Whoops, did I say most? That was probably an overstatement.. sorry!<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>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<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>
<blockquote style="border-left:#0000ff 2px solid;padding-left:5px;margin-left:5px;margin-right:0px" dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en-us" align="left">
<hr>
<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><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>
<blockquote style="border-left:#ccc 1px solid;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">
<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>