I think we need to be pretty clear as to what each of these classes represent, otherwise the data associated with them will be useless.
If someone wants to document that they have a jar full of different individuals of several species taken from a particular place and time then perhaps that should be modeled as a separate kind of thing.
Eventually one of the jars will be opened and something will be identified to species.
They will want to relate that specimen back to the jar it came from.
If we think of these jars as a collection set, then there may be some utility in being able to map where various collection sets are from.
However, do we want these collection sets to show up in a search of species occurrence records?
I also question the utility of analyzing occurrence records at clades higher than species.
Species are assumed to be made up of population of interbreeding individuals,
But what is a genus vs, a subgenus, vs a tribe?
If these higher clades were somewhat stable and had some agreed on understanding then this might make sense.
There is no clear reasoning behind why one clade is a family in Mammals and a clade of similar age is a genus in Beetles.
- Pete
On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
Dean,
I intended to comment on your earlier post but got caught up in other
threads and hadn't yet taken the time. I know on at least one previous
occasion this issue of mixed aggregations was discussed on the list but
I spent about 15 minutes looking for it in the archives this morning
and couldn't find it. I remember somebody pointed out some software
that allows places within an image to be demarcated (i.e. call the
image an aggregation and define spots in it as Individuals). Also, I
tried to handle the issue of tokens (or evidence) that are derived from
other tokens in my paper (see
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/pages/conceptual-scheme-insect.gif for
an example) by using sernec:derivedFrom and sernec:derivativeOccurrence
(see
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/rdf/terms.htm). But I think my
approach needs to be rethought in the context of separating tokens from
occurrences. I am very keen to work this out, but I really don't thing
that piling this onto Individual is the way to do it. I'm in the
middle of running and photographing gels at the moment but look forward
to continuing the discussion on these points at a later time.
Steve
Dean Pentcheff wrote:
Leveraging off my earlier toss-in of the parent-child
collection scheme, let me toss in this observation.
I'll preface it by saying that although it's a situation we deal with
in reality, my gut impulse is that it should probably _not_ be
accomodated by the "Individual" concept under development.
We have many records for un- or partially-sorted lots of marine
invertebrate samples. Often we can make very rough determinations of
what are in those lots (e.g., we can see that a jar contains
ophiuroids, gastropods, sphaeromatid isopods, red algae, and larval
fish). Critically, these are multiple particular and disjunct parts of
the taxonomic hierarchy, not just a single "highest containing rank"
determination.
It turns out to be super-useful to record that very rough determination
because (as alluded to by Rich) we can then appropriately make that jar
available to visitors seeking particular taxa (and save them the
trouble of grubbing through shelves of jars where we already "know"
there's nothing of interest to them).
Right now, we do _not_ conflate this rough determination with a Real
Taxonomic Determination (®™ and all that): they are two completely
separate fields. So to find all the jars we know have ophiuroids, one
does indeed have to search both the real taxonomic determination field
as well as the rough-determination (text) field (if one wants to
include unsorted lots in the quest).
I'm introducing this case more with the idea that it may usefully help
define the outer limits for "Individual" -- something that the
"Individual" concept should _not_ accomodate. I can't really wrap my
head around how the developing "Individual" concept can usefully be
mutilated to accomodate this case.
-Dean
--
Dean Pentcheff
pentcheff@gmail.com
dpentche@nhm.org
On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Richard
Pyle
<deepreef@bishopmuseum.org>
wrote:
> I think if I'm understanding what John wrote,
> he was going to substitute "taxon" for "species
> (or lower taxonomic rank if it exists)" with
> the understanding that Individual is not
> intended to be used for aggregates of
> different taxa. That would solve this problem, right?
It depends on what you mean by "different taxa". If you are using the
word
"taxa" here to imply "species or lower ranks", than I don't think it
would
solve the problem. But if you mean it in a generic way, then I'm OK
with
that. By "in a generic way", suppose I had a trawl sample or a
plankton tow
sample that included unidentified organisms from multiple phyla, all of
which are animals. I should not be prevented from representing this
aggregate as an "Individual", with an identification instances linked
to a
taxon concept labelled as "Animalia". This means the contents of the
Individual all belong to a single taxon (Animalia), and therefore it
does
not violate the condition excluding aggregates of different taxa. An
instance of Individual so identified would be almost useless for many
purposes, I agree -- but it's easy enough to filter such Individuals
out by
looking at dwc:taxonRank of the Taxon to which the Individual was
identified. Also, it's not useless for all purposes, because a botanist
would like to know that s/he doesn't have to look through that sample to
find stuff of interest.
I guess my point is, there should not be any rank-based requirement for
the
implied taxon circumscription of an "Individual".
Rich
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
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Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
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