Wait now Im confused. How else would one represent the genus in the WoRMS example? Surely no one would put Pomatomus as the genus for a record representing the binomial "Gasterosteus saltatrix". Would they???
I agree with Dave -- the definition of the term "genus" is not right. It should follow the template for the definition of specificEpithet:
"The genus part of the scientificName."
Also, I don't like the inclusion of the genus within the definition of subgenus term. I would change it to:
"The subgenus part of the scientificName."
I think the problem is that these definitions do not account for the idea that records representing synonyms would be passed around using these terms. They were originally created as taxonomic attributes of occurrence records, rather than as primary taxon name records.
Obviously, terms like taxonomicStatus and acceptedNameUsage[ID] acknowledge that synonyms would be passed around, but I don't think the definitions of the rank-specific terms were updated accordingly.
It gets a bit fuzzy for names above the rank of genus. For example, if someone passes a family name represented as a synonym of a different family name; what is put for the "family" term? The synonym family name, or the valid family name? At first blush, I would think the synonym (literal) family name. However, that would require a change to the definition of the dwc:family term (and all the other higher-rank terms).
Rich
From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of David Remsen (GBIF) Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 10:39 PM To: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org List Cc: Paul Murray Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwCscientificName: good or bad? [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
dwc:Genus
I think the definition "The full scientific name of the genus in which the taxon is classified." 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.
Consider this record in the WoRMS database concerning my favorite fish:
http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=301162
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.
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
DR
On Nov 25, 2010, at 9:11 AM, Markus Döring wrote:
the denormalised single Linnean Rank terms are very, very helpful for sharing occurrence data. They are the primary means to distinguish between homonyms when only a canonical name is given. And they are found in many denormalised sources like spreadsheets. No doubt these are needed!
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).
As far as I can tell the dwc changes we are discussing are still the same. Either:
A) add a canonicalName term or B) add an atomised term for genus/uninomial + infrageneric/uninomial
I think both options are a way to go. A single canonical name if given correctly is very straight forward to parse, so personally I think this is easier than having multiple terms. For the name part terms I think I would agree with Chuck that a single uninomial can be used for genus or infrageneric ranks. As a canonical binomial would *not* include a subgenus or section, there is not need to have that parsed information as a term. In case the scientificname actually IS the subgenus, the uninomial can be used.
Markus
On Nov 25, 2010, at 8:36, David Remsen (GBIF) wrote:
Rich
Your two statements below don't jibe well in this case. Putting random concatenations of higher taxa into dwc:higherClassification would make for a real mess. Having only the basic named Linnaean ranks does ignore all of the intermediate ranks but it supports conformity at least for those in a way that higherClassification cannot as you lose the associated rank term. It also supports what I think is a fairly substantial bloc of data that exists in a denormal form with only (or nearly only) the basic Linnaean ranks in named rank columns. Concatenating these into dwc:higherClassification would be lossy in this case.
My real concern, however, would be in trying to subsequently line up multiple datasets where there were omissions in some higher ranks so that the concatenations were abbreviated. In other words
Bivalvia:Mytildae:Mytilus edulis Mollusca:Mytiloidea:Mytilus: Mytilus edulis Animalia: Mollusca:Mytiloidea:Mytildae:Mytilus: Mytilus edulis
See http://code.google.com/p/gbif-ecat/wiki/Nom5ExampleMytilusedulis for a real world example and, ignoring the other inherent messes, imagine trying to deal with this with no higher rank columns for context and all those nulls removed (no fair keeping the delimiters for them either).
DR
On 25/11/2010, at 11:56 AM, Richard Pyle wrote:
One golden rule of data management that I often tell people is that it's often better to be consistent, then correct. That is, something that's consistently incorrect can be corrected easily.
Right -- you mean in the sense of Family, Order, Class, etc. Personally, I think it would be "ideal" to eliminate these individual fields and just use dwc: higherClassification for this purpose. People with normalised data can represent it properly via parentNameUsage[ID] -- with the understanding that all names with a rank lower than genus would include the genus name as uninomial.
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