[tdwg-content] tdwg-content Digest, Vol 20, Issue 17

Wed Nov 3 22:06:15 CET 2010

I think we need to be pretty clear as to what each of these classes
represent, otherwise the data associated with them will be useless.

If someone wants to document that they have a jar full of different
individuals of several species taken from a particular place and time then
perhaps that should be modeled as a separate kind of thing.

Eventually one of the jars will be opened and something will be identified
to species.

They will want to relate that specimen back to the jar it came from.

If we think of these jars as a collection set, then there may be some
utility in being able to map where various collection sets are from.

However, do we want these collection sets to show up in a search of species
occurrence records?

I also question the utility of analyzing occurrence records at clades higher
than species.

Species are assumed to be made up of population of interbreeding
individuals,

But what is a genus vs, a subgenus, vs a tribe?

If these higher clades were somewhat stable and had some agreed on
understanding then this might make sense.

There is no clear reasoning behind why one clade is a family in Mammals and
a clade of similar age is a genus in Beetles.

- Pete

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu>wrote:

>  Dean,
> I intended to comment on your earlier post but got caught up in other
> threads and hadn't yet taken the time.  I know on at least one previous
> occasion this issue of mixed aggregations was discussed on the list but I
> spent about 15 minutes looking for it in the archives this morning and
> couldn't find it.  I remember somebody pointed out some software that allows
> places within an image to be demarcated (i.e. call the image an aggregation
> and define spots in it as Individuals).   Also, I tried to handle the issue
> of tokens (or evidence) that are derived from other tokens in my paper (see
> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/pages/conceptual-scheme-insect.gif for an
> example) by using sernec:derivedFrom and sernec:derivativeOccurrence (see
> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/rdf/terms.htm).  But I think my approach
> needs to be rethought in the context of separating tokens from occurrences.
> I am very keen to work this out, but I really don't thing that piling this
> onto Individual is the way to do it.  I'm in the middle of running and
> photographing gels at the moment but look forward to continuing the
> discussion on these points at a later time.
>
> Steve
>
>
> Dean Pentcheff wrote:
>
> Leveraging off my earlier toss-in of the parent-child collection scheme,
> let me toss in this observation.
>
> I'll preface it by saying that although it's a situation we deal with in
> reality, my gut impulse is that it should probably _not_ be accomodated by
> the "Individual" concept under development.
>
> We have many records for un- or partially-sorted lots of marine
> invertebrate samples. Often we can make very rough determinations of what
> are in those lots (e.g., we can see that a jar contains ophiuroids,
> gastropods, sphaeromatid isopods, red algae, and larval fish). Critically,
> these are multiple particular and disjunct parts of the taxonomic hierarchy,
> not just a single "highest containing rank" determination.
>
> It turns out to be super-useful to record that very rough determination
> because (as alluded to by Rich) we can then appropriately make that jar
> available to visitors seeking particular taxa (and save them the trouble of
> grubbing through shelves of jars where we already "know" there's nothing of
> interest to them).
>
> Right now, we do _not_ conflate this rough determination with a Real
> Taxonomic Determination (®™ and all that): they are two completely separate
> fields. So to find all the jars we know have ophiuroids, one does indeed
> have to search both the real taxonomic determination field as well as the
> rough-determination (text) field (if one wants to include unsorted lots in
> the quest).
>
> I'm introducing this case more with the idea that it may usefully help
> define the outer limits for "Individual" -- something that the "Individual"
> concept should _not_ accomodate. I can't really wrap my head around how the
> developing "Individual" concept can usefully be mutilated to accomodate this
> case.
>
> -Dean
> --
> Dean Pentcheff
> pentcheff at gmail.com
> dpentche at nhm.org
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>wrote:
>
>> > I think if I'm understanding what John wrote,
>> > he was going to substitute "taxon" for "species
>> > (or lower taxonomic rank if it exists)" with
>> > the understanding that Individual is not
>> > intended to be used for aggregates of
>> > different taxa.  That would solve this problem, right?
>>
>>  It depends on what you mean by "different taxa".  If you are using the
>> word
>> "taxa" here to imply "species or lower ranks", than I don't think it would
>> solve the problem.  But if you mean it in a generic way, then I'm OK with
>> that.  By "in a generic way", suppose I had a trawl sample or a plankton
>> tow
>> sample that included unidentified organisms from multiple phyla, all of
>> which are animals.  I should not be prevented from representing this
>> aggregate as an "Individual", with an identification instances linked to a
>> taxon concept labelled as "Animalia".  This means the contents of the
>> Individual all belong to a single taxon (Animalia), and therefore it does
>> not violate the condition excluding aggregates of different taxa. An
>> instance of Individual so identified would be almost useless for many
>> purposes, I agree -- but it's easy enough to filter such Individuals out
>> by
>> looking at dwc:taxonRank of the Taxon to which the Individual was
>> identified. Also, it's not useless for all purposes, because a botanist
>> would like to know that s/he doesn't have to look through that sample to
>> find stuff of interest.
>>
>> I guess my point is, there should not be any rank-based requirement for
>> the
>> implied taxon circumscription of an "Individual".
>>
>> Rich
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-content mailing list
>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>
>
>
> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
> postal mail address:
> VU Station B 351634
> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>
> delivery address:
> 2125 Stevenson Center
> 1161 21st Ave., S.
> Nashville, TN 37235
>
> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-content mailing list
> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>
>

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/attachments/20101103/06d05240/attachment.html 