Taxonomic resolution

[SimonGoring]

The taxonomy tables in the neotoma pacage deal exclusively with pollen for the time being. I've spoken with Joan Bunbury and she's suggested that Ostracodes don't need any kind of synonomy as they currently stand.

Other than that it's not clear what other kinds of synonomies might be needed.

For Pollen, some of the things we're working on:

• [ ] European synonomy
• [ ] New taxon synonomy Specifically (per communication with Sakari Salonen:
• [ ] Rule for Digitalis
• [ ] Confirm that Huperzia is thrown out, and not lumped in POLYPOD?
• [ ] Can you confirm the grouping for the various Polygonum types? Into how many groups do we lump?
• [ ] If I understand correctly, Neotoma makes no attempt to throw out anthropogenics, and especially the anthropogenic varieties of Poaceae?
• [ ] Delphinium
• [ ] Hippocrepis comosa
• [ ] Mentha
• [ ] Ononis
• [ ] Pedicularis
• [ ] Phaeoceros laevis
• [ ] Pulmonaria
• [ ] Sarothamnus scoparius
• [ ] Stachys / Stachys sylvestris
• [ ] Thymus

[jssalonen]

These pollen synthesis issues came up during our work to bring a (northern) subset of the EMPD down to a taxonomic level ~similar to e.g. Whitmore.

The major issues are Huperzia selago and the anthropogenic Poaceae, as they occur in fair numbers in the data. The others are pretty inconsequential, at least as far as the EMPD synthesis is concerned.

About Huperzia -- it's actually not within Polypodiaceae taxonomically. It used to be within Lycopodium (and is included there in some 1970s pollen literature), so it might be included in some older analysts' "Lycopodium undiff." counts. However, morphologically it's quite different from the basic spore type which includes Lycopodium annotinum, L. clavatum, and Diphasiastrum. It's basically a separate type.

I think the real question then is whether it's been reliably separated in other people's work. Within the EMPD I observe that Huperzia is only separated in samples analyzed by a handful of analysts from Helsinki and Bergen. This is not consistent with the modern distribution, so based on the EMPD data, I think it tends to not be reliably distinguished. Overall, I favour throwing it out.

Regarding anthropogenic Poaceae -- I think I also favour lumping it with Poaceae. The major reason being that I think a lot of anthropogenic Poaceae will be in people's undifferentiated Poaceae/Gramineae counts anyway. So it's not really possibly to separate the anthropogenic/non-anthropogenic varieties.