Name matching of species not in ALA taxonomy: is defaulting to genus level instead of "Unmatched taxa" (in legacy Lists tool)

[kylie-m]

This relates to Lists and Biosecurity Alerts, for Systems to investigate

We’ve got an issue with names matching that needs to be resolved for [biosecurity] alerts. When some species are uploaded into the list tool they are being matched to genus instead of species. This appears to occur when the species is not in our taxonomy, but the genus is. This behaviour is not suitable for alerts, as for some species we’ll send lots of alerts that are not relevant. (Eg. Camponotus ants have 1000's of species in the genus).

An example of this occurring can be found in this list: https://lists.ala.org.au/speciesListItem/list/dr27132?q=&offset=0&max=10&sort=itemOrder Specifically, for Caulerpa cylindracea, Caulerpa taxiflia & Gambusia affinis, we need these species to be “Unmatched Taxa”

• raised by @turley85 in #ala-alerts https://atlaslivingaustralia.slack.com/archives/C062NE4KC4A/p1720495104919959

[adam-collins]

It is using the provided name and the comma delimited synonyms for searching. I cannot find where it could be getting the matched name.

To investigate further more details are required

• the email
• location of the alert (I failed to find it in either test or prod)

[turley85]

Thanks @adam-collins,

I'm attempting to add the alert into prod now - and no email has been sent. But from what you've said it sounds like the alert should work as intended - ignoring matched name.

Regardless, can we modify names matching to so it doesn't match to a higher taxonomy. At the moment, there's likely a lot of species in the alert lists that are not in our taxonomy but otherwise matching. I use the "unmatched taxa" function in lists to harvest these missing species and give them to the Taxonomy WG for consideration for adding both the Ala's taxonomic backbone.

[turley85]

Another related issue. I've been adding kingdom to the lists to assist with names matching homonyms. However, this is resulting in unmatched taxa being successfully matched to kingdom. Eg.

Same issue here in that I need unmatched taxa to be flagged as unmatched for taxonomic review/resolution.