Dear Sally,

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[Yde] For practical reasons I think the starting point for assigning GUIDs should be basically nomenclatural.

[Richard] I completely agree -- but again, what gets a "Name" GUID? (as opposed to a "usage" GUID or a "concept" GUID) Only basionyms? (I hope!) Or also different combinations? (I hope not!) Or also spelling variants? (I *really* hope not!!) There is also a problem of how to deal with autonyms (=nominotypical names in zoology). One GUID, or two? Logically, only one -- but most people don't do it that way.

[Sally] I agree that name guids are probably a good place to start, partly because they're one of the areas where the rules have been fairly thoroughly thrashed out over the past 200 years ... I would argue (after all the debate that went on in the TCS-LC mailing list) that a new combination _should_ get a GUID, (after all, as has been said before, GUIDs are cheap...) because there is a good mechanism in the LC part of the TCS to resolve from a new combination to the base name. However if the zoologists don't like to treat new combinations as names in their own right, I see no problem with them not doing it ... as long as whatever system we come up with will allow both approaches side by side.

Zoologists should establish a central nomenclator to keep their combinations.

I have to check if the TCS can deal with objective synonymy in a zoological sense. Species2000 for instance can't not deal either with objective synonymy nor with basionyms and is therefore missing a crucial part of information.

[Sally] Obviously the zoologists have always had the problem that they don't have a comprehensive nomenclator but now that they're working on that with registration - are there any other significant gaps that aren't covered by a nomenclator of some sort that could be used to issue ids?

I don't agree. Obviously botanist don't have real nomenclators and probably will never be able to establish one on short term because of their problems with homonyms, pro parte synonymy, etcetera. I discussed this issue with Frank Bisby and his team in St Petersburg and they agreed that while zoologists can try to set up a central nomenclator (like ZooBank), botanist should look for other solutions. This could be one or more concept based lists like IOPI.

Kind regards,

Yde