Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
barbetsmith | Western Water Shrew (Sorex navigator) |
it's missing a range map. |
Sep. 10, 2023 09:28:44 +0000 | maxkirsch |
@austinrkelly this flag is regarding the taxon range map (the pink range map overlay on a taxon page, often but not always imported from IUCN), not whether there are iNat observations to display on the map, so I've unresolved the flag.
the issue here is that when iNat switched over from IUCN to MDD as its taxonomic backbone for mammals a few years ago, not all the necessary taxonomic changes were made. in this particular case, American water shrew Sorex palustris should've been split three ways (into northern S. palustris, eastern S. albibarbis, and western S. navigator water shrews), but instead the latter two were simply added to the iNat taxonomy while keeping the original broad concept of S. palustris alongside them (erroneously simply labeling it as corresponding to the MDD's narrower concept of S. palustris, despite keeping the broad IUCN range map and all observations of the three MDD species). the only change made to the American water shrew complex at the time was a 1-to-1 swap of IUCN's Glacier Bay water shrew S. alaskanus into S. navigator, which is what's responsible for the latter species's current tiny range map on iNat.
tl;dr: someone needs to split Sorex palustris into S. palustris, S. albibarbis, and S. navigator, and also carve the ranges of the latter two species off the range map for the former
Ranges for S. palustris and S. navigator updated using the IUCN range for S. palustris carved up following the distribution map in Hope et al. 2014
Combined ranges and observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/map?taxa=1370758,46355,1370755#4/50.671/-104.507
@lwnrngr Thank you!
I've gone ahead and created a draft taxon split here. (The atlases are still tentative)
The study recommending the split had some significant gaps in sampling in eastern North America, including almost all of Ontario and the Great Lakes states, so the range boundary between S. palustris sensu stricto and S. albibarbis is still pretty much completely unclear (so I've added a complex mainly to catch records from the unsampled region so they don't get bumped up to subgenus). If we're going through with this split, should records from near/around Lake Superior be assumed to be S. palustris for now by proximity, or bumped up to complex? And how many (if any) observations from eastern Ontario should be assumed to be S. albibarbis by proximity? (Presumably at least the one south of Ottawa, but what about those around Algonquin Provincial Park and points southward?)
Happy to rework the range for S. palustris sensu stricto (and S. albibarbis?) pushing it back away from around the great lakes, if deemed preferable.
The range for S. albibarbis appears to be a replica of the range given in 'Handbook of the Mammals of the World... ' as seen on the GBIF page for the species, but is not listed as the source on the iNat range page
ooh, didn't realize the range maps and plates from HMW are in plazi/zenodo/gbif - good to know for future reference
looks like the HMW range map of S. palustris also encompasses the western Great Lakes region, so probably fine to keep both maps as they are on iNat and keep the observations around Lake Superior in S. palustris for now
here are the subspecies range maps for S. palustris (sensu lato) from The Mammals of North America (Hall 1981) and The Mammals of Canada (Banfield 1974) (which are pretty different in where they draw the lines between subspecies in eastern Canada, the latter having nominate palustris extending pretty far east into Quebec, but it's not clear what that's based on). (the southeastern border of the HMW and iNat range maps for S. palustris sensu stricto is in around the same place as that of sspp. palustris and hydrobadistes in Hall 1981.) Hall (1981) treats a specimen record from North Bay, Ontario as albibarbis (and Banfield 1974 maps albibarbis in southeastern Ontario), so I'm guessing it's probably ok to provisionally put the observations from Algonquin southward in albibarbis for now?
If iNat's taxonomy recognizes this species, it needs a range map (and the range map for S. palustris needs to be changed to exclude the area thought to correspond to the range of S. navigator, which is split from it). If iNat doesn't intend to recognize this species, then it needs to be downgraded to subspecies status.