On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Kevin Richards <RichardsK@landcareresearch.co.nz> wrote:

This is exactly why this problem still exists and will be very complex to solve - everyone says "we should have a single ID for a specific taxon name, there seems to be several IDs 'out there' that refer to the same taxon name, so Im going to create another ID to link them all up" - yet another ID that no one will particularly want to follow - you would have to get everyone to agree that your combinations/integration of taxon names is the best one and hope everyone follows it - unlikely in this domain.

Isn't this kind of what the The Plant List, and eBird already do?

A difference being that they tie these to a specific name and specific classification. 

The Plant list is not really even open so it is difficult to people to adopt it in mass.

For instance, if I manage a herbarium, how do I easily reconcile my species list with the entities represented in the Plant List?

eBird has millions of records which implies that they have been able to convince the observers in the field to adopt their system. You are correct in that there are probably a lot of taxonomists that don't like their list.

It differs from many of the other classifications, but remember the system rewards them for not agreeing. Note the difference between the microbial taxonomists and other taxonomists. In the case of the microbial

workers, the system rewards them for solving problems not debating alternatives. Also, if a good idea comes out that will make it easier for the microbiologists to solve the problems they are rewarded for solving, they are less likely to care whose idea it is.

Like the microbiologists, there are lots of biologists that work with species with the goal of addressing some non-taxonomic problem. 

They don't really care if the name is Aedes triseriatus or Ochlerotatus triseriatus, but they do care that the identifier that they connect their data to is stable.

In regards to the issue of market forces,I suspect (but have no knowledge of) that there were probably decisions made in devising these lists that have more to do with appeasing certain personalities that creating best list. With the way this system rewards people it is likely that the "correct" version will float to the top only after that person has passed away. I don't have much faith that the best system will always float to the top, That has a lot to do with the personalities and how the system rewards are setup. Theoretically, it is possible for one strong personality or group to force others to adopt their less than optimal solution - at least this seems to happen in other environments.

Also, there are all sorts of ways that people can use the publication record to rewrite history. Simply cite the review paper that cites the original paper. Or don't cite it at all.

I would have used only the ITIS TSN but if the name changes the ID changes. This isn't "wrong", it just does not solve my problem.

* ITIS also should add the spiders from the World Spider Catalog.

Another issue that I think has inhibited adoption of a common list is that people can't agree on a particular name or a particular classification.

Since you can model a species concept as having many names and many classifications why not do so?

If this idea was originally accepted, I would not have needed to create TaxonConcept.org.

My plan has aways been to get something that works to solve some problems and then let some larger group take it over.

In a sense, I am more like the microbiologists in that I am not being paid to solve this or debate this problem. 

I am doing it because I think something like this is needed, and it is an interesting and personally rewarding puzzle.

- Pete

My thoughts are that the most likely way this will be solve is by stnadard market type pressures - ie the best solution/IDs will be used the most and "float" to the top.  It is easy to say that the global taxon name data is a mess, but if you think about it 30 years ago taxon name data were very disparate, duplicated, unconnected, many with NO IDs at all.  So I beleive we are making progress and that we will continue to do so albeit at a fairly slow rate.

Kevin

"I agree. This was one of the reasons that I setup TaxonConcept the way I did. It attempts to connect both the LOD entities and the foreign key based entities."

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Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Email: pdevries@wisc.edu
TaxonConcept  &  GeoSpecies Knowledge Bases
A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data  Project
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