This issue is with reference to http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69
I have proposed the creation of a new Darwin Core term, Individual, that is a class representing individual organisms in their environment (as opposed to live organisms in collections which would be Occurrences of type LivingSpecimen). The justification for this new term is given at the link above, but to summarize, this class is needed: 1. to establish the concept of an individual (in the sense of the object of dwc:individualID) and its relationship to other classes in the TDWG ontology. 2. to provide a way for users who assign a GUID as a value for the dwc term individualID to meet Recommendation 11 (regarding GUID typing) of the draft TDWG GUID Applicability Statement.
I should also note that the problem that my proposal is intended to resolve may exist for other terms in the new Darwin Core standard that can refer to resources that can be identified with GUIDs. In particular, there may be no existing classes in the TDWG ontology http://tdwg-ontology.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ontology/voc/ for GUID-labeled resources that are referenced by identificationID datasetID, eventID, and locationID . The lack of an appropriate means to type objects identified by GUIDs is only one of the impediments to the implementation of GUIDs in the biodiversity community, but it is one that can be solved relatively quickly by appropriate action on the part of the TDWG technical architecture group.
Steve Baskauf