I have a very slow and tenuous email connection here in the field, so as much as I would like to comment in my usual verbose fashion, that will need to wait until my return to Hawaii at the end of July (sighs of relief and sounds of joy can be heard across the internet....)

Very briefly:

1. I favor the creation of an "Individual" class (indeed, I had planned to propose it myself).

2. I believe that the term "BiologicalEntity" is the best term for this class and its ID attribute.

3. I agree in general with the complete proposal as outlined by John in his original email, but I will have more detailed comments about the included attributes when I return.

4. If this proposal is ratified, then the term "IndividualID" in the Occurrence class should be eliminated. (My first thought was to have it changed to "BiologicalEntityID"; but no other class has these "foreign key" equivalents in them, so best to handle it via Resource Relationship; see #6 below).

5. If this proposal is ratified, I do not think there needs to be a separate class for "Evidence", as outlined in John's other email (at least not at this time).

6. We need to have a good discussion about the appropriate use of http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#ResourceRelationship within DwC. It seems to me that this Class is underutilized. Indeed, I think that it should be the most heavily used Class in all of DwC, if indeed its function is to establish relationships between instances of the same or different (i.e., among or within) DwC classes. If we used it more regularly and consistently, we could eliminate all the "associatedXXX" terms (e.g., "associatedBiologicalEntities), and represent these associations via instances of the resourceRelationship class. Indeed, if we qualified the definition of this class, we may also be able to use it to establish relationships with non-DwC Class identifiers as well (e.g., perhaps negating the need for " dcterms:references/dcterms:source/etc. terms currently being discussed on a parallel thread.

OK....by my standards, at least, that was pretty brief.

Aloha, Rich

P.S. To the BiSciCol'ers (SciColists?): I have CC'd our group because this conversation is highly relevant to our project.

-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content- bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of John Wieczorek Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 11:49 PM To: TDWG Content Mailing List Subject: [tdwg-content] New terms need resolution: "Individual"

Darwin Core Issues 69 and 80: http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/list

This issue is related to the issue of Evidence (CollectionObject, Representation, Token, Unit) covered in a previous posting. In the Darwin Core there is currently no separate class to explicitly represent the

biological

entities involved in an Occurrence. This is problematic when trying to be explicit about the attributes of these entities in the semantic world.

Various

names have been given to this concept, including "Individual", "BiologicalIndividual", "BiologicalEntity", "Organism", and "DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit" in ABCD.

Open Issues: Determine if there is a general consensus on the need for new class for

this

concept.

The best name for this class.

Create a new Type Vocabulary term referring to this new class.

Decide which properties currently organized under Occurrence should instead be organized under this new class.

As a seed for further discussion, here is a complete proposal.

Term Name: BiologicalEntity Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/BiologicalEntity Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/ Label: BiologicalEntity Definition: The category of information pertaining to an individual organism or a group of organisms that can reliably be known to represent a single

taxon.

Comment: For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/BiologicalEntity Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Class Refines: Status: recommended Date Issued: 2011-07-04 Date Modified: 2011-07-04 Has Domain: Has Range: Version: BiologicalEntity-2011-07-04 Replaces: Is Replaced By: Class: ABCD 2.06: {DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/CultureCollectionUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/MycologicalUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/HerbariumUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/BotanicalGardenUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/PlantGeneticResourceUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/ZoologicalUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/PalaeontologicalUnit or DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/MultimediaObjects/MultimediaObject}

Term Name: BiologicalEntity Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/BiologicalEntity Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/ Label: BiologicalEntity Definition: A resource describing an instance of the BiologicalEntity

class.

Comment: For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/DwCTypeVocabulary Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Class Refines: Status: recommended Date Issued: 2011-07-04 Date Modified: 2011-07-04 Member Of: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/DwCType Has Domain: Has Range: Version: BiologicalEntity-2011-07-04 Replaces: Is Replaced By: Class: ABCD 2.06: not in ABCD

Term Name: biologicalEntityID Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/biologicalEntityID Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/ Label: biologicalEntityID Definition: An identifier for the set of information associated with an BiologicalEntity. May be a global unique identifier or an identifier

specific

to the data set. Comment: For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/BiologicalEntity Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property Refines: http://purl.org/dc/terms/identifier Status: recommended Date Issued: 2011-07-04 Date Modified: 2011-07-04 Has Domain: Has Range: Version: biologicalEntityID-2011-07-04 Replaces: individualID-2009-04-24 Is Replaced By: Class: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/BiologicalEntity ABCD 2.06: DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/

Term Name: biologicalEntityRemarks Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/biologicalEntityRemarks Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/ Label: biologicalEntityRemarks Definition: Comments or notes about the BiologicalEntity. Comment: Example: "seen several times in Tilden Park before capture". For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/CollectionObject Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property Refines: Status: recommended Date Issued: 2011-07-04 Date Modified: 2009-07-04 Has Domain: Has Range: Version: biologicalEntityRemarks-2011-07-04 Replaces: Is Replaced By: Class: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/BiologicalEntity ABCD 2.06: DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/Notes

Term Name: associatedBiologicalEntities Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/associatedBiologicalEntities Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/ Label: associatedBiologicalEntities Definition: A list (concatenated and separated) of identifiers of other BiologicalEntity records and their associations to this

BiologicalEntity.

Comment: Example: "sibling of MXA-231; sibling of MXA-232". For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/BiologicalEntity Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property Refines: Status: recommended Date Issued: 2011-07-04 Date Modified: 2011-07-04 Has Domain: Has Range: Version: associatedBiologicalEntities-2011-07-04 Replaces: associatedOccurrences-2009-04-24 Is Replaced By: Class: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/BiologicalEntity ABCD 2.06: DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/Associations/UnitAssociation/Associat edUnitSourceInstitutionCode

• DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/Associations/UnitAssociation/AssociatedUni
• tSourceName
• DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/Associations/UnitAssociation/AssociatedUni
• tID

Terms to be organized under biologicalEntity rather than Occurrence: previousIdentifications associatedMedia associatedReferences _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content