Morphological Data Representation

Peter Rauch peterr at SOCRATES.BERKELEY.EDU
Mon Nov 26 11:22:45 CET 2001


On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Robert A. (Bob) Morris wrote:

> My feeling is that taxonomic hierarchy is best got by web
> applications from services such as ITIS or other web
> services offering XML. There is a large community of
> descriptive data consumers, e.g. field naturalists, that
> find taxonomic hierarchy generally uninteresting. IMO,
> trying to integrate it with descriptive data actually
> addresses a small group of applications at a cost of added
> complexity.

"There is a large community of descriptive data consumers, e.g.
field naturalists, that find taxonomic hierarchy generally
uninteresting."

Bob, this comment needs a little bit more explanation /
discussion.

Without arguing _where_ the field naturalist and other consumers
should get their taxonomic hierarchical information, I'd want to
argue that such information is (should be!) anything but
"uninteresting" to many (most?, all?) consumers, in their work
of understanding who is present in their study worlds and why.

Having access to purported (evolutionary) relationships of their
study organisms focuses a special, valuable, most "interesting"
light on their studies. These users need to find these taxonomic
relationships handily, somewhere. In that context, your question
--Where?-- is probably a fair one to ask.

Peter




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