[tdwg-content] Taxon and Name [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Nico Franz]

Dear Steve et al.:

I would've phrased it more or less like this:

2. The names (example: Curculio L.) are labels (!) that denote one or 
more concept labels (example: 1. Curculio L. sec. Linnaeus, 1758 and 2. 
Curculio L. sec. Pelsue & O'Brien, 2010).

1. The concepts are something like this (from Franz & Peet, 2009): A 
taxonomic concept is the underlying meaning, or referential extension, 
of a scientific name as stated by a particular author in a particular 
publication. It represents the author’s full-blown view of how the name 
reaches out to observed or unobserved objects in nature (beyond 
statements about type specimens). It is a direct reflection of what has 
been written, illustrated, and deposited by a taxonomist, regardless of 
his or her theoretical orientation.Taxonomic concepts are labelled using 
the abbreviation ‘sec.’ for the Latin secundum, or ‘according to’ 
(Berendsohn, 1995). The ‘sec.’ is preceded by the full Linnaean name and 
followed by the specific author and publication, as in Andropogon 
virginicus L. sec. Radford et al. (1968), an earlier concept, versus 
Andropogon virginicus L. sec.Weakley (2006), which is a later and 
narrower concept. The consistent practice of handling a taxonomic name 
only in connection with a specific source makes it possible to trace the 
evolution of its multiple meanings through time.

So according to this (debatable) view, two things are perhaps most 
important: (1) by using a fairly rigorous name + reference approach to 
recognizing concepts, you can have a lot of concepts (inflation) that 
point to the same set of biological individuals (referring back to your 
words) but are nevertheless separate as data entities, even if their 
meanings are aparently congruent. So (2) in that sense the "concept" is 
not the set of individuals (past, present, future) - that would be the 
taxon, I presume. The concept is more like a perspective of what the 
taxon is or might be - and always according to a particular author and 
reference. Identification differ, in my mind, from this mainly because 
the identifier makes no strong claim about challenging a published 
concepts or authoring a new one.

3. It seems that name usage and what I call above taxon concept label 
are close to synonymous (?).

Respectfully,

Nico


Nico M. Franz
Department of Biology
University of Puerto Rico
Call Box 9000
Mayagüez, PR 00681-9000

Phone: (787) 832-4040, ext. 3005
Fax: (787) 834-3673
E-mail: nico.franz at upr.edu
Website: http://academic.uprm.edu/~franz/


On 11/1/2010 1:33 PM, Steve Baskauf wrote:
> Paul, Rich, et al.
> [...]
> In general, I have come to understand the following:
> 1. There are taxon concepts, which I guess represents a particular
> circumscription of individuals.  The taxon concept is the result of some
> kind of rule that allows one to decide whether  particular individuals
> should be included in that taxon or not.  The set of all biological
> individuals that are included are the actual concept (or maybe not?).
> 2. There are taxon names, which have been published for the purpose of
> identifying taxa.
> 3. There are taxon name usages, which are a sort of node that connects a
> name with a concept.  If I'm getting Rich right, this is the resource to
> which dwc:Identifications should be tied.  Rich also suggested that
> taxon name usages might be instances of the dwc:Taxon class.
> Although these three types of resources aren't all defined as "classes"
> in Darwin Core, it seems to me that they are classes in the "RDF sense"
> (i.e. that their instances can be typed to them).
>
> [...]
>
> So is this anything close to reality?
> Steve
[...]