Dear Yde,
Just catching up. There is one small
practical point I’d like to understand about Fauna Europaea. You
wrote the following:
How is Fauna Europaea organised?
- Basically we have a
list of 'naked' taxon names (from the infraspecific level to Kingdom) including
full authorship for at least the generic and (infra)specific levels. All those
taxon names (read: name elements) have unique id's.
- All epithets are linked
to their original genus, so original combinations can be reconstructed. This is
nearly, but not completely similar to basionyms in botany because gender
unequivalencies are not necessarily corrected.
- Species names are
created by recursively linking species-group names to genus-group names. Genus
names are parents of specific epithets, and specific epithets are parents of
infraspecific epithets.
- Subjective synonyms are
specific epithets recursively linked as childs to 'accepted' specific epithets.
For objective synonymy genus names synonyms are recursively linked as childs to
'accepted' genus names.
- Conclusion: Names
(=naked name element/author/year plus original genus for epithets) are for
eternity. Species names (so your taxon names) are temporary concepts (if they
are not basionyms) which don't have identifiers and which are not kept in the
database after taxonomic changes else then by version control.
- However, an unique
species name id can be easily artificially created by merging both generic and
epithet id's (a trick we also use for Species2000).
- Taxon concepts are not
explicitly covered.
Can you explain a little more about how
you handle epithet agreement (“gender unequivalencies”) in this
system? I realise this is tangential from the main GUID discussion, but
it does seem to be a complication to the task of treating the epithet as the
primary unit.
Thanks,
Donald
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Donald Hobern (dhobern@gbif.org)
Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability
Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100
Tel: +45-35321483
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