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Aphodius/Aphodiinae taxonomy - revisited

There is undoubtedly a thread for this, but starting a new fresh one.

Since Gordon & Skelley published their monograph on North American Aphodiini in 2007 there has been a debate on whether or not BugGuide should keep things in Aphodius or accept the newer taxonomy of elevating subgenera to the genus level and additions of new genera. BG decided to keep everything in Aphodius. There is one big problem there, and Bill Warner explains it here. Taking previously described species that had been in Aphodius and keeping them in Aphodius is one thing. However, by just haphazardly putting all these aphodiines in Aphodius, BugGuide is creating new, unpublished combinations.

For example, Pseudagolius warneri is on BugGuide as Aphodius (Pseudagolius) warneri. Even though Pseudagolius has been placed as a subgenus within Aphodius, P. warneri has NEVER been placed in Aphodius. So, for BugGuide to do this, BugGuide is declaring a combination that has never been published.

I recommend BG follow the genus-level taxonomy of Gordon & Skelley. I know it may be inconvenient, but it does represent the current taxonomic status uniformly of all North American aphodiines.

Contributed by Blaine Mathison on 23 October, 2019 - 4:29pm

thanks for the hard work!

1. let's keep the genera in alphabetical order for now

2. everything currently in the genus Aphodius that is not specifically posted in A. fimetarius or A. pedellus should be moved up to Aphodiini. There are a lot; I can do some from time to time unless you guys have a way of streamlining the process.

… Blaine Mathison, 26 July, 2020 - 9:28am

OK, all the new genera are alphabetical, we think!

All of the loose images on Aphodius have been moved to Aphodiini.
Please chaeck the info page for the No Taxon subgenus Aphodius and see if we want to save any of that info someplace. Then we will delete it.
All that will be left is editing all the genus and species pages, especially the "Preferred Common Name:" field which is currently wrong on just about every page.

… john and jane balaban, 26 July, 2020 - 1:10pm

wow, thanks

I think the info in that No Taxon page can go at this point; the genus level and tribal level info have everything

… Blaine Mathison, 26 July, 2020 - 9:14pm

Aphodius is a genus page now

We started cleaning up the first few genera. Every info page for genus and species needs to be edited to fix the common name section. Should we put all the genera in alpha order or do they cluster in some other way?

… john and jane balaban, 23 July, 2020 - 6:13pm

OK, all No Taxon subgenus pages have been changed

to genus pages. Except Aphodius itself - we hadn't realized the original page was a No Taxon. Will get that fixed.
Can you look at the Info page for subgenus Aphodius and see if there is any Info there that should be captured and moved before we delete that page?
Can you move as many of the images as you can from the Aphodius page to all the new genus pages? We will move all that are left when you are done to the Aphodiini page.
Then all the new genus Info pages as well as the species pages need to be visited and the information there needs to be corrected primarily the Preferred Common Name field on every page.
Anything else?

… john and jane balaban, 23 July, 2020 - 8:28am

John will change all of the No Taxon subgenus pages

to genus pages except for the No Taxon subgenus Aphodius page, which we will deal with when he is done.

… john and jane balaban, 20 July, 2020 - 8:22pm

gotcha

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 8:49pm

Yes,

that is what we asked of John. Now we just have to wait till that is done for the next moves.

… john and jane balaban, 20 July, 2020 - 8:20pm

we'll wait to deal with the No Taxon Subgenus Aphodius itself until you guys have had a chance to look through the images currently sitting on the Genus Aphodius base page. We can move whatever of those images that are not yet recognizable to the new genera up to the tribe when folks are done looking at them. Will let you know when we hear back from John VanDyk

… john and jane balaban, 20 July, 2020 - 2:41pm

I don't understand what you mean by No Taxon

nothing there should have a No Taxon status

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 8:18pm

this subgenus: https://bugguide.net/node/view/156703/tree

should be all that is left in Aphodius the genus proper (with no subgenera).

I'll move everything up to the tribal level that is currently under genus Aphodius

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 8:14pm

correction:

there are 5 pages of beetles at the genus Aphodius level. This is too many manually move. They can stay there for now. They can be moved once the new genera are established

In the meantime have ALL subgenera EXCEPT the subgenus Aphodius moved to the genus level. For the two things left (A. fimetarius, A. pedellus), make those species within the genus Aphodius but without subgenera

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 8:17pm

OK,

We were just going to ask that. Will write John VanDyk and see about him getting it done.

… john and jane balaban, 20 July, 2020 - 2:26pm

thanks

afterwards there are a lot of things sitting in 'Aphodius' at the genus level that should be moved to the tribal level unless they can be placed in their appropriate genus

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 2:28pm

Someone who understands what changes have to be made

should spell out clearly what needs to be done - what species goes where, etc. Then we can ask John VanDyk to change the No Taxon pages into genus pages and it will be all done.

… john and jane balaban, 20 July, 2020 - 2:13pm

basically...

all the subgenera under Aphodius should be elevated to genus level, except for Aphodius. The only thing remaining in genus Aphodius should be A. fimetarius and A. pedellus.

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 2:18pm

Please continue to discuss this here

but if we decide to make these changes, please do not make new genus pages and do not move all the images. We can simply have John VanDyk change the no Taxon subgenus pages into genus pages and it will be done, clean and simple.

… john and jane balaban, 26 April, 2020 - 2:43pm

I won't make changes....

I don't have the skills LOL, but these changes should be made promptly!

… Blaine Mathison, 20 July, 2020 - 1:18pm

agree

I am good friends with Gordon, and the work they did elevating subgenera to genus better aligned the taxonomy with the Palearctic fauna. I think the only Nearctic species that stayed in Aphodius was A. fimetarius.

… Guy A. Hanley, 26 April, 2020 - 9:56am

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