[tdwg-content] DwC taxonomic terms
Markus Döring
m.doering at mac.com
Thu Aug 6 14:31:59 CEST 2009
Dear John & DwC friends,
after finally having time to review the current dwc terms again I came
across a couple of issues I'd like to see discussed or even changed. I
am working for nearly 1 year now with the new terms during their
development, especially with the new and modified taxonomic terms. So
far they work very well in practice, but there are a few improvements
I can think of, mostly related to the latest changes shortly before
the public review started. I have added them as separate issues to the
google code site, but list them here in one go. The number of issues
is larger than I hoped for, but most of them are minor terminology
issues for consistency and not touching the core meaning of the terms.
Markus
---
#47 rename basionym(ID) to originalName(ID)
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=47
The intend for this term is really to reflect where a name originally
comes from in case it is a recombination. The term basionym is mostly
used with botanists and covers only the cases when an epithet remains
the same, i.e. not replacement names. The best matching, broader term
therefore is originalName I think. Changes have to be done to both the
verbatim name and the ID.
Good examples for synonyms, basionyms, replaced names etc can be found
in this document:
http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/PROTEM/TAXSIG/taxonomy_synonyms_examples.pdf
---
#48 remove taxonConceptID
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=48
The conceptID is intended to state that 2 name usages / potential taxa
are the same, even if they use a different name. This is a special
case of true concept relations and I would much prefer to see this
covered in a dedicated extension treating all concept relations,
especially frequent cases such as includes, overlaps, etc. I am more
than willing to define such an extension
---
#49 rename scientificNameID, acceptedScientificNameID and
higherTaxonNameID
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=49
no matter what the final term names are I think the 3 ones should be
consistent. Originally it was intended to call them taxonID,
acceptedTaxonID and higherTaxonID
with a loose definition of a taxon, more based on the idea of that all
terms here are taxonomic terms and therefore contain taxon in their
name. The current version scientificNameID, acceptedScientificNameID
and higherTaxonNameID intends to do the same I believe, but the
terminology invites people to use them not referring to each other
from what I have seen so far in practice.
Concrete recomendations:
#49a replace scientificNameID with nameUsageID
There is the need to uniquely identify a taxon concept with a given
name, a name usage. A nameID suggests the name is unique which it isnt
if combined with an sec reference aka taxonAccordingTo. A taxonID
suggests to refer to a distinct taxon concept. A name usage seems the
smallest entity and can therefore be used to act as a sort of unique
key for names, taxa, taxon concepts or just usages of a name. All
other taxonomic dwc ID terms can and should point to a name usage id
then. This makes me think if most/all other IDs should reflect this in
their names, see below.
It could make sense to keep scientificNameID as a ID to the name as
defined by a nomenclator. But this ID can also be used as a name usage
id, so in order to gain clarity I would prefer to have the term removed.
#49b rename acceptedScientificName(ID) to acceptedNameUsage(ID)
this term should point to the name usage that reflects the "accepted"
taxon in case of synonyms, no matter if they are objective or
subjective. AcceptedScientificName sounds more like a nomenclatural
exercise and in accordance with #3 (nameUsageID) the term
acceptedNameUsage(ID) would be the best fit in my eyes.
#49c rename higherTaxonName(ID) to higherNameUsage(ID)
in consistency with nameUsage & acceptedNameUsage
---
#50 remove recommendation to concatenate multiple values, especially
for higherTaxonName/higherNameUsage
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=50
similar to originalName or acceptedNameUsage this term is meant to be
a verbatim pointer to the higher taxon as an alternative way of using
higherTaxonNameID. Therefore it should only contain a single name, the
direct parent, in my eyes. There are also already the 7 mayor ranks as
separate terms that can be used to express a flattened hierarchy.
I am aware DwC suggests to use concatenated lists in a single term in
other places, e.g. , but I believe it would be better to keep the
meaning singular and use multiple instances of that term to express
multiple values. Dublin Core also recommends to use multiple XML
elements for multiple values, see recommendation 5 in http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-xml-guidelines/
---
#51 rename namePublicationID to namePublishedInID
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=51
for consistency with namePublishedIn
---
#52 rename (verbatim)scientificNameRank to (verbatim)rank
http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=52
to avoid discussions about whether the rank belongs to the name or the
taxon and also because its nice and short and there is no clash in
biological terminology.
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