<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Re: Topic 3: (Fauna Europaea and gender agreement)
GUIDs f</title></head><body>
<div>Dear Donald,</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000080">Just catching up. There is one small practical
point I'd like to understand about Fauna Europaea. You wrote
the following:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000080"> </font>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">How is Fauna
Europaea organised?</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- Basically
we have a list of 'naked' taxon names (from the infraspecific level to
Kingdom) including full authorship for at least the generic and
(infra)specific levels. All those taxon names (read: name elements)
have unique id's.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- All
epithets are linked to their original genus, so original combinations
can be reconstructed. This is nearly, but not completely similar to
basionyms in botany because gender unequivalencies are not necessarily
corrected.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- Species
names are created by recursively linking species-group names to
genus-group names. Genus names are parents of specific epithets, and
specific epithets are parents of infraspecific
epithets.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- Subjective
synonyms are specific epithets recursively linked as childs to
'accepted' specific epithets. For objective synonymy genus names
synonyms are recursively linked as childs to 'accepted' genus
names.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">-
Conclusion: Names (=naked name element/author/year plus original genus
for epithets) are for eternity. Species names (so your taxon names)
are temporary concepts (if they are not basionyms) which don't have
identifiers and which are not kept in the database after taxonomic
changes else then by version control.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- However,
an unique species name id can be easily artificially created by
merging both generic and epithet id's (a trick we also use for
Species2000).</font></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman">- Taxon
concepts are not explicitly covered.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000080"> </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000080">Can you explain a little more about how you handle
epithet agreement ("gender unequivalencies") in this system?
I realise this is tangential from the main GUID discussion, but it
does seem to be a complication to the task of treating the epithet as
the primary unit.</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>We asked our experts to provide the original genera of all
included epithets. We had a hard time in the beginning to convince
especially the Coleoptera and Diptera experts for the need of this
additional details, because it is not part of their standard practice
to keep this kind of information.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>For synonyms there are hardly gender unequivalencies, because for
the epithets mainly the original spellings are included which (by
definition) follow the gender of the original genus.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>For accepted species names we don't keep the original spellings
of epithets when the endings of epithets shift because of combinations
with counter-gendered genus names.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>So we can have the situation:</div>
<div><i>Bruchela pygmaea</i> Gyllenhal 1833 [Original genus<i>
Urodon</i>]</div>
<div>(see: http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=186668)</div>
<div>Very likely the real original combination has been:</div>
<div><i>Urodon pygmaus</i> Gyllenhal 1833, but we don't keep
'<i>pygmaus</i>' as gender variant.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>For Fauna Europaea this is not a principal (taxonomic) issue,
only a technical issue in how to implement fuzzy search facilities
(e.g. by trunking all taxon name endings and replace them by wild
cards) to lead users to the relevant currently accepted species name.
However, personally I would prefer to include all original spellings
of epithets in Fauna Europaea the near future.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>------</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>An interesting additional story on the subject of gender
endings:</div>
<div>Years ago most Lepidopterist's gave up the effort of trying to
harmonize the genders of genus names and adjectives. It was expected
during the last years that at some moment the ICZN would accept this
practise. Recently the European Society of Lepidopterist did accept
this practice, however, the ICZN did not. Because the ICZN was our
holy book in Fauna Europaea and the zoological code commission much
represented within our committees the Lepidopterist's were forced
strictly to follow the code and to adapt their data as such. Due to
this fact now the absurd situation exists that the Fauna Europaea data
are incongruent with Lepidoptera data in other resources with respect
to adjectives endings. Therefore within the next version of Fauna
Europaea we will (explicitly) include two variant gender spellings of
Lepidoptera species.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>------</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Next week I will meet the ZooBank people in London and ask about
their opinion on keeping orthographic variants for genus names (e.g.
shifts from 'Dasia' to 'Dasya'), adjectives (gender endings) and
author names ('Müller' and 'Mueller').</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Kind regards,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Yde</div>
</body>
</html>