Taxonomic Swap 94877
(Tehty 20-07-2021)
|
|
korvattu seuraavalla: |
|
Kommentit
Hi, @gregh1. I am actually very familiar with the Committee on Taxonomy of the Society for Marine Mammalogy and have even been in contact with Dr. Patricia Rosel on another matter. I have seen that they have retained the species as Arctocephalus tropicalis. However, iNaturalist's policy is to follow the Mammal Diversity Database, and they have moved the fur seal to the genus Arctophoca.
My planned course of action was to contact Dr. Upham at the MDD and propose they integrate the taxonomy brought forward for by the Society of Marine Mammals so that there would be greater cohesion amongst mammal taxonomy (and then it would also free me up to follow the Committee's taxonomy more closely, sans the retention of Neovison macrodon, which should be moved to the genus Neogale).
Hi Bobby
Thanks so much for the quick feedback. I agree that, that would be an appropriate course of action. It is no reflection on the hard work of the American Society of Mammalogists, but taxonomies devised by recognised groups of experts with decades of familiarity with particular taxa would be more appropriate than an all encompassing scheme created by those who don't have this depth of knowledge. The SMM's taxonomy is internationally accepted and used by researchers globally. The problem with iNaturalist following the American Society of Mammalogist's scheme is that is that the general public will now use these names, while researchers use the correct names. I see that Wikipedia pages have also recently been changed to use Arctophoca which will further compound the problem, and require considerable work to clean up. Scientific publications will refer to Arctocephalus, which will confuse the public if they are searching for Arctophoca and hinder the very advancement of science that iNaturalist is attempting.
I share a similar position!
@gregh1 all taxa listed under Arctophoca have been returned to Arctocephalus.
Thanks a million Bobby. That is excellent news. I see that the same has happened on Wikipedia also.
Subantarctic fur seals are still regarded as belonging to genus Arctocephalus. They are accepted as such by the latest report of the Committee on Taxonomy of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (Committee on Taxonomy 2021). The committee is regarded as the authority on marine mammal taxonomy. While Berta & Churchill (2012) suggested all Arctocephalus fur seals, except for Arctocephalus pusillus, be reassigned to genus Arctophoca, and this was accepted by the Committee of Taxonomy (2011), this was not accepted for more than a year. The Committee on Taxonomy (2012) indicated that the change was premature, based on genetic work by Nyakatura & Bininda-Edmonds (2012). This species name should therefore be Arctocephalus tropicalis and the taxonomic swap cancelled since it is out of date.
Berta, A. and Churchill, M. 2012. Pinniped taxonomy: review of currently recognized species and subspecies, and evidence used for their description. Mammal Review 42: 207-234.
Committee on Taxonomy. 2011. List of marine mammal species and subspecies. Society for Marine Mammalogy. Available at: https://www.marinemammalscience.org/species-information/list-of-marine-mammal-species-subspecies/. (Accessed: 10 January 2012).
Committee on Taxonomy. 2013. List of marine mammal species and subspecies. Updated 3 December 2013. Available at: http://www.marinemammalscience.org. (Accessed: 3 July 2014).
Committee on Taxonomy. 2021. List of marine mammal species and subspecies. Available at: http://www.marinemammalscience.org. (Accessed: 21 July 2021).
Nyakatura, K. and Bininda-Emonds, O.R.P. 2012. Updating the evolutionary history of Carnivora (Mammalia): a new species-level supertree complete with divergence time estimates. BMC Biology 10: 12.