iNaturalist Plutella treatment in Australia
Starting out in 2016 with iNaturalist, I was informed that an
"overlooked" species of native Plutella had been recently
described and required dissection or perhaps bar coding
to separate from the introduced species.
Here is the relevant reference ...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807746/
I only just noticed that a good many Plutella in Australia have been
identified to species. Other than @graemevc Graeme's material
which I know was bar coded (pers. comm. 2017), I'd like to
know what the basis for the change has been. According to
AFD, the two species are still recognized ...
https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/Plutella/checklist
however, there has occasionally been a lag in listing with
respect to the literature so I was wondering if I had missed
something.
@dustaway @ianmcmillan @kenharris @dhobern
@hkmoths @imcmaster @tleitch @daniel_heald
@aedmonds @bushbandit @gumnut
Comments
complex taxon time . . .
created as a taxon complex : https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/911325-Plutella-xylostella-australiana
all photo material of Australian P. xylostella or P. australiana should be placed as this taxon complex, unless barcoding of the photographed individual has taken place.
Hope that helps.
Excellent Roger, did not know that could be done.
Thanks for unifying this pair, makes it useful to group them, given the sheer number of obs.
@loarie - it strikes me, now that I've created a few complex taxa, that it woud be a good idea to have under the "about" tab on the species page, a section that should be written up with reasoning as to why the taxon complex was created and its intended iNat use - in this instance I would include a link to the original publication that separated australiana from xylostella and that the two can't be separated on external morphology. Could this be done somehow within the curatorial framework, please?
@vicfazio3 @dustaway - I have also created a page for P. australiana, and xylostella remains in place. The "about" section of each species should contain some information on the potential confusion between the two species in Australia. Maybe Scott (@loarie ) can sort out some scripting that allows curation to augment the text brought in from Wikipedia.... ?
@all my Plutella were IDed before I knew about the overlooked one, back on Bowerbird - I'll amend accordingly
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