[tdwg-content] If you need something for referring to a population, then it is probably best to do it as a related class
Steve Baskauf
steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu
Mon May 2 15:16:27 CEST 2011
OK, Pete, I'm going to try to write the other email that I mentioned in
the previous one. This email relates to the actual suggestion that you
made in the email, that is to use the URIs of the form like:
"http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Occurrence". In the RDF that
defines what this URI means, the URI is described as "A lightweight tag
that can be used to label occurrences of this species". What I'm not
sure about is what exactly one is supposed to do with it. From the
example that I was talking about in the previous email
(http://ocs.taxonconcept.org/ocs/f522444a-2dd9-400e-be59-47213ef38cb9.rdf),
this "tag" is the object of the predicate
txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag . So I guess that it is another
way that one could query Occurrence records to find out which ones are
Occurrences of the species having the identifier "ICmLC" (/Boloria
selene/). But I'm not sure what the advantage of that is. The RDF for
the Occurrence already tells me that the Occurrence has the
txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesConcept property with object URI
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/ICmLC#Species . I can resolve that URI
and "find out" that the "species concept" (sensu DeVries) is /Boloria
selene/ . But if I used the "lightweight tag" I'd also have to resolve
its URI to find out about it and the RDF for the tag directs me to the
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/ICmLC#Species URI anyway via the
dcterms:isPartOf property of the tag. I guess the point is that if one
wants to "find out" about the Occurrence, it takes two steps to get to
the species concept description if I use the tag (first through
txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag, then through dcterms:isPartOf)
which is no advantage over just getting there in one step (via
txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesConcept). If the only point is to have
something to put in as a search term, then why not just make the
txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag a data property with the literal
object the string "ICmLC"?
I suppose that one could say that an advantage of the "lightweight tag"
approach would be that one is indicating that the particular Occurrence
is an instance of a class that consists of all Occurrences of the
species /Bororia selene/. That seems to be what the intention is. But
this seems to be a case of creating many subclasses rather than having a
general class and assigning it properties that help one to understand
the nature of the instance of that class. It requires the creation of a
class for every species on the planet. Instead of there being a
relatively small number of classes that includes the basic kinds of
resources (Occurrence, individual, Identification, taxon concept) there
is a class for occurrences of every kind of taxon concept. Actually,
there are several classes for every instance of taxon concept, because
you are recommending that the "lightweight tag" approach be used for
other types of things as well, such as individuals and (in your
suggestion below, populations). There isn't anything intrinsically
"wrong" with this approach, but with my bias toward preferring "well
known" types/classes it just seems like a lot to expect consuming
applications to "understand" what amounts to potentially millions of
classes that this method would introduce.
I also don't quite understand what a txn:SpeciesOccurrenceTag is
exactly. In the RDF that defines the txn:SpeciesOccurrenceTag instance
for /Bororia selene/ (http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/ICmLC#Occurrence)
the dcterms:description says that it "allow species occurrences to be
modeled as instances of SpeciesOccurrenceTag". But that doesn't seem to
be what is actually occurring. When the Occurrence instance
http://ocs.taxonconcept.org/ocs/f522444a-2dd9-400e-be59-47213ef38cb9#Occurrence
is described, it is not typed as the lightweight tag (which IS a
txn:SpeciesOccurrenceTag because of the implicit typing caused by the
XML container element name). The lightweight tag URI is the object of
the txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag property, but that doesn't
make the Occurrence an instance of SpeciesOcurrenceTag as would be the
case (I think) if the lightweight tag URI were the object of a rdf:type
property. Anyway, I'm confused about this.
The other issue that I would raise with this approach is that it brings
up the same issue that I raised in the other email that I wrote. It
essentially puts a burden of anticipating the results of a query onto
the metadata provider. If one follows the model of allowing multiple
Identifications for an organism, then it is possible that someone
somewhere else might apply their own Identification instance to the
individual represented in the Occurrence. As was the case in my earlier
example, for txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag to be useful as a
thing to be queried, the metadata provider would need to somehow know
that this additional Identification had been made, and then create
another txn:occurrenceHasSpeciesOccurrenceTag property for the
Occurrence instance. This seems to somewhat at odds with the benefit
that the Linked Data world has in allowing resources to be created by
people all over the cloud and then linked rather than expecting a
centralized authority to do everything.
Anyway, maybe you can explain what is going on so that I can understand
it better and maybe explain why this approach is better than just
creating a few classes and describing their instances by descriptive
properties.
Steve
Peter DeVries wrote:
> I am still somewhat puzzled why TDWG seems so opposed to adopting
> anything that comes from outside a small click?
>
> I was thinking that it would be best to create a separate class that
> can be used for populations of a species.
>
> This would require adding an additional tag to the TaxonConcept
> Species Concept Model, which currently includes several tags like entities
>
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Species <- The Species Concept
> for the Cougar
>
> See http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p.html HTML
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p.rdf RDF
>
> http://lsd.taxonconcept.org/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flod.taxonconcept.org%2Fses%2Fv6n7p%23Species
> Knowledge Base View (http://bit.ly bit.ly/gMFqR1
> <http://bit.ly%20bit.ly/gMFqR1>
>
> The model mints URI's for the following related entities. See RDF. or
> KB View
>
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Image - An image of a Cougar
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Occurrence - An occurrence of a
> Cougar
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Individual - An individual Cougar
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#Taxonomy - A Basic Taxonomy
> for the Cougar, one alternative among many potential classifications
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#NCBI_Taxonomy - The NCBI
> Taxonomy for Cougar, or starting at the lowest available clade
> http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/mCcSp#OriginalDescription - The
> Original Description of the Cougar, ideally with links to the PDF or
> BHL URI.
>
>
> Here is how a subset of these would relate to the new #Population Tag
> and related semantic entities.
>
>
> This tag is used an individual organism that that is an instance of
> the species concept pecies concept RDF.
> This allows you to refer to a individual cougar in a way that is
> separate from the concept of cougar and retains links to other data
> relating to that species concept.
>
>
> <txn:SpeciesIndividualTag
> rdf:about="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Individual">
> <dcterms:title>A Tag for individuals of the species concept Puma
> concolor se:v6n7p</dcterms:title>
> <skos:prefLabel>A Tag-like resource that is used to label
> individuals of the species concept Puma concolor se:v6n7p</skos:prefLabel>
>
> <dcterms:identifier>http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Individual</dcterms:identifier>
> <dcterms:description>A lightweight tag that can be used to label
> individuals of this species. These allow individual organisms to be
> modeled as instances of SpeciesIndividualTag</dcterms:description>
> <dcterms:isPartOf
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Species"/>
> <wdrs:describedby
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p.rdf"/>
> </txn:SpeciesIndividualTag>
>
> Add a tag for a species population to the species concept RDF.
> This allows you to refer to a population of cougars in a way that is
> separate for an individual cougar and retains links to other data
> relating to that species concept.
>
> <txn:SpeciesPopulationTag
> rdf:about="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Population">
> <dcterms:title>A Tag for populations of the species concept Puma
> concolor se:v6n7p</dcterms:title>
> <skos:prefLabel>A Tag-like resource that is used to label
> populations of the species concept Puma concolor se:v6n7p</skos:prefLabel>
>
> <dcterms:identifier>http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Population</dcterms:identifier>
> <dcterms:description>A lightweight tag that can be used to label
> populations of this species. These allow populations of a species to
> be modeled as instances of SpeciesIndividualTag</dcterms:description>
> <dcterms:isPartOf
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Species"/>
> <wdrs:describedby
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p.rdf"/>
> </txn:SpeciesPopulationTag>
>
>
> This is the RDF for a population, it has as one of it's parts an
> individual organism.
> It is typed to indicate that it refers to a population of Cougars.
>
> <owl:Class
> rdf:about="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/pops/NorthAmericanCougarPopulation">
> <rdf:type
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p#Population"/>
> <skos:prefLabel>The population of North American Cougars Puma
> concolor se:v6n7 </skos:prefLabel>
> <dcterms:hasPart
> rdf:resource="http://ocs.taxonconcept.org/ocs/51cd124d-78c5-40aa-a7ff-2e3f58ca6ade#Individual"/>
> <wdrs:describedby
> rdf:resource="http://lod.taxonconcept.org/pops/NorthAmericanCougarPopulation.rdf"/>
> </owl:Class>
>
> Respectfully,
>
> - Pete
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Pete DeVries
>
> Department of Entomology
>
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
>
> 445 Russell Laboratories
>
> 1630 Linden Drive
>
> Madison, WI 53706
>
> Email: pdevries at wisc.edu <mailto:pdevries at wisc.edu>
>
> TaxonConcept <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> & GeoSpecies
> <http://lod.geospecies.org/> Knowledge Bases
>
> A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data <http://linkeddata.org/> Project
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
--
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) 343-6707
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/attachments/20110502/08b53167/attachment.html
More information about the tdwg-content
mailing list