Taxonomic Swap 127071
(Guardado el 01/07/2024)
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That would be amazing, since I doubt There is any real verifieable observation of Amanita vaginata anyways
Excellent idea, I have heard that no one knows which species the name Amanita vaginata refers to.
Yes I agree with all of the above. Sounds like a great idea!
I agree. Maybe there actually is some observation where the name was used willingly for something actually fitting the usual concept of Amanita vaginata s. str., but until a typification is made it is better to label everything as A. sect. Vaginatae.
I don't think I support this swap. A. vaginata is a name used in at least several field guides, not for A. sect. Vaginatae in general, but for a more specific morphotaxon in every case. The morphotaxa described and used may cover species across the section, and not be entirely consistent, but the name is still being used meaningfully - it doesn't cover the entire section. E.g., A. fulva and A. pachycolea are excluded. It helps users find observations they've made and seen, helps them break down the section morphologically, and gives identifiers a (slightly) more manageable piece of the section to attack.
Sure, it may be that most of these identifications are probably wrong and probably useless. But that still leaves many providing a bit of meaningful resolution, and lumping the name away (unfortunately) means permanently destroying that resolution. I'm totally sympathetic to swapping all of one's own names like this, but unless the IDs are definitely wrong or definitely useless, I'm concerned that doing it to everyone else may be overbearing and heavyhanded.
@pulk If all observations were all gray species, I wouldn't mind keeping it. It isn't used for a more specific morphotoxon every time, even if it is the case for some. The observations range from the fulvoid clade to even some easily identifiable species like Amanita ceciliae or A. pachycolea, that you mentioned. All of the IDs are definitely wrong, as Amanita vaginata is a species of the /coryli clade and is probably only found in Europe. But for now, we are missing a lot of insights on this clade as it's the most difficult one to work with here and the European amanitologists are still studying it. The name is definitely missapplied.
Another problem is that it messes with iNaturalist's Computer Vision. The IDs given by CV are becoming better with every model update and many beginners use it. As the CV has been polluted with so many wrong IDs of very different Vaginatae (and some other things like Russula, Pluteus, Volvopluteus, Leucoagaricus, other Amanita, etc.) it's now becoming way less useful. Sure, it will identify most of the Vaginatae species as Amanita vaginata, but the distinctive species are forgotten. The identification of distinctive species are then predated by the wider Amanita vaginata identifications, but that wouldn't be the case if it had a higher rank of section Vaginatae. It's especially a problem in Europe, as most species are published.
I understand the motivation for lumping the name away. I would totally consent to it being done to my own observations. However, as long as there are a non-trivial fraction of people using the name meaningfully out there, I really think it would be overstepping the bounds of curatorship to decide to do this for others.
Again, the name appears in multiple contemporary field guides, as a species or group, distinguishing it from others in the same section. As curators, we have to be aware of a line somewhere that separates responsible curation of our shared taxonomy, and irresponsible activist curation of other people's observations. Amanita vaginata is a validly published species in A. sect. Vaginatae, described as a species in legitimate resources. Taxonomically, I assume its status on iNat is perfectly fine.
Where people are severely misusing the name, I think the most appropriate way to handle it is to manually identify those obses at a higher rank - like the rest of the users who aren't curators have to. Where people are weakly "misusing" the name - for a rather large species group - I think that's totally fine.
It is useful data. I've spent a lot of the last few weeks analyzing bulk iNat data to tease apart myco-geographic regions in North America. Identifications don't have to be perfect for the bulk data they form to be amazingly informative - the output is the synthesis of a huge number of imperfect identifications. Just from a data science perspective, nuking IDs like this seems like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. If species that fall into the loose morphotaxon described in field guides as A. vaginata occur more in some regions than others, someone like me may want to know that.
It doesn't overstep the curatorship boundaries, in my opinion. The removal of ambiguous taxa is a common task amongst curators.
Indeed, Amanita vaginata is a valid and legitimate published name. However, it has been applied ambiguously for centuries, as Hanss & Moreau discussed in their paper. If there was an consensual concept all around the world, it would be perfectly fine to keep it like this. According to Hanss & Moreau, candidates for Amanita vaginata exist in stirps Coryli but the IDs as this taxon are applied to many other stirps.
Changing it to Vaginatae wouldn't be destructive for the data, as all observations would be re-identified as such. I also want to include complexes circumscribing all stirps. Manual identification will refine the different complexes and data would be way more useful that way.
From your data perspective, I don't see the difference between using a wider Vaginatae and using Amanita vaginatae. Or maybe you use it to obtain all Vaginatae not belonging to other species?
Again about the Computer Vision, this taxon predates all other taxa with its incorrect IDs and many beginners are mislead by it.
@nschwab Can you expound on this sentence - "The removal of ambiguous taxa is a common task amongst curators"?
Given ambiguity in applying a name, removing that name and the association of observations with that name doesn't seem like the best course of action or even a good one. Our concept should be modified/restricted in the future, yes. Many individuals have misused the name equivalently to A. sect. Vaginatae, yes. But many individuals are also using the name in a semi-restricted sense consistent with sources like https://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Amanita_vaginata.html, https://www.mushroomexpert.com/amanita_vaginata.html, and all the field guides on my shelf.
Replacing with "Amanita vaginata complex" seems reasonable, replacing with the entire section doesn't. We're curators, not nannies.
"Species throught sect. Vaginatae are often (mis)identified by this name"
is importantly different from
"(Nearly) everyone who uses this name applies it indiscriminately to the entire sect. Vaginatae".
My understanding is that the former is true and the latter is not. If the latter were true, I would support this change.
@pulk Now that a paper outlining the major Vaginatae clades has been implemented to iNaturalist, I think it's time to discuss further on this topic.
Unfortunately, swapping doesn't allow to refine much the identifications. Replacing A. vaginata with the whole sect. Vaginatae is still the only possible way as the different species identified as Amanita vaginata span across multiple stirps. Still, the best long-term solution would be to manually re-identify the different observations to the corresponding stirps when it can. But the longer we keep Amanita vaginata active, the more identifications we will have to do at once.
In Europe, where most species are published and stirps characterized it starts to become a real problem. We have to manually re-identify thousands of species and when we are able to identify them to species-level or stirps level, the identifications conflict and and just appear as Vaginatae anyways.
@nschwab Is the paper whose taxonomy was implemented the Hanss & Moreau one linked in the swap draft?
No, the one whose taxonomy was implemented is the following:
Varga D., Hanss J.-M., Moreau P.-A., Kovács G.M. & Dima B. 2024. Phylogenetic and morphological studies reveal large diversity and three new species in Amanita sect. Vaginatae (Agaricales, Basidiomycota) from Europe. Mycological progress 23: 38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-024-01974-0
@nschwab Ok, thanks, that paper seems helpful. I'll give in and stop arguing for keeping A. vaginata IDs, if only because I have to assume that if anybody was actively using a more refined concept of A. v., they would have communicated that to the Amanita community by now.
Although the presence of specimens ID'd as A.v. in 5 stirpes in that paper isn't a very convincing argument - 4 of them only have a single such specimen - I do think it's meaningful that the authors evidence no interest whatsoever in clarifying a concept of A.v. That's also consistent with the blank entry on amanitaceae.org and Danny Miller's writeup at https://www.alpental.com/psms/ddd/Amanitaceae/index.htm.
I appreciate your patience with me on this. Although I'm convinced now this swap is probably fine, I want to emphasize again to anyone reading that it's not okay in general to simply jump from "this name has been used for unrelated taxa" to "this name is meaningless". I believe in the majority of cases, there is a salvageable core concept that many people have tended towards. Looking at A. vaginata among A. sect Vaginatae as one of the minority cases, I'm glad you were willing to hold off on it this long, but also (tentatively) glad to see the swap implemented.
Nice
@pulk @alan_rockefeller @cyanula @cooperj @amanitamozart @universal @marcofloriani @mushroomanny
Any thoughts on this?