[tdwg-content] Does a species entail a specific classification or does it have many classifications.

Gregor Hagedorn g.m.hagedorn at gmail.com
Mon Nov 29 05:12:05 CET 2010


Hi Peter,

since you address me, I have a hard time to refrain from polluting
other peoples mailboxes...

> I believe that was Linnaeus's original intent.
> Unfortunately the current system seems to have strayed from this original
> goal.

Linné believed that species types were objective (they are not, they
depend on a species concept, which sadly is usually not mentioned in
publications...) and he did not take scientific progress (and the
versioning this demands) into account. Versioning is still a challenge
for much of scientific communication, I think we do not need to be too
self deprecating.

> You have a name, lets say Duplictus annoyii.
> To get information about what that name might be you reference a semantic
> web service using a URL form of the name.
> http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii
> If you a human using a web browser this will return a page that lists all
> the things it might be.
> Kingdom Animalia Duplictus annoyii Schmoe 1886 => appears in database in X,
> Y, Z

Yes, that is name usage indexing, which is very useful.

> Eventually the service could also include opinions about which name variants
> are valid and which are not.
> Felis concolor => Felis concolor Linnaeus 1771
> "Valid" names would include properly formed synonyms so Felis concolor would
> return Felis concolor Linnaeus 1771.

If you mean nomenclaturally validly formed name, yes, I believe that
is a service that IPNI and others should perform.

> The associated URLs for each of these forms would be
> HTML Page http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii.html
> RDF Page http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii.rdf
> This service would help map a given genus specific epithet combination to
> possible full scientific names with authorship.

I think of these names, among possible name variants, as "canonical"
names, i.e. names that are formed according to best practice, e.g. as
defined by the code (but possible also by others).

> In GNUB / GNITE these two URI's could be considered reconciliation groups.
> http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor    => PrefName:""Felis
> concolor Linnaeus 1771"
> http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Puma_concolor   => PrefName:"Puma
> concolor (Linnaeus, 1771)"
> This allows a different service or different groups to make statements about
> these.
> http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor olderSynonymFor
>  http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Puma_concolor
> or
> http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor isBasionymOf http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Puma_concolor

Whereas the basionym- or replacement-name-relation is homotypic
unambiguous, the heterotypic synonym relation is a function of species
concepts.

What I try to say about taxon concept management, is that we usually
don't have the biological knowledge to document the circumscription of
a taxon in an objective way. There are trivial and easy cases, like
two morphoforms, long recognized, well understood, that are now
understood to be truly only one species with varieties. In practice,
this is, in my opinion, rare. More likely is that a new species is now
detected. However, now it depends on the phrasing and structure of the
identification tools previously used, whether earlier identifications
according to a given publications would have included the new species
or not. That is, in the light of a new species, every publication that
aids identification defines its own taxon concept.

I am rather certain that biologists don't have the resources to
investigate this in its full breadth. However, in some important
cases, where necessary or particularly interesting, these resources
have been found, and opinions about the concept mapping have been
expressed. To me the function of managing taxon concepts is to be able
to manage this, while still allowing to reason (with greater margin of
error) on the "default assumption" that - unless otherwise known -
most taxon concepts for most purposes can be "roughly" set equivalent.

This is why I was commenting on the attempt to introduce a single
class of taxon-concept URIs for all living things, without
contemplating the mismatch of resources to actually document and
verify them.

> Are interpreted as being statements about the same "thing"

What you describe is the goal!

An interesting question I have is whether I can distinguish reasoning
that was made based on those cases where taxon concepts have been
investigated, from those based on default nomenclatural equivalence
(i.e. homotypic synonyms)?

Also, I think I am missing timelines. If I make the default
assumption: "names match" for the last 20 years, I am likely to get
good results. If I do this for the last 200 years, I probably end up
with garbage only.

One think I have been thinking of: provided I know when a new
treatment has been published which is now generally accepted, assuming
that it takes 10 years to spread (plenty of counter-examples to
that...), then such a timeframe might be used to qualify the quality
of inferences. Perhaps...

Also, the quality of inferences on species having been recently lumped
versus species has been split is different. In the first case, pretty
naive heterotypic synonymy works quite reliably, in the latter case
only details (and usually unavailable) study of taxon concept works.

I think the present work of listing the accepted names with their
present heterotypic synonymy in CoL will be a big progress. I wonder
whether these data can be used to identify validity time periods and
information about splitting or lumping changes?

I have no ready solutions to these problems and appreciate all who tackle it!

Gregor


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