Thanks, Jessie. No doubt I am the culprit for many misunderstandings -- especially given that is is nearly 4am and I should really call it quits.

I agree with Donald that a shorthand to referring to a Taxon_Concept is

the combination

of Taxon_Name and the Taxon_Publication. This is slightly but importantly

different to

Rich here in that the publication should be seen as a taxonomic

publication (for

another discussion elsewhere) rather than any publication - i.e. not

simply usage of a

name which could include an observation or identification - this

interpretation

opens up Taxonomic_Concepts too widely to cover potential taxa rather than

those which

have been defined, described and published in some scientific manner.)

In the context of this discussion, I'm not quibbling on this point. I'm happy to assume, for the moment, that "Concepts" would be a (small) subset of usages. I didn't mean to draw this distinction, and I apologize if it seems like I did. I've only used the term "usage" in the sense of "SEC" -- I did not mean to insinuate that *all* usages should be thought of as concepts. Like you said -- for another discussion elsewhere.

I agree with Sally that we should have Nomenclators provide GUIDs for

Taxon_Names but

would be more strict and say that these names should have only one GUID

and that the GUID

should always resolve to exactly the same name. So IPNI would be plant

names, Index

fugorum fungi names, zoobank when available animal names etc. and that we

should

share the resource of fixing this rather than duplicating effort (if I had

any

resource to give;-) ) IPNI and IF wouldn't overlap in names.

This is congruent with my thinking. But are you comfortable with these different nomenclators having different definitions of a "name"? Might make it hard to pool cross-nomenclator data.

Definitely bed time...

Rich