<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>dwc:Genus</div><div><br></div><div>I think the definition "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, 'Arial Unicode MS', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; ">The full scientific name of the genus in which the taxon is classified." </span>is incomplete and only makes sense for valid/accepted taxon names. I think the definition should be changed so that the dwc:genus refers to the genus part of the name. For some synonyms, the genus part is different. In this case, why should the genus part refer to the genus of the accepted/valid taxon? It is already linked to that taxon via other methods and would inherit that information through the link. It's just an opportunity to create integrity conflicts as well as an opportunity to lose some valuable additional information. </div><div><br></div><div>Consider this record in the WoRMS database concerning my favorite fish:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=301162">http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=301162</a></div><div><br></div><div>Note that the parent (genus) for this synonym is the literal, nominal parent genus, not the genus for the valid name. Given the degree of homonymy among the genera this could provide useful and explicit linking to a parent genus records, particularly if it were included, like in this case, in the source dataset. The value in either cases is limited in the larger aggregate world due to the recommendation that dwc:Genus, like all the named higher taxon elements, be canonical.</div><div><br></div><div>On a related note then, I would recommend that for synonyms, the more normal and enriched dwc:parentNameUsageID should be used to retain this information. In other words, normally, a synonym is linked to the accepted/valid taxon via acceptedNameUsageID and dwc:parentNameUsageID is null. In this case, however, it should be used to </div><div><br></div><div>DR</div><br><div><div>On Nov 25, 2010, at 9:11 AM, Markus Döring wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>the denormalised single Linnean Rank terms are very, very helpful for sharing occurrence data.<br>They are the primary means to distinguish between homonyms when only a canonical name is given.<br>And they are found in many denormalised sources like spreadsheets. No doubt these are needed!<br><br>And yes, dwc:genus and dwc:subgenus according to the definition is for the *classification*, not the parsed name (even though this is mostly the same).<br><br>As far as I can tell the dwc changes we are discussing are still the same. Either:<br><br> A) add a canonicalName term<br>or<br> B) add an atomised term for genus/uninomial + infrageneric/uninomial<br><br>I think both options are a way to go.<br>A single canonical name if given correctly is very straight forward to parse, so personally I think this is easier than having multiple terms.<br>For the name part terms I think I would agree with Chuck that a single uninomial can be used for genus or infrageneric ranks.<br>As a canonical binomial would *not* include a subgenus or section, there is not need to have that parsed information as a term.<br>In case the scientificname actually IS the subgenus, the uninomial can be used.<br><br><br>Markus<br><br>On Nov 25, 2010, at 8:36, David Remsen (GBIF) wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Rich<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Your two statements below don't jibe well in this case. Putting <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">random concatenations of higher taxa into dwc:higherClassification <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">would make for a real mess. Having only the basic named Linnaean <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">ranks does ignore all of the intermediate ranks but it supports <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">conformity at least for those in a way that higherClassification <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">cannot as you lose the associated rank term. It also supports what I <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">think is a fairly substantial bloc of data that exists in a denormal <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">form with only (or nearly only) the basic Linnaean ranks in named rank <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">columns. Concatenating these into dwc:higherClassification would be <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">lossy in this case.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">My real concern, however, would be in trying to subsequently line up <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">multiple datasets where there were omissions in some higher ranks so <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that the concatenations were abbreviated. In other words<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Bivalvia:Mytildae:Mytilus edulis<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Mollusca:Mytiloidea:Mytilus: Mytilus edulis<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Animalia: Mollusca:Mytiloidea:Mytildae:Mytilus: Mytilus edulis<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">See <a href="http://code.google.com/p/gbif-ecat/wiki/Nom5ExampleMytilusedulis">http://code.google.com/p/gbif-ecat/wiki/Nom5ExampleMytilusedulis</a> <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for a real world example and, ignoring the other inherent messes, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">imagine trying to deal with this with no higher rank columns for <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">context and all those nulls removed (no fair keeping the delimiters <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for them either).<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">DR<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">On 25/11/2010, at 11:56 AM, Richard Pyle wrote:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">One golden rule of data management that I often<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">tell people is that it's often better to be consistent, then <br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">correct. That<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">is, something that's consistently incorrect can be corrected easily.<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Right -- you mean in the sense of Family, Order, Class, etc. <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Personally, I<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">think it would be "ideal" to eliminate these individual fields and <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">just use<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">dwc: higherClassification for this purpose. People with normalised <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">data can<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">represent it properly via parentNameUsage[ID] -- with the <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">understanding that<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">all names with a rank lower than genus would include the genus name as<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">uninomial.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">_______________________________________________<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">tdwg-content mailing list<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content">http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content</a><br></blockquote><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>