Dealing with unnamed/cryptic species

[SSuominen1]

In GBIF it is possible to add OTU/ASV-ID's as an identifyer, but this is not currently possible in OBIS. At the moment we recommend registering the highest possible scientific name. Are there other possibilities?

[claudenozeres]

Other DwC fields? E.g., dwc:verbatimScientificName tdwg/dwc#181

I feel this is a similar matter to discussions for taxonomic names in records by complementing them with 'remark', 'identifier', and 'verbatim' DwC fields when using a valid scientificName is not satisfactory--usually because by being conservative at a general level, it may be hiding taxonomic issues. Example: Gadus macrocephalus. Was considered another species, Gadus ogac, but taxonomically it is not considered another species (or even a subspecies), so have not choice but to name all Gadus ogac strictly as Gadus macrocephalus according to WoRMS. This is correct behaviour--but useful to acknowledge that the historic name of Gadus ogac is not an error, but a geographical synonym.

So, for an OTU, a higher level name is 'correct' but less useful unless complemented with taxon information in another field. It will be valuable to include use of others fields. But why this question? Perhaps because some people may use a more specific name to an OTU that seems reasonable (and this can happen in error/unaware of issues). Often happens on BOLD for marine in North America--name provided is not confirmed by provider of specimen and sequence. But displaying the wrong name becomes obvious when there are many records available--the 'right' or (new if cryptic) species name emerges as the dominant one. Thus, could it be ok to have what is an expected name given in unnamed or cryptic species? On iNaturalist, it would suggest a taxon based on photo and geography. OBIS could suggest based on geography. Later, with more records and information, the unnamed species become named and both the general-named and the specific-name OTUs are updated.

The advice to give a general name (if no remark/identifier/verbatim name field is available) is good, in general. But can also suggest reviewing current records for potential names in an area, that may help to give a 'temporarily valid name based on regional information'?

Example (and I could give many--thanks to discussions with experts of records based on geography in iNaturalist): Cyanea capillata, a jellyfish, is now known genetically to be of several species (and OTUs). In the region of the Northeast Pacific, OBIS records show 1137 records for Cyanea capillata, and 3 records of Cyanea sp. In this area, both the species and generic should be 'wrong' for their OBIS distributions--they are expected to be of a known (not an unnamed or cryptic) species by OTU: Cyanea ferruginea, which currently has no records in OBIS, https://obis.org/taxon/135259, but is correctly displayed on iNaturalist (and therefore GBIF), https://inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=any&subview=map&taxon_id=786996, http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=287192#distributions