Taxonomic authorities for free living protists and algae?
Taxonomy for protists is a mess, but especially so on iNat. We should elect some taxonomic authorities to give preference to in order to avoid having an eclectic bunch of conflicting schemes. Right now the only one we have is WoRMS, but that doesn't cover everything and a lot of it is just an outdated mirror of Algaebase.
The ideal situation would be to have a single global authority for each taxa that we rigidly adhere to, and then keep a list of every time we explicitly deviate from it. That's what iNat does with vascular plants using Plants of the World Online. That won't work for protists, but we could pick some of the best ones and try to stick to them as feasible. It is especially helpful to try to keep anything from Order and above stable since only iNat staff can make changes to such high level nodes.
So, what are some good ones to use? Are there any objections to my suggestions?
Algaebase seems like a good choice for what it covers. WoRMS is already accepted. I don't know what's good for other things like ciliates and ameoboids.
Also, if you would like to edit the taxonomy yourself, read the curator guide and then send an email to help@inaturalist.org.
@djpmapfer @sarka @roman_romanov @bdstaylor @karolina @daviswj @stephaniemartin @actinophrys @swampy
