[tdwg-content] Does a species entail a specific classification or does it have many classifications.

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

Hi Pete,

To answer your question:

> Does a species entail a specific
> classification or does it have many classifications.

A species "concept" (or the various applicable names) is independent of classifications, one or many, which may be applied to it, with one exception: the name that is applicable at any time will depend on the genus within which it is placed in a particular preferred classification scheme. Above that level, it is truly independent. In other words, the task of delimiting and naming species (taxonomy, also nomenclature) and the task of arranging taxa in groups, at least above genus level (systematics) are separate and almost completely independent of one another.

Actually there is one other exception - if a species is moved between codes (e.g. something described as a protist turns out to be a bacterium or an animal fossil turns out to be a plant), the applicable name may also need to be changed because of code-specific nomenclatural provisions. However again, the species concept (taxonomy) has not changed, just the name (nomenclature).

So as a consequence of the above, one is free to apply either a single preferred higher classification, or multiple ones, or none (so long as the placement in a particular genus is clearly indicated) to a particular species concept, or change these through time, without affecting the latter in the main.

Not sure if this helps...

Regards - Tony
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-
> bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Gregor Hagedorn
> Sent: Friday, 26 November 2010 8:14 AM
> To: Peter DeVries
> Cc: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; Markus Döring (GBIF)
> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Does a species entail a specific
> classification or does it have many classifications.
> 
> > If this is so trivial then why does GBIF have one map for Felis concolor
> and
> > one map for Puma concolor?
> > also why does the Barcode of life not have all their Aedes triseriatus
> and
> > Ochlerotatus triseriatus mapped to one id rather than one for each name
> and
> > misspelling?
> 
> I think it shows that the real problem is not URLs versus strings, the
> problem is the knowledge behind these strings.
> 
> >> se:Puma_concolor_sec._Smith
> > How many lexical variants of the string above are there likely to be?
> 
> This is a misunderstanding, my example is a URI, with owl:sameAs etc.
> behind
> 
> 
> > What you see as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassia_(legume) is
> > actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassia_%28legume%29
> > Things like & need to be replace with & Note that if you are not
> careful
> > this can become &&&&& as it is re-encoded.
> 
> It certainly happens that bugs appear even after 20 years of using
> URLs, but it is a class of highly generic bugs in any web-software. It
> does not appear a good argument to me.
> 
> I am not aware that people have problems linking to Wikipedia or
> DBpedia, which happens to use exactly these human-proofreadable URIs.
> 
> -------------
> 
> > Also aren't TDWG URI's supposed to be opaque?
> 
> Why do we use dwc:scientificName instead of
> dwc:entity013030d4a93abdd6206234b683c51b31 ?
> 
> I am sure the semantic vocabulary management system for DarwinCore
> would show the proper label for the opaque URI... :-)
> 
> Basically, programmers demand human readability for their own domain,
> but deny it to the biodiversity domain itself...
> 
> I fully believe you and all who are doing it do it with careful
> consideration of the needs as they see it. I just believe that those
> taking these decisions have a specific perspective and use case
> scenarios, that involves biologists only after the perfect software
> user interface system is finished. I challenge the last assumption ...
> 
> Redesign tdwg vocabularies and Darwincore with opaque
> dwc:concept013030d4a93abdd6206234b683c51b31 URIs instead of
> dwc:commonName (where I really prefer the synonym vernacularName - or
> is it the other way round?) and proof that it works well for
> communication and discussion.
> 
> I believe Opaque IDs work OK if they can be systematically and
> unambiguously assigned. Taxon names and concepts can not, they need to
> be discussed and "debugged" probably over decades. Just like tdwg
> vocabularies -- just 6 orders of magnitude greater scope.
> 
> Gregor
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