Arctos: Cretolamna vs. Cretalamna

[Jegelewicz]

Adiel discovered a spelling error in the Genus Cretolamna, which is actually short for Cretaceous, which is why he wants to change our 271 Cretolamnas to Cretalamna. There is literature citing both spellings, but methinks it is going to require some fancy finger-work to change them.

Here is my question: can there be two Arctos entries: one for Cretolamna AND one for Cretalamna?! Is there another route I can take short of going into each record and changing them individually to Cretalamna? I looked at the "manage classifications hierarchically" and it is nothing like the documentation in the Arctos handbook and makes no sense whatsoever to me. I know NMMNH also uses Cretolamna....HELP!

[Jegelewicz]

@mbprondzinski @aklompma no worries, we can add the correct names pretty easily but before we do anything:

1. How urgent is this?
2. Should we mark all of the Cretolamna names as "invalid" and relate them as misspellings of the Cretalamna names?
3. Do you actually want to maintain a Cretolamna hierarchy or would you prefer to just manage the names directly in the Arctos source?

If we need to meet up to discuss, I am pretty open right now on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

[aklompma]

This is not really urgent. The deal is that the majority of scientist now use Cretalamna (certainly in recent pubs), but Cretolamna has also been used in the past by some. It would be great if both names could be retained, but Cretalamna is shown when searching for either one... When searching for both names separately now, the same records appear, which is good.

However, both spellings are used within the same record, so I think part of the change was successful:
https://arctos.database.museum/guid/ALMNH:Paleo:15250

[Jegelewicz]

HMMMMM - actually, that is NOT correct. The classification should match the actual name. @mbprondzinski and I probably need to discuss this and develop a plan.

[mbprondzinski]

Yeah, I was going to contact you about this. I don't know what exactly needs to be done, but hopefully you and I can work something out! I'm available to chat on Wednesday @Jegelewicz

[Jegelewicz]

OK - all Cretalamna names have been added with classifications and Cretolamna names have synonym pointers to associated Cretalamna names. I think next step is to re-identify all ALMNH records using Cretolamna to Cretalamna. I'll look at that later today.

[mbprondzinski]

Can I do that? I need to know how to do this...

[dustymc]

one for Cretolamna AND one for Cretalamna

There are many thousands of similar situations. These both look like "valid" names to me, and I don't think there's enough consensus to quarantine one of them.

short of going into each record and changing them individually

There are various bulk tools, this is a "normal" problem that Arctos handles easily.

Should we mark all of the Cretolamna names as "invalid"

This suggests doing something in the Arctos classification, which from here just looks like wasted work.

and relate them as misspellings

Yes, my automation probably would not find this particular variation (not sure though), explicit relationships are ALWAYS useful.

maintain a Cretolamna hierarchy

That's an alternative to "from here just looks like wasted work."

The classification should match the actual name.

See: "from here just looks like wasted work." It should, but that's just not a realistic expectation of the Arctos classification (or anything else that's been managed in a similar way). I'm fighting with this now in an attempt to pull hierarchical data out - it's just not there, pulling data is going to take some work, it would be a shame to dump that work back into the mess where it won't be very useful in the future.

When searching

It's about time our inconsistent data worked in our favor, I suppose....

[Jegelewicz]

You sure can! All it would take is an identification upload - https://arctos.database.museum/tools/BulkloadIdentification.cfm

My plan would be to search for all records identified as any of the Cretolamna names (there are only seven), download the results and use that to create an upload identification file using the Cretalamna names. Wanna take a stab at it?

[dustymc]

upload

Or

[Jegelewicz]

HAHAHA! Actually @dustymc probably has the easier suggestion since these are just changing the spelling of something....

[mbprondzinski]

Okay, I'll give it a try using Dusty's method!

[mbprondzinski]

Set taxa_formula to use_existing_name to create a new ID using the old name. Everything about taxa will be ignored with this formula. @Jegelewicz

What does that mean? The "existing name" is what I want to get rid of! I saw this earlier and stayed clear of it because it was threatening and made no sense. Also, if I just want to change the genus name, do I need to add the species name? Really this explanation is not helpful to me.

[Jegelewicz]

You don't want that option - you want "A" then select the name you want to change to. Make sense?

[Jegelewicz]

Like this:

[Jegelewicz]

yellow fields are required, so you'll need to fill those in too.

[mbprondzinski]

What if they are all IDed by different people? Also, why can't I just do "Cretolamna" for all of the entries, including "bryanti? and "appendiculata"? There are a lot of just "Cretolamna"s with no species.

[DerekSikes]

You can use the tools above (just out of sight in the screenshot Teresa
provided) to set the ID to use the agent name and date etc of the most
recent ID. This way you can create new iDs that are identical to the old
ones except for the new taxon name spelling. You would want to leave
remarks to explain what you've done.

However, this gets into a long running protocol issue I've never been happy
with. The option I describe above is one way to do this. The other is to
use your name as the determiner because you are the one making the decision
that taxonspellingA=taxonspellingB - the original agents did not make that
decision. So in this case you would be the determiner and the date would be
the day you make the change and the method would be 'revised taxonomy' -
which indicates that you are making a new ID not based on studying the
physical specimens but based on changes in the taxonomy of the names.

The prior ID is retained in Arctos (but not shared with GBIF etc which only
grabs the most recent ID) so you would be listed as the determiner of those
specimens - which many people might misunderstand to think you studied the
physical specimens, which you didn't. There's no easy answer.

-Derek

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 10:52 AM Mary Beth @.*> wrote:

What if they are all IDed by different people? Also, why can't I just do
"Cretolamna" for all of the entries, including "bryanti? and
"appendiculata"? There are a lot of just "Cretolamna"s with no species.

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[mbprondzinski]

Aye yi yi, I see what you mean. Well, I will make a decision and let the chips fall where they may. Thanks, Derek.

[mbprondzinski]

Okay, so I tried the first method per Teresa/Dusty/Derek and got this error:

Here is how I set it up (it also didn't work using Formula "A" which gave me an error at 172:

[Jegelewicz]

You cannot use "use exisiting name" and also a new name. You need to use "A" and a new name.

[mbprondzinski]

That didn't work either!

[mbprondzinski]

Whoever fixed it, now it's working...thank you very much!

[mbprondzinski]

I've just encountered another problem: all the Cretalamna appendiculata are retaining the Cretolamna appendiculata, making it impossible for me to pull up just the Cretolamna genus entries:

[Jegelewicz]

I think it will change eventually - give it a day or two.

[mbprondzinski]

I just hope Adiel made the right decision on this. Everyone in GBIF seems to use Cretolamna (!)

[Jegelewicz]

I think this is done. Closing