Request for withdrawal of proposal to move dwc:establishmentMeans to proposed the DwC class Individual
In my previous understanding of Occurrence in which a single token was incorporated as a part of an Occurrence, I considered an Individual to have ceased to exist and to have become an Occurrence of type LivingSpecimen when it was collected to be part of a collection (e.g. zoo). Given this understanding, I felt that there were few or no cases where the establishmentMeans of an Individual would change (excluding its capture and incorporation in a collection) and therefore it made sense for having a single establishmentMeans value for the individual. However, under the apparent consensus opinion that the token documenting an Occurrence is a separate entity, I no longer believe that there is any purpose in recognizing an entity called "LivingSpecimen". A living specimen is simply an individual with curation information. The token for an Occurrence that involves the collection of a living specimen is the Individual itself (in the case of removal of the entire organism) or a different Individual (i.e. in the case where a new individual is propagated vegetatively from the Individual being documented by the Occurrence). Given this understanding, the establishmentMeans of an Individual can change over time, so it is not possible for every Individual to have a single value for establishmentMeans.
The consensus that seems to have emerged from the tdwg-content discussion is that dwc:establishmentMeans is a complex thing that describes the relationship of an Individual to a Location that can change over time. I do not see how establishmentMeans is a property of an Occurrence - in fact it is not clear to me exactly how one applies establishmentMeans as a property to an instance of any existing DwC class. But in any case, there does not now seem to be any advantage to moving it from the class Occurrence to the proposed class Individual, so I officially withdraw my proposal if that is possible. Alternatively, the TAG could take a vote and vote the proposal down, but I think that would be a waste of time.
Steve
Easily done. Issue 81 ( http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=81) has been closed.
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:29 AM, Steve Baskauf <steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu
wrote:
In my previous understanding of Occurrence in which a single token was incorporated as a part of an Occurrence, I considered an Individual to have ceased to exist and to have become an Occurrence of type LivingSpecimen when it was collected to be part of a collection (e.g. zoo). Given this understanding, I felt that there were few or no cases where the establishmentMeans of an Individual would change (excluding its capture and incorporation in a collection) and therefore it made sense for having a single establishmentMeans value for the individual. However, under the apparent consensus opinion that the token documenting an Occurrence is a separate entity, I no longer believe that there is any purpose in recognizing an entity called "LivingSpecimen". A living specimen is simply an individual with curation information. The token for an Occurrence that involves the collection of a living specimen is the Individual itself (in the case of removal of the entire organism) or a different Individual (i.e. in the case where a new individual is propagated vegetatively from the Individual being documented by the Occurrence). Given this understanding, the establishmentMeans of an Individual can change over time, so it is not possible for every Individual to have a single value for establishmentMeans.
The consensus that seems to have emerged from the tdwg-content discussion is that dwc:establishmentMeans is a complex thing that describes the relationship of an Individual to a Location that can change over time. I do not see how establishmentMeans is a property of an Occurrence - in fact it is not clear to me exactly how one applies establishmentMeans as a property to an instance of any existing DwC class. But in any case, there does not now seem to be any advantage to moving it from the class Occurrence to the proposed class Individual, so I officially withdraw my proposal if that is possible. Alternatively, the TAG could take a vote and vote the proposal down, but I think that would be a waste of time.
Steve
-- Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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participants (2)
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John Wieczorek -
Steve Baskauf