Hi,

I have been rattling off messages in between meetings over the last couple of days responding to points on the list only to find later that they have been bouncing. I will try again and respond to Rich's point here and Yde's in another post - and hope one of them get onto the list!

Rich - yes. I think you sum up the difference between new combinations in ICZN and ICBN well. But... just because the ICZN does not consider the usage of a name in a different genus as a nomenclatural act does not stop us creating a data object (TaxonName object) to represent what that name looks like in the new genus - perhaps with its new ending and possibly different author string (ICZN Recommendation 51G). Data structures can be used to represent things in life that have the same structure not that necessarily have the same meaning. So two types of names:

1. Really honest to God nomenclatural acts ( zoological basionyms). 2. New combinations we want to talk about (with references to basionyms).

but both represented with the same data structure. Both could have GUIDs.

Is there a parallel with autonyms under ICBN? People use autonyms so should they have a GUID? But they are automatically created and mean different things in different circumstances.

Hope this is helpful.

Roger

--

------------------------------------- Roger Hyam Technical Architect Taxonomic Databases Working Group ------------------------------------- http://www.tdwg.org roger@tdwg.org +44 1578 722782 -------------------------------------