Proboscidea searches is giving Insects

[geotom88]

When you search on the app for Proboscideans, it changes the class to Insects. Also trying to pull records out the database using Proboscidea returns insect records.

[pnovack-gottshall]

This isn't a bug (sorry, bad pun) - there IS an order of insects named Proboscidea Scopoli 1763 (now considered a synonym for Hemiptera). That's what is being visualized here.

What is weird is that the mammal clade Proboscidea Illiger 1811 is not being populated in this search index. I'm not sure if the problem is that both names are now opinioned to the same taxonomic rank (order) or if the index is simply not showing this name in its indexed namespace.

Both homonyms ARE available in the search index to the top right of the search page, however.

[geotom88]

Hiya, ah ok that makes sense. I should have many fully explained why I thought it was a bug. If go through each of the taxa in levels - so Mammalia, Tethytheria.... then when I click the Proboscidea option, it changes the class from Mammalia to Insectivore etc. Does that make sense?

P.S very well placed pun :D

[pnovack-gottshall]

OK, now I see. I can replicate it my mapping Tethytheria, then choosing Proboscidea from the "10 immediate subtaxa," which then switches to the outdated insect homonym. That's very weird, because I can't see any errors in the opinions that underlay how taxa are parented. Let me poke around to see if I can find a fix. Thanks for catching!

[PatHolroyd]

This bug still seems to be present, but behaves differently in different parts of the interface. In the Navigator Omnibox, a search for Proboscidea will give you all three options in the dropdown menu and you can select one. At the main menu a search for collections containing Proboscidea will give you both elephants and hemipterans. A search for collections containing Proboscidea through the API or download records page gives only hemipterans.

[pnovack-gottshall]

Not a fix, but a work-around until fixed, at least for downloads.

The PBDB API (See https://paleobiodb.org/data1.2/general/taxon_names_doc.html) claims that using base_name will "if the parameter value matches more than one taxonomic name in the database, either because it is a homonym or because you used wildcards, then the taxon with the most occurrences in the database will be selected by default."

whereas using match_name will "Selects all records corresponding to all matching taxa, where the matching is alphabetic rather than taxonomic. If the parameter value matches more than one taxonomic name in the database, all will be selected. Subtaxa will not be included; if you wish to get subtaxa, you can pick out from the result the name or names you are interested in and do a second query using the base_name parameter."

You'd still need to download the subtaxa, but at least this gets only the mammals.