solution is to treat the parrotfishes as a single tribe. Is that now clear? It's not my job to convince Ron Fricke of anything! What I'm telling you is how the technical literature recognises the group.

Posted by kendallclements about 1 year ago

So you want

Family Labridae

Tribe Scarini

Subtribe Scarina

Genus Bolbometopon
Genus Cetoscarus
Genus Chlorurus
Genus Hipposcarus
Genus Scarus

Subtribe Sparisomatina

Genus Calotomus
Genus Cryptotomus
Genus Leptoscarus
Genus Nicholsina
Genus Sparisoma




Can you confirm thats correct ?

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

That's correct. Parrotfishes are a tribe (Scarini) within Labridae that consists of two subtribes: Scarina and Sparisomatina.

Posted by kendallclements about 1 year ago

OK I'm reverting this swap and going to replace it with a swap to newly created Scarini https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/636233

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

ok reverted, rewired, recommitted and committed https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/123769 and https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/123770
might take a while to process but I think this should now be as you want it

Posted by loarie about 1 year ago

This works beautifully.
Thank you @loarie, and apologies for the mucking around.
FYI @kendallclements.
Mark

Posted by markmcg about 1 year ago

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