[tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking

[David Remsen (GBIF)]

Pete - you just summed up much of where I left off in my just-sent  
post.   If we can present those curating occurrence records with a  
comprehensive set of relevant concept options, ideally tied to  
reference publications like field guides, etc.,  we can support the  
use of concept identifiers in those records.    That provides the  
basis for having some idea of the process by which they determined  
what name to use.

DR

>
> To Paddy et al. I don't know if we really know unless we have some  
> idea of the process by which they determined what name to use.
>
> - Pete
>
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:00 AM, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org 
> > wrote:
> What you're asking for would certainly be nice!  But I was aiming  
> more for what you described as "an improvement". Baby steps.... :-)
>
> Seriously, though -- I agree taxonomists have failed to be  
> sufficiently explicit in their writings over the centuries to  
> provide the raw material for machine-generated reasoning and  
> inferencing through the content of their documents.  However, I'm  
> not so sure they have failed to provide sufficient information to  
> allow for (mostly) reliable and accurate human- (or at least  
> taxonomist-) generated reasoning and inferencing.  That's why I  
> think a key aspect of all of this -- especially for legacy content  
> -- is third-party assertions.  I don't think it's true that "most"  
> species descriptions result in persons 1&2 assinging a given  
> specimen to two separate concepts.  But certainly there are enough  
> to represent a non-trivial problem.
>
> Rich
>
> From: Peter DeVries [mailto:pete.devries at gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 7:24 PM
> To: Richard Pyle
> Cc: David Remsen (GBIF); tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; Kevin  
> Richards; Jerry Cooper; dmozzherin; David Patterson
> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Name is species concept thinking
>
> I think that the problem is that most species descriptions are  
> written a way that person1 interprets specimenA as conceptB and  
> person2 interprets specimenA and ConceptC.
>
> This needs to be made more scientific so that one can test what  
> proportions of specimens actually conform to the description  
> (concept).
>
> These descriptions should be open, world readable and reference-able  
> via a URI.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> - Pete
>
> ** There also seems to be mismatch between the concept the human  
> identifier choose (often via a key) and the species description  
> (concept) to which you are saying their data applies.
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org 
> > wrote:
>
> > That said modeling relationships between taxonomic publications  
> where
> > the authors actually read the original species description, reviewed
> > the type specimens, and thought about the actual species  
> conscription is
> appropriate.
>
> This is the sort of things the Meta-Authorities would take into  
> account when
> selecting a "follow-this-treatment" Usage-Instance for the preferred
> treatment of a name.
>
>
> > Also consider that a large proportion of specimens are  
> misidentified,
> > and it occurs to me that modeling things like species occurrences as
> > if they are Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771) sensu stricto is probably
> > not appropriate. At best they are something like (Felis concolor /
> > Puma concolor) with some significant level of error.
>
> GNA can't helpw ith that directly -- but it can help indirectly.   
> Imagine a
> service that takes ever specimen in a given collection's database,  
> and runs
> it against a mapping service as I described in the previous  
> message.  I can
> easily imagine a GIS-based algorithm that finds "outliers" -- that is
> occurrence records that appear to be outside the distribution based  
> on the
> occurrence records from other sources.  A clver/robust such  
> algorithm could
> probably even discern whether the outlier likely represented a range
> extension (e.g. poorly-known species, plausible extansion), vs. a
> misidentification (e.g., well-known species and/or common
> misidentification).
>
> This would lead to a set of flagged records from the collection that  
> might
> be misidentified.
>
> Rich
>
>
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>
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Pete DeVries
> Department of Entomology
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
> 445 Russell Laboratories
> 1630 Linden Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
> GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Pete DeVries
> Department of Entomology
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
> 445 Russell Laboratories
> 1630 Linden Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
> GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> ------------------------------------------------------------

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