Forwarded for Jerry, as his email was bounced...
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Cooper Sent: Friday, 11 June 2010 9:43 a.m. To: Richard Pyle; Kevin Richards; 'Peter DeVries' Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: RE: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking
I hesitate to contribute to this debate, but it is useful. Kevin articulated an issue that has bugged me forever.
I think we do need an agreed way for identifying a 'set of name/article pointers' that define a useful grouping (which I would hesitate to call a concept). I don't think an open-ended linked data chain does provide that defined grouping.
Pete's point about the two different name/article intersections referring to the same 'concept' is resolved by the fact they are based on the same type, and that issue I prefer to see resolved at the nomenclatural level by protologue & type-collection pointers (as in the GNUB model).
I think it would help if we took a step back from using the term 'taxon concept' and agreed on what we are trying to achieve by linking/grouping the various constructs, and then arrive at a more precisely defined vocabulary for name/article intersections, and the open-ended universe of related stuff.
I suspect we will find that different end-user groups (e.g. hard core nomenclaturalists, nomenclaturally savvy taxonomists, most taxonomists, and the most important group ... non taxonomic savvy end-users of taxonomic services) all have differing and overlapping requirements, and a different understanding of the words being used.
Despite my peripheral involvement in taxon concept space for many years I suspect the above comments reflect a deep seated blinkered view that stops me seeing how it should work given the existing vocabulary!
Jerry
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Pyle [mailto:deepreef@bishopmuseum.org] Sent: Friday, 11 June 2010 9:03 a.m. To: Kevin Richards; 'Peter DeVries' Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; Jerry Cooper Subject: RE: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking
This is something that has been slightly confused over the years, ie there
seems to be 2 ways of defining a "taxon concept":
- A Taxon Name (nomenclatural data) + Literature Reference - ie Name X as
defined in article Y
- As you have said a grouping of data that define a taxon concept (Name +
Reference + Synonyms + Type Specimen + Protologue, .)
I don't think of these as two different ways of defining a concept. I see #1 as a way of *pointing to* a taxon concept definition, and #2 as the concept definition itself. Basically, #1 (usage instance) is effectively a container or an identifier for the taxon concept definition.
However, there is somewhat of a dichotmy in the way that taxon concepts are defined - one is by included members (i.e., specimens, presumably including at least one name-bearing type specimen, from which a name-label is derived), the other is by properties (i.e. characters -- morphologic, genetic, or otherwise). In practice, most concept definitions include both. But I think the "definition" of the concept (i.e., the circumscription boundaries) is the same for both -- it's just that those boundaries can be articulated in different ways (i.e., by examplar members, and by purported properties).
1 has been covered quite well with the various schemas we have come up with over the years, but I think these schemas have failed to capture 2 very well (the data fields are there, but the encompassing ID is not),
ie
Agreed -- sort of. I think the schemas are there, but have not been organized appropriately (yet). See below.
TaxonName ID = N1, FullName = "Aus bus" Reference ID = R1, Citation = "Richards, how to define a taxon concept" TaxonConcept ID = C1, NameID = N1, ReferenceID = R1 BUT, the taxon concept C1 does not encompass all related data that defines
that concept (synonyms etc)
No, but it could, through a network of linkages, as I tried to describe in one of my recent posts.
To do that we need more Concept Ids and relationships between these
concepts, eg
Exactly! And we need a schema-based process to capture the relevant information (diagnoses, etc.), anchored to the Concept Ids. At a basic level, Plazi/TaxonX does this. However, it usually only goes as far as the text-blob. To parse the text blob, we need to either look towards SDD (for character-based concept definition stuff) or DwC/Occurrence (for specimen-based concept definition stuff).
ConceptRelationship ID=CR1 ConceptFromID=C2, ConceptToID =C1,
RelationshipType='has preferred name'
Yes, I agree we need this as well! But again, I see this as a way of networking pointers to taxon concept defintions, not describing the definitions themselves.
Man, these conversations really hurt my brain.... :-)
Aloha, Rich
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