I don&#39;t know how many of you are working with Semantic Web technologies, but I did a talk at the<div>2008 Meeting of the Entomological Society of America Meeting in Reno.</div><div><br></div><div>You can see it here :&nbsp;<a href="http://esa.confex.com/esa/2008/webprogram/Paper39190.html">http://esa.confex.com/esa/2008/webprogram/Paper39190.html</a>&nbsp;</div>
<div><br></div><div>One of the issues that I have been struggling with is the need for a unique identifier for a species</div><div>concept that stays the same despite changes in taxonomic hypotheses. When I brought this up</div>
<div>earlier some mentioned that many considered the taxonomic hypothesis to be the species concept.</div><div><br></div><div>I thought that this approach was wrong because it unnecessarily required me to convince one of my</div>
<div>collaborators to adopt my taxonomic hypothesis when it was clear we were talking about the same</div><div>species.</div><div><br></div><div>To me a species is a real thing to which different taxonomic hypothesis are applied.</div>
<div><br></div><div>With this in mind I implemented a system where each species has a unique URI which resolves according</div><div>to the recommendations of the linked data community.</div><div><br></div><div>You can see this service at: &nbsp;<a href="http://species.geospecies.org/">http://species.geospecies.org/</a>&nbsp;</div>
<div><br></div><div>Here is the page for Culicidae&nbsp;<a href="http://species.geospecies.org/families/Culicidae">http://species.geospecies.org/families/Culicidae</a>&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Here is an example of the URI for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Aedes vexans</span></div>
<div><br></div><div><a href="http://species.geospecies.org/spec_concept_uuid/0fcb5b7e-bcfc-4b56-b565-e1e38768badd/">http://species.geospecies.org/spec_concept_uuid/0fcb5b7e-bcfc-4b56-b565-e1e38768badd/</a>&nbsp;<br></div><div>
<br></div><div>For a web browser this will resolve to the human readable page, for a semantic web crawler</div><div>it will respond with RDF data.</div><div><br></div><div>Here is journal reference marked up using the two major bibliography ontologies that includes</div>
<div>what species concepts are included in the article. This allows publications to retain links to</div><div>species concepts despite changes in nomenclature.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://rdf.geospecies.org/refs/sucaet2008wbr/index.rdf">http://rdf.geospecies.org/refs/sucaet2008wbr/index.rdf</a>&nbsp;<br>
</div><div><br></div><div>Here is an RDF file of species observation records (the web version is currently password protected)</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://rdf.geospecies.org/observations/index.rdf">http://rdf.geospecies.org/observations/index.rdf</a>&nbsp;<br>
</div><div><br></div><div>I have chosen the UUID as the mechanism to make unique URI&#39;s not because of their inherent beauty,</div><div>but because the allow anyone on almost any platform to create a unique id without worrying about to</div>
<div>identical id&#39;s being created.</div><div><br></div><div>For those interested, I can send you a PDF of my talk slides and text.</div><div><br></div><div>I would also appreciate any feedback or suggestions :-)</div>
<div><br></div><div>- Pete</div><div><br><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "><div>---------------------------------------------------------------</div><div>Pete DeVries</div><div>
Department of Entomology</div><div>University of Wisconsin - Madison</div><div>445 Russell Laboratories</div><div>1630 Linden Drive</div><div>Madison, WI 53706</div><div>Email:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:pdevries@wisc.edu">pdevries@wisc.edu</a></div>
<div><a href="http://insects.entomology.wisc.edu/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); ">Insects of Wisconsin</span></a>&nbsp;</div><div><a href="http://spiders.entomology.wisc.edu/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); ">Spiders of Wisconsin</span></a></div>
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