Hi Nate,
I agree completely, and yes -- I do think it is relevant. What we haven't really discussed in detail on this thread is how you scope an "Individual". I think the more examples we give for how it's useful to exapnd the concept of an "Individual" beyond a single organism, and into things like small groups, large groups, colonies, etc. -- perhaps all the way up to populations or even taxa -- the better able we'll be to get our collective heads around things. I had never previously considered your example of a group in the living organism sense (evemn though my first job was at a public aquarium!), so I think this is very useful to toss into the mix.
Aloha, Rich
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From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Nate Flesness Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:59 AM To: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg-content] newbie comments on Individual
This is a tough list to join - lots of specialized vocabulary and concepts (its purpose of course)
- I've been "lurking" awhile, and this is the first time I think I understand and might have something small to add from the live collections point of view.
Speaking from 30+ years at ISIS working with biodiversity data from 800+ institutions (zoos, aquariums, etc) on live animal individuals and groups,
I'd expand Steve Baskauf's comment to say people need BOTH the ability to handle individual animals (a wolf) and ALSO the situation
Where your data does not distinguish individuals but you track a group identity and some kind of count (a wolf pack. we do that, and/or by life stage, and/or by sex).
Some live fish can be practically tracked as individuals, and sometimes obviously not because there are ~5000 in that tank. Some of our groups are
too big to count individuals even as estimates (beehives, ant colonies), so we change the units and count colonies.
I hope this was faintly relevant and look forward to meeting more of you in person when opportunity allows,
Nate Flesness
Director of Science
International Species Information System (ISIS)
www.isis.org