An e-mail from iNat leads here:
Which iSpot can’t render due to a programming issue I don’t pretend to understand.
Basically, it seems that iNat has replaced all IDs of ‘Rubus fructicosus’ with ‘Rubus’, due to ‘The inclusion of a complete infrageneric classification of the subgenus Rubus which makes it unnecessary and redundant.’
The accompanying comment trail suggests that the change is not universally welcomed.
However, it seems to be an in-house exercise: I don’t know if it has any implications for the iSpot database.
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It’s weirdly presented, but what they’ve actually done is replace Rubus fruticosus agg. by Rubus sect. Rubus, with European Blackberry Complex as the vernacular name. That’s not as silly as mapping them to Rubus, which loses information, but Stace restricts sect. Rubus to microspecies arising as hybrids between raspberries (subg. Ideobatus) and blackberries (subg. Rubus sect. Glandulosus). Stace’s subg. Rubus is divided into sections Rubus, Glandulosus, Corylifolii (dewberry-blackberry crosses) and Caesii. Sell & Murrell treat the first two as subsections Rubus and Hiemales in sect. Rubus. In neither treatment does sect. Rubus equal Rubus fruticosus agg. as usually conceived, as it commonly includes the Corylifolii as well, and maybe even Rubus caesius. The last comment in the linked comment trail brings up that point.
this is likely to be the work of one Curator.
I have been affected in iNat by Taxonomic Swaps. I had some lengthy interchanges with the Curators involved. They are very plausible, though I really disagreed with one!
Each Curator has a lot of power (though may not work in isolation) and I know from experience that some are high powered and qualified researchers who read all the papers on their side of a paywall.
