[tdwg-content] Request for vote on proposals to add Individual as a Darwin Core class and to add the term individualRemarks as a term within that class

[John Wieczorek]

Most of you probably do not receive postings from the Google Code site for
Darwin Core. Steve B. updated the proposal for the new term Individual, and
then commentary ensued on the Issue tracker. Since there remains an
unresolved issue, I'm bringing the discussion back here by adding the
commentary stream below.  The unresolved issue is Steve's amendment is the
restriction in the definition to "a single species (or lower taxonomic rank
if it exists)."

Rich argues that we should not obviate the capability of applying an
Identification to an aggregate (e.g., fossil), where the aggregate consists
of multiple taxa.
Steve argues that Identifications should be applied only to aggregates of a
single taxon.

Steve, aside from the aggregate issue (which should be solved
satisfactorily), your suggestion is too restrictive, because it would
obviate the possibility of making an Identification (even for a single
organism) to any rank less specific than a species. That is a loss of
capability, and therefore unreasonable.

Comment 7<http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Reporter%20Summary%20Opened#c7>
 by baskaufs <http://code.google.com/u/baskaufs/>, Today (8 hours ago)

As a result of the discussion that has taken place on the tdwg-content
email list during 2010 October and November, I am updating the term
recommendation for Individual as follows:

Definition: The category of information pertaining to an individual organism or
a group of individual organisms that can reliably be known to
represent a single species (or lower taxonomic rank if it exists).

Comment: Instances of this class can serve the purpose of connecting
one or more instances of the Darwin Core class Occurrence to one or
more instances of the Darwin Core class Identification.

Refines: N/A

Please note that as a precautionary measure, I have removed the
statement that Individual refines
http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/PhysicalObject because the definition of
PhysicalObject specifically mentions that the object is inanimate.  I
am not currently aware of any well-known term that defines living
things.

Steve Baskauf


Delete comment<http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Reporter%20Summary%20Opened#>
Comment 8<http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Reporter%20Summary%20Opened#c8>
 by deepreef at hawaii.rr.com<http://code.google.com/u/deepreef@hawaii.rr.com/>
, Today (8 hours ago)

I think the definition should be "...represent a single taxon".  We
shouldn't restrict it to members of the same species (or lower),
because then we technically can't include things that may represent
more than one species, yet would best be treated within the scope of
an Individual.

Also, I'm slightly partial to the term "Organism" for this class,
rather than "Individual", because it's more clearly tied to the
biology domain, and less likely to collide with the word "Individual"
in other domains.  I know such collision is not a technical problem,
but it might lead to some confusion.

Delete comment<http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Reporter%20Summary%20Opened#>
Comment 9<http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Reporter%20Summary%20Opened#c9>
 by baskaufs <http://code.google.com/u/baskaufs/>, Today (8 hours ago)

Well, the reason that I defined it to be members of the same species
is to ensure that the term Individual can serve the primary function
that I perceived was needed: to make the connection from occurrences
to identifications.  When I said one or more identifications, I meant
one or more opinions about what that single species (or lower) was,
not that there could be multiple identifications of several different
species that happened to be in the same "bag" such as the contents of
a pitfall trap containing multiple species, an image that contained
several species, or a specimen that contained parasites of a different
species.  I think that there is a need for a term for this other kind
of thing, (a heterogeneous "lot", "batch", or something), but I think
that including this in definition of Individual defeats the purpose
for which I proposed it.  If there were several different species in
the "Individual", then one would have to specify which identification
went with which biological individual within the "lot", which would
result in actually breaking down the "lot" into single species
"Individuals" anyway.
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