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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=567185120-13062010><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>It would certainly help if we could have the
tools/services/content/UIs in place to allow people who people taxonomically
identify occrence records to point-and-click among the options. However,
we don't need to have that infrastructure in place to get started.
Whenever I give advice to people setting up data-gathering protocols involving
occurrence records (of any kind), is to always always always *always* record the
field guide or taxonomic treatment that was use in establishing the
identification. Even if the person is an expert in the group, and
identified it from their brain, they should still include some sort of published
treatment as a "sensu" reference. Eventually, these treatments will get
plugged into the taxon concept "matrix", and the identification will have
taxon-concept context.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=567185120-13062010><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=567185120-13062010><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>The point is, we don't need to build the tools before people
can start capturing the information.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=567185120-13062010><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=567185120-13062010><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>Rich</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
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<FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> David Remsen (GBIF)
[mailto:dremsen@gbif.org] <BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, June 13, 2010 12:59
AM<BR><B>To:</B> Peter DeVries<BR><B>Cc:</B> David Remsen (GBIF); Richard
Pyle; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; Kevin Richards; Jerry Cooper; dmozzherin;
David Patterson<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept
thinking<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Pete - you just summed up much of where I left off in my just-sent post.
If we can present those curating occurrence records with a
comprehensive set of relevant concept options, ideally tied to reference
publications like field guides, etc., we can support the use of concept
identifiers in those records. That provides the basis for having
some idea of the process by which they determined what name to use.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>DR</DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>To Paddy et al. I don't know if we really know unless we have some idea
of the process by which they determined what name to use.</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>- Pete<BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:00 AM, Richard Pyle <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:deepreef@bishopmuseum.org">deepreef@bishopmuseum.org</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
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<DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN>What
you're asking for would certainly be nice! But I was aiming more for
what you described as "an improvement". Baby steps....
:-)</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial><SPAN></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial><SPAN>Seriously, though -- I agree taxonomists have failed to
be sufficiently explicit in their writings over the centuries to provide
the raw material for machine-generated reasoning and inferencing through
the content of their documents. However, I'm not so sure they have
failed to provide sufficient information to allow for (mostly) reliable
and accurate human- (or at least taxonomist-) generated reasoning and
inferencing. That's why I think a key aspect of all of this --
especially for legacy content -- is third-party assertions. I don't
think it's true that "most" species descriptions result in persons 1&2
assinging a given specimen to two separate concepts. But certainly
there are enough to represent a non-trivial problem.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial><SPAN></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT color=#0000ff size=2
face=Arial><SPAN>Rich</SPAN></FONT></DIV><BR>
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<DIV class=im><B>From:</B> Peter DeVries [mailto:<A
href="mailto:pete.devries@gmail.com"
target=_blank>pete.devries@gmail.com</A>] <BR></DIV><B>Sent:</B>
Saturday, June 12, 2010 7:24 PM<BR><B>To:</B> Richard Pyle<BR><B>Cc:</B>
David Remsen (GBIF); <A href="mailto:tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org"
target=_blank>tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org</A>; Kevin Richards; Jerry
Cooper; dmozzherin; David Patterson<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re:
[tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=h5>
<DIV></DIV>I think that the problem is that most species descriptions
are written a way that person1 interprets specimenA as conceptB and
person2 interprets specimenA and ConceptC.
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>This needs to be made more scientific so that one can test what
proportions of specimens actually conform to the description
(concept).</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>These descriptions should be open, world readable and
reference-able via a URI.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Respectfully,</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>- Pete</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>** There also seems to be mismatch between the concept the
human identifier choose (often via a key) and the species description
(concept) to which you are saying their data applies.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Richard Pyle
<SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:deepreef@bishopmuseum.org"
target=_blank>deepreef@bishopmuseum.org</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT><BR>> That said
modeling relationships between taxonomic publications where<BR>>
the authors actually read the original species description,
reviewed<BR>> the type specimens, and thought about the actual
species conscription is<BR>appropriate.<BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV>This is the sort of things the Meta-Authorities would take into
account when<BR>selecting a "follow-this-treatment" Usage-Instance for
the preferred<BR>treatment of a name.<BR><BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV>> Also consider that a large proportion of specimens are
misidentified,<BR>> and it occurs to me that modeling things like
species occurrences as<BR>> if they are Puma concolor (Linnaeus,
1771) sensu stricto is probably<BR>> not appropriate. At best they
are something like (Felis concolor /<BR>> Puma concolor) with some
significant level of error.<BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV>GNA can't helpw ith that directly -- but it can help indirectly.
Imagine a<BR>service that takes ever specimen in a given
collection's database, and runs<BR>it against a mapping service as I
described in the previous message. I can<BR>easily imagine a
GIS-based algorithm that finds "outliers" -- that is<BR>occurrence
records that appear to be outside the distribution based on
the<BR>occurrence records from other sources. A clver/robust
such algorithm could<BR>probably even discern whether the outlier
likely represented a range<BR>extension (e.g. poorly-known species,
plausible extansion), vs. a<BR>misidentification (e.g., well-known
species and/or common<BR>misidentification).<BR><BR>This would lead to
a set of flagged records from the collection that might<BR>be
misidentified.<BR><BR>Rich<BR><BR><BR></DIV>_______________________________________________<BR>tdwg-content
mailing list<BR>
<DIV><A href="mailto:tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org"
target=_blank>tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org</A><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content"
target=_blank>http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content</A><BR></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR
clear=all><BR>--
<BR>----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Pete
DeVries<BR>Department of Entomology<BR>University of Wisconsin -
Madison<BR>445 Russell Laboratories<BR>1630 Linden Drive<BR>Madison, WI
53706<BR>GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <BR>About the GeoSpecies Knowledge
Base<BR>------------------------------------------------------------<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR
clear=all><BR>--
<BR>----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Pete
DeVries<BR>Department of Entomology<BR>University of Wisconsin -
Madison<BR>445 Russell Laboratories<BR>1630 Linden Drive<BR>Madison, WI
53706<BR>GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <BR>About the GeoSpecies Knowledge
Base<BR>------------------------------------------------------------<BR></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>