[tdwg-content] DwC Occurrence [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Richard Pyle]

>I totally agree!  An individual is NOT a taxon. It just belongs to one 

I would refine that to "It just is asserted to belong to one..." 

> so we need to focus our attention on individual-at-event type 
> of assertions.  

I would classify individual-at-event instances as "instances", rather than
assertions.  I think they represent what most of us would treat as "facts".
"Assertions" are more like opinions -- like "what taxon concept this
individual falls within".

> That individual is linked to a TaxonName which represents a 
> TaxonConcept. Why do we need to talk about species at all? 
> All we have to deal with is individuals, taxon names, and taxon concepts.
 

I think of "species" as the most popular kind of "taxon concept". Not like
strict Linnean rank sort-of species.  

> I also agreed that an individual doesn't have to be whole, 
> so in my opinion "parts" can also be considered 'the individual in
question'. 

That is my old thinking.  My new thinking is that you abstract up to an
whole organism when you have a part (e.g., tissue sample), when representing
an Occurrence; just as you would abstract down to "Indidividual", when you
what to represent Taxon-at-Event for an Occurrence.

> Similarly, I also agree that up to populations we can still talk about
individuals.  
> However, it is important to be able to link "parts" to the whole
individuals 
> if needed, e.g. is_part_of.

Agreed!  The link needs to be there.  We just need to figure out which links
are within-class (e.g., parent-child), and which are across classes.

In haste, but still with Aloha,

Rich