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Hi @jwidness, looks great, please commit. I'm sure there are loads of misidentifications hanging around, so I don't see a major issue if IDs get coarsened to genus level as many bat IDs in the Neotropics are only occasionally checked by users with sufficient expertise.
It looks great!
I researched the specimens of S. lilium from Peru, and found this publication: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332683569_Small_mammals_of_the_Mayo_River_Basin_in_northern_Peru_with_the_description_of_a_new_species_of_Sturnira_llirh_amir_http_amir_http_amir_hirost
It seems that the individuals identified as S. lilium for most of the Central and Northern Andes and the Amazon basin belong to this new species (S. giannae) described by Velazco and Patterson. However, there is no record of S. giannae in GBIF or IUCN, so I don't know exactly how to proceed.
In general, we haven't been adding to the iNat mammal taxonomy if the taxon isn't in IUCN or MDD. If you'd like to use S. giannae we can consider adding it, but if it's not going to be used, I'd rather hold off until later.
There's also S. adrianae, which is already in MDD, but not in IUCN. It's sort of a split from S. ludovici, but supposedly there's at least a potential for an area of sympatry? For now I've marked it as a synonym of S. ludovici, but that's just until I figure out something better. Suggestions welcome.
So I imagine that the ideal is to postpone S. giannae, because I don't know how to identify them by photo and I believe that few people are capable. Regarding S. ludovici, unfortunately, I also don't know how to help you. But note that more recent works and the IUCN have listed 22 species for the genus Sturnira, and several occur in sympathy with S. ludovici.
Hi everyone, just a quick general comment: "identifiability" shouldn't be a criterion whether or not a species is to be included or not in iNat's taxonomy. Many bats cannot be identified to species level based on photos alone, so IDs in such cases will need to stay at genus or any other appropriate level.
Speaking of iNat's mammal backbone: now that "Bats of the World" (Simmons & Cirranello, AMNH: https://batnames.org) is online, I suggest to adopt this as the global backbone for all bats here on iNat as it is a much more autoritative source concerning bat taxonomy than either MDD or IUCN.
This is a split supported by both MDD and IUCN. The maps are drawn directly from IUCN's website. There is also a draft for moving S. l. parvidens into S. parvidens, though I think those are all probably safely covered by the atlases anyway (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/74721). The bigger issue is the observations that are nowhere near IUCN's maps, e.g. southern Peru. I think a number of those are going to be kicked back to genus, but I have no idea if the problem is with the IUCN maps, or if they're misidentified on iNat.
If anyone has thoughts, please share. Otherwise I'll plan to commit this soon.
@jakob @bobby23 @loarie @carloshrussi