Tim: Coffee time.
Dave:
Here's how I imagine this would work under GNA, integrated with GBIF:
1. Person submits text-string "Puma concolor" to a GNA-aware mapping service.
2. Service fires text string off to GNI, and sees how many lexical buckets are involved, and how many protonyms are represented in those buckets.
3. If problems of Homonymy/Homography exist (i.e., if more than one legitimate Protonym for a species-group name "concolor" has ever been combined with a genus-group name "Puma"), then the service replies with a page that says "Do you mean the big cat, or do you mean the protozoa?" (pretending, for a moment, that the name "Puma concolor" has also been applied to a protozoa). Perhaps the service can also review the usage history of the two names, and algorithmically determine that they most likely meant the big cat -- but at least alert the user that a potential case of homonymy/homography exists.
4. If step 2 yielded no apaprent homonymy/Homography, or if the user selected one from among more than one Homonyms/Homographs, then the service takes the selected ProtonymID and throws it at a GNUB-aware taxon concept resolver.
5. The GNUB-aware Taxon Concept resolver looks at how many Taxon Concept Service Providers (e.g., ITIS, EOL, WoRMS, etc.) have made some sort of concept-definition assertion about the Protonym. In most cases, this could/should be as simple as "Concept Service [X] says that for Protonym [IDp], follow taxon name usage-instance [IDtnu]". Given [IDtnu], GNUB will tell us which Genus combination to use, which orthographic spelling to use, which taxon rank to use, and which set of Protonyms should be regarded as subjective synonyms of the taxon concept represented by [IDtnu]. If the different taxon concept providers (I call them "Meta Authorities") all agree (i.e., each taxon concept provider yields the same set of ProtonymIDs), then no user interaction is required on this step. If there are different interpretations of what the current treatment of "Puma concolor [big cat]" should be, then the user is presented with the different options (and perhaps a bit of information on what the different active concepts are, in terms of distribution and/or classification).
6. The resultant set of Protonym IDs from step 5 (the original ProtonymID from step 2/3, plus the exploded set of Protonyms for subjective/hetrotypic synonyms from step 5), are then thrown at GBIF (which would be GNA-Aware, and thus know how to translate all the ProtonymIDs into a larger set of text-string names and/or GBIF may have already cashed this by converting text-string names from occurrence providers into ProtonymIDs via GNI).
7. The user is then presented with a distributional map from GBIF occurrence records, based on the selected Protonym of the original submitted text-string name, cast in the context of the set of heterotypic synonyms established in Step 5.
The bad news is that this sounds incredibly complicated. The good news is that it's actually not. Especially not from the user's perspective.
In the WORST case scenario, the user needs to provide three pieces of information:
1. The text-string name submitted in Step 1.
2. A decision in the case of Homonyms/Homographs, what critter/weed/microbe they're after.
3. A decision about which Meta Authority to follow for the taxon concept.
This, again, is the WORST case scenario. A much more likely scenario involves fewere steps for the end user.
Consider:
Step 2 only applies in the 10%(ish) cases of text-string names involved in some sort of Homonymy/Homography problem. So in 90%(ish) of cases, step 2 won't come into play.
Step 3 only applies in cases where the Meta-Authorities disagree on the current usage of a name (e.g., ITIS is a lumper, WoRMS is a splitter). Even in cases where there is disagreement, the user could simply be presnted with two (or more) maps, showing each of the current interpretations/statuses of the selected critter/weed. For example, the user might get a page that says "If you follow the ITIS interpretation of this species, the map looks like this. If you follow the WoRMS interpretation of the name, the map looks like that."
And, indeed, Step 1 wouldn't exist in the majority of cases, because I suspect most people will get to the Map service by clicking on a link from some web page article or database system. In most cases, this link would also bypass Step 2 as well.
In other words, if we can continue to develop GNA the way we're already developing it, we should be able to get the the point (Soon!) where a user clicks a link on a web page, and immediately gets a single map distribution using the taxon concpet adopted by the overwhelming majority of Meta-Authorities, or (at worst) gets more than one map based on more-than one contemporary/contentious views of what the species concept should be (with links to more information, if the user wants the details).
So, if we keep building GNA, we should have exactly the service that Pete says he'd like to have (i.e., a single map with the full distribution of the species, regardless of what text-string name is used to lable the georef'd occurrence data-points).
Simple, really....
:-)
Rich
-----Original Message----- From: David Remsen (GBIF) [mailto:dremsen@gbif.org] Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 10:50 AM To: Peter DeVries Cc: David Remsen (GBIF); Richard Pyle; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; Kevin Richards; Jerry Cooper Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking
Pete -
This statement has been sticking with me since I read it. It might be me but I don't see any relationship between that statement and how this relates to taxon concepts. In a concept-based system you could easily have two different maps for Puma concolor. Whether Felis concolor is included is not relevant because nomenclatural synonyms have no bearing on the circumscription. They are both names for the same type.
There may be two different concepts (circumscriptions) published for Aedes triseriatus. It could be quite legit for a different (objective synonym only) name like Oclerotatus triseriatus to refer to that same concept. So in that sense, there is a rationale for different scientific names to be able to reference the same concept to meet that requirement of the example you cite. But in zoology these examples aren't even considered different names and the rule of priority would prevent truly different (heterotypic names) from referring to the same type so the use cases for different scientific names being able to refer to a single concept ID are quite limited.
Mapping objective (homotypic) synonymy provides the basis for providing a single map for those examples you cite but it's not using true concept-based principles.
Best, David
Frankly I think it would be an improvement if we could get maps etc that combine Aedes triseriatus / Ochlerotatus triseriatus
into one map
and Felis concolor and Puma concolor into a different
single map. :-)
Respectfully,
- Pete