Heads up: Some or all of the identifications affected by this split may have been replaced with identifications of Alces alces. This happens when we can't automatically assign an identification to one of the output taxa. Review identifications of Alces alces americanus 852463

Taxonomic Split 112134 (Committed on 2022-07-28)

Various authorities recognize different subspecies for Alces alces for different reasons, but for the sake of simplicity and to recognize the preferences of the iNaturalist community to acknowledge subspecific taxa for the moose in North America, this taxon change shifts those recognized in the current IUCN Red List Assessment (Hundertmark, 2016).

Most recent phylogenetic work on Alces alces is aimed at determining if it represents one or two species, but there has been work done that support the traditional subspecific designations at least in North America (Hundertmark et al. 2003).

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ... (Citation)
Added by bobby23 on July 15, 2022 02:55 AM | Committed by bobby23 on July 28, 2022
split into

Comments

@loarie there seem to be significant issues that occurred when I committed this swap. The input was de-activated but none of the inputs were activated.

Posted by bobby23 over 1 year ago

I think I fixed the issue. One of the inputs was assigned to an inactive parent of the same name (Alces alces) and I overlooked it.

Posted by bobby23 over 1 year ago

ok great

Posted by loarie over 1 year ago

While the split roughly restores where the subspecies should be by region, it seems to have overlooked Cape Breton, as per this part of the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources story about the Cape Breton moose that I quoted from in my comment on the merge in 2019:

"The mainland moose and the Cape Breton moose are two separate sub-species. On the mainland, the moose are Alces americana and in Cape Breton the species is Alces andersonii. The original indigenous population of Alces americana in Cape Breton was extirpated in the late 1800's - early 1900's. The cause of this extirpation remains unknown. The current population in Cape Breton started from the introduction of 18 Alces andersonii moose from Alberta in 1947 and 1948. The moose from the mainland are native to eastern North America."

https://novascotia.ca/natr/wildlife/sustainable/mmoosefaq.asp#mm2

Could the Cape Breton moose please be put back to A. a. andersoni as they were back in 2019?

Posted by benarmstrong over 1 year ago

Please see http://www.accdc.com/webranks/NSvert.htm ranks for NS which supports the DNR story on their website (sorry about the poor formatting of my copy-and-paste from the table ... it looks better in the table at the link).

Cervidae Alces alces Moose Orignal G5 N5

S1 2022 03 14

AMALC03020

Cervidae Alces alces americana Moose Orignal G5 N5

Endangered S1 2022 03 14

AMALC03010

Cervidae Alces alces andersoni Northwestern Moose

G5TNR N5

S5 2000 09 25

AMALC03011

The issue I was trying to address is the Endangered status of the mainland Nova Scotia moose which are A. a. americana. If you don't distinguish the small but healthy and stable population of introduced A. a. andersoni in Cape Breton from the mainland NS moose, you don't get a clear picture of the plight the mainland moose are in.

Posted by benarmstrong over 1 year ago

@benarmstrong I have adjusted the atlases for these subspecies so that Cape Breton is included with Alces alces andersoni and excluded from A. a. americana. I committed a new taxon change here and I believe this should fix the issue.

Posted by bobby23 over 1 year ago

Great! I left a comment on the new split but probably should've put it here to thank you for your efforts. I've been able to convey this good news back to the WRWEO board, as the iNat data is increasingly important when talking to the public about species on the land we help steward.

Posted by benarmstrong over 1 year ago

Happy to hear it! Please let me know if there are any other issues concerning moose or any other mammal taxa on the site.

Posted by bobby23 over 1 year ago

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