[tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwC scientificName: good or bad?

Jim Croft jim.croft at gmail.com
Fri Nov 19 23:29:50 CET 2010


There is a subtle difference in in the common but loosely expressed
assertion of scientific names having (i.e. Including) authors and name
components having authorship (which may or may not be displayed).

Jim

On Friday, November 19, 2010, John van Breda
<john.vanbreda at biodiverseit.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm coming in a bit late on this conversation so I hope I am not repeating
> what has already been said, but botanical names can also have authorship at
> both specific and infraspecific levels, e.g.
> Centaurea apiculata Ledeb. ssp. adpressa (Ledeb.) Dostál
>
> And to make it even more complex, you can have subspecies variants, so 2
> infraspecific levels, e.g.
> Centaurea affinis Friv. ssp. affinis var. Affinis
>
> Atomising this properly could be quite complex but necessary to be able to
> present the name as it should be written with italics in the correct place.
> E.g. in the example above, the author string and rank strings are not
> normally italiced, but the rest of the name is. Unless we can include this
> formatting information in dwc:scientificName?
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
> [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of "Markus Döring
> (GBIF)"
> Sent: 19 November 2010 09:24
> To: Roderic Page
> Cc: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; Jim Croft
> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwC
> scientificName: good or bad?
>
> What Darwin Core offers right now are 2 ways of expressing the name:
>
> A) the complete string as dwc:scientificName
> B) the atomised parts:
>     genus, subgenus, specificEpithet, infraspecificEpithet,
> verbatimTaxonRank (+taxonRank), scientificNameAuthorship
>
> Those 2 options are there to satisfy the different needs we have seen in
> this thread - the consumers call for a simple input and the need to express
> complex names in their verbatim form.
> Is there really anything we are missing?
>
>
>
> When it comes to how its being used in the wild right now I agree with Dima
> that there is a lot of variety out there.
> It would be very, very useful if everyone would always publish both options
> in a consistent way.
>
> Right now the fulI name can be found in once of these combinations:
>  - scientificName
>  - scientificName & scientificNameAuthorship
>  - scientificName, taxonRank & scientificNameAuthorship
>  - scientificName, verbatimTaxonRank & scientificNameAuthorship
>  - genus, subgenus, specificEpithet, infraspecificEpithet, taxonRank,
> scientificNameAuthorship
>  - genus, subgenus, specificEpithet, infraspecificEpithet,
> verbatimTaxonRank, scientificNameAuthorship
>
> To make matters worse the way the authorship is expressed is also
> impressively rich of variants.
> In particular the use of brackets is not always consistent. You find things
> like:
>
> # regular botanical names with ex authors
> Mycosphaerella eryngii (Fr. ex Duby) Johanson ex Oudem. 1897
>
> # original name authors not in brackets, but year is
> Lithobius chibenus Ishii & Tamura (1994)
>
> # original name in brackets but year not
> Zophosis persis (Chatanay), 1914
>
> # names with imprint years cited
> Ctenotus alacer Storr, 1970 ["1969"]
> Anomalopus truncatus (Peters, 1876 ["1877"])
> Deyeuxia coarctata Kunth, 1815 [1816]
> Proasellus arnautovici (Remy 1932 1941)
>
>
> On Nov 19, 2010, at 8:50, Roderic Page wrote:
>
>> I'm with Jm. For the love of God let's keep things clean and simple.
>> Have a field for the name without any extraneous junk (and by that I
>> include authorship), and have a separate field for the name plus all
>> the extra stuff. Having fields that atomise the name is also useful,
>> but not at the expense of a field with just the name.
>>
>> Please, please think of data consumers like me who have to parse this
>> stuff. There is no excuse in this day and age for publishing data that
>> users have to parse before they can do anything sensible with it.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>> On 19 Nov 2010, at 07:06, Jim Croft wrote:
>>
>>> Including the authors, dates and any thing else (with the exception of
>>> the infraspecific rank and teh hybrid symbol and in botany) as part of
>>> a thing called "the name" is an unholy abomination, a lexical
>>> atrocity, an affront to logic and an insult the natural order of the
>>> cosmos and any deity conceived by humankind.
>>>
>>> In botany at least, the "name" (which I take to be the basic
>>> communication handle for a taxo

-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
 - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

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