Many thanks, John.  This is extremely helpful!

First of all, in the context of a distinct term for basisOfRecord, I see absolutely no problem with adding the term “MaterialSample”. I fully support your proposal (although if this is simply a basisOfRecord term to be used alongside Occurrence, PreservedSpecimen, LivingSpecimen, FossilSpecimen, HumanObservation, MachineObservation; does it need a defined “ID” term? Do all the others have defined “ID” terms?).

However, I’m excited by this conversation because I think we are very close to solving a bigger problem (which was the focus of the 2010 discussion on this list around “IndividualOrganism”).

This bigger problem involves the need for a defined “concept” (I’m hesitating to say “class”), and an associated “ID”, in dwc that refers to the physical/material basis of an Occurrence.  We don’t yet have a term for this concept in dwc (“IndividualID” hinted at the need for one, but that term was not well-defined, and the term itself seems to cause confusion).  As Steve Baskauf and I have both been advocating for the establishment of new class in dwc for exactly this purpose, I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page about what each concept is.  The more I understand about what you need for “materalSample”, the more convinced I am that both of our needs can be met with the same concept.

I am perfectly happy to adopt the term “MaterialSample”, but I guess it all boils down to this: In order for something to be a “MaterialSample”, must it necessarily be removed from nature?   

If the answer is “No”, then I think we can merge the two concepts into one.

If the answer is “Yes”, then I think “materialSample” is best characterized as a subclass of what Steve and I have been pushing for (setting aside, for the moment, the additional complexity of taxonomically homogeneous vs. heterogeneous).

In the latter case, I would define the superclass (whatever term is used for it), along the lines of:

"The category of information pertaining to the physical basis of a sampling, subsampling, or observational event. In biological collections, the [SuperclassTerm] is typically a defined group of organisms, a single whole organism, or a part of a whole organism that is collected or otherwise documented in nature, and either preserved, destructively processed, or documented through some form of Evidence (such as images or reported visual observations)."

Aloha,

Rich

From: jdeck88@gmail.com [mailto:jdeck88@gmail.com] On Behalf Of John Deck
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 4:01 AM
To: Richard Pyle
Cc: Markus Döring; Steve Baskauf; TDWG Content Mailing List; Robert Whitton; Ramona Walls
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] New Darwin Core terms proposed relating to material samples

Since the original proposal was from a group of folks, we decided to put our heads together to construct a general response to the various issues and ideas expressed on this thread.

John Deck for Rob Guralnick, Ramona Walls, and John Wieczorek

In the text of the  issue submitted for MaterialSample (https://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=167) we noted cases where the current basisOfRecord terms pertaining to the Occurrence class (Occurrence, PreservedSpecimen, LivingSpecimen, FossilSpecimen, HumanObservation, MachineObservation) do not adequately cover certain cases, including: environmental sample (for metagenomic analysis), transcriptomes (measuring genes but not taxa), and destructive samples (e.g. tissues destructively sampled in order to generate genomic DNA).  The term we borrowed from OBI (http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/OBI_0000747) is broad enough to be utilized across various cases that fulfill our criteria while still maintaining a consistent, clear and human understandable meaning.  For our purposes, we can think of “Material Sample” as any type of matter that we can use in order derive further evidence needed for identifications, and taxa, whether it is taxonomically homogenous, heterogenous, a single individual, sets of individuals, or populations.

How is MaterialSample different from Individual?  The intent of individualID is fairly clear:  since an Occurrence represents an organism at a place and time (per Markus’ email), the individualID term allows us to assign an instance identifier for a particular organism that can be present in multiple events. MaterialSampleID, on the other hand, is intended to allow users to say that the basis of an occurence is a material entity (i.e. matter) that has been sampled according to some particular method. Whether or not this material entity is an individual (sensu individualID in DwC) is an independent axis of classification. As was already pointed out, there is no restriction on specifying that an occurence is associated with more than one type, so any occurrence can have both an individualID and a materialSampleID.

We maintain our position on the proposal for MaterialSample as a value for the basisOfRecord, with an associated materialSampleID to identify instances of them. Per Steve’s initial comments, we have already withdrawn the proposal for a MaterialSample class distinct from that in the Darwin Core type vocabulary, which should make it easier to evaluate the implications of what we’re discussing.  

********************

NOTES, MaterialSample from OBI:

OBI has fairly broad definitions of samples & specimens that are meant to be utilized across many different scientific activities.  Material Sample is defined as a “material entity that has the material sample role”, while a material sample role is defined as “ a specimen role borne by a material entity that is the output of a material sampling process”, and a material sampling process is “a specimen gathering process with the objective to obtain a specimen that is representative of the input material entity”.  

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Richard Pyle <deepreef@bishopmuseum.org> wrote:

Hi Markus,

Great question!  Particularly because this is exactly the sort of use case
we designed our model around.

> if you take a tissue sample of the same tree every year, would the
identifier
> in individualID be the same for all of them or be different? WIth the
current
> dwc:individualID definition it would be the same for all samples. If I
> understand you correct each sample would have its own "individual"
> identifier in your proposal? It can't see how you can collapse these two
things
> into one definition.

No, that is not how we would handle it.

In our model, there would be one IndividualID to represent the tree,
spanning the time period beginning (more or less) when the seed was
germinated, until the time at which the entire physical structure of the
tree was disintegrated.  It is an individual tree.

There would be multiple Occurrence instances, for each time that someone
observed or sampled or otherwise wished to document some condition of that
tree. All of these Occurrence instances would refer to the same individualID
value (i.e., the "tree").  In the example above, this means there would be a
different Occurrence instance for each year that a sample is taken --
because in each case, an assertion that the full tree existed at a certain
time and place can be made (I understand that trees tend not to move around
very much, so the Location for each event associated with each Occurrence
would, in this case, remain the same; but the other Event properties -- such
as eventID, samplingProtocol, samplingEffort, eventDate, eventTime,
startDayOfYear, endDayOfYear, year, month, day, verbatimEventDate, habitat,
fieldNumber, fieldNotes, eventRemarks -- would be documented accordingly for
each sampling Occurrence instance).

Suppose that the tree is visited every month, but only sampled once per
year.  In that case, there would be an Occurrence record for every monthly
visit.  In other words, an Occurrence instance exists regardless of whether
a physical sample was made or not.  Any in-situ images made of the tree
would likewise be associated with the specific Occurrence instance, and each
image would represent a separate instance of "Evidence".

Now, let's focus on the annual samplings.  Every time a new sample is taken
from the tree, at least one new instance of Individual (with a unique
individualID value) is created to represent the sample.  This sample
(individual instance) may be a "gathering" (set of multiple individual
specimens gathered at the same time), or it may be a single specimen, or it
may be simply a tissue sample intended for destructive analysis.  In any
case, it's a new individual instance derived from the "parent" individual
instance representing the whole tree.  In our implementation, "Individual"
can be hierarchical, such that a whole-organism tree can be sub-sampled with
many "child" instances of "gatherings" (say, one gathering each year), and
each gathering may have multiple child "specimen" individuals (e.g.
individual botanical sheets created from the multiple items of a single
gathering), and each specimen may have further "child" subsamples extracted
for DNA analysis (or whatever), and the hierarchy can continue on down to
whatever derivatives that people feel a need to keep track of (e.g.,
aliquot).

The point is, all Individual instances are well-defined physical objects (or
well-defined sets of physical objects), and they can be arranged in a
n-tiered hierarchy.

Moreover, each Individual that can be characterized as a "sample" (what we
refer to as a "CollectionObject") may also have a property value for
"CollectionOccurrenceID" -- which refers to the specific Occurrence instance
at which the sample was obtained.

So, for example, if the tree is visited on May 27, 2013 and a specimen
(sample) is taken, then:
1) An Event instance is generated to represent the event where the tree was
visited;
2) An Occurrence instance is generated, which refers to the new EventID, and
the existing IndividualID for the whole tree, and includes whatever other
Occurrence properties are relevant for the tree at the time of this
Occurrence
3) An Individual instance is generated for the specimen, which has a
property value for parentIndividualID that refers to the individualID for
the whole tree, and a property value for collectionOccurrenceID that refers
the Occurrence instance where the specimen was collected.

So, to summarize the answer to your question:
- There are multiple Occurrence instances that refer to the same Individual
instance representing the whole tree (and, hence can be collapsed to the
same IndividualID value).
- Any Individual can have derivatives that are themselves unique Individual
instances.
- Individuals are arranged hierarchically, and certain properties can be
inherited up or down the hierarchy, depending on the properties and their
associated logical constraints.

At some point, I will assemble a set of other specific use cases, and how we
manage them through our use of the "Individual" instance (although I will
probably not use the word "Individual", as this seems to cause too much
confusion in these discussions).

Aloha,
Rich

--
John Deck
(541) 321-0689