TDWG-SDD Digest - 15 Aug 2003 to 27 Aug 2003 (#2003-16)

[Eric Gouda]

At Thursday 28-8-2003, you wrote:
>  <snip....>
>2. However, several aspects of complex descriptive data sets need
>    an operational access to a taxonomic hierarchy.
>    -> default values for new items
>    -> observations assumed to be true for an entire group but not
>       actually observed should be noted as "higher taxa" descriptions
>       and the information should be treated as implied in lower taxa.
>       The situation is identical for implying information from
>       species to subspecies as it is from Family to species.
>       -> Note that in contrast to DELTA, SDD has no special
>          "subspecies mechanism"

Just some thoughts:

I think a transparent mechanism is needed in which you can indicate in the
item description which rank a taxon (item) is and you can include as many
taxon ranks as you like (the subspecies mechanism is included then).
Taxa can link to higher (and maybe lower) taxa, so the program that is
going to produce Natural Language Descriptions can include descriptive
characters from several ranks (as indicated by the user). Identification
programs can start at a chosen rank and continue to the next rank taxa when
finished. In XML this would be easy to define.

In this way you could key out specimen for a whole family or flora when
included, from family to subforma level if you like.

Eric
+++
    ____               ____   E.J.Gouda at bio.uu.nl  http://www.uu.nl/botgard/
   / ___|_ __(_) __   / ___| ___  _   _  __| | __ _    Faxnr: +31 30 2535177
  | |__ | '__| |/ _| | |  _ / _ \| | | |/ _` |/ _` |   Prive:   Jungfrau 107
  | |___| |  | | (_  | |_| | (_) | |_| | (_| | (_| |   NL - 3524 WJ  Utrecht
   \____|_|  |_|\__|  \____|\___/ \___/ \__,_|\__,_|   THE NETHERLANDS  (NL)
   Curator of UNIVERSITY BOTANIC GARDENS,  PO Box 80.162, NL-3508 TD UTRECHT
   \ Listowner: Alpine-L, Arisaema-L, Bromelia-L, DELTA-L, Passiflora-L    /
    \__         Penstemon-L, Trillium-L (at Nic.SurfNet.NL)             __/