[tdwg-content] Darwin Core terms sex and lifeStage with mixed content

[John Wieczorek]

Dear all,

There is a body of topics surrounding Darwin Core terms for which it is
tempting to overload the content in an effort to provide richer data than
the standard would seem to support. We have a pair of older open issues on
this general topic in the Darwin Core issue tracker.

https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/35
https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/36

You can see in the discussions on those issues that there is some consensus
that the content of Darwin Core terms should remain consistent with the
definitions and not mix concepts.

I've had recent questions in particular about the fields 'sex' and
'individualCount'. Here is an example. How should one populate Darwin Core
terms for a record of 2 males and 5 females in a single lot?

I propose that part of this is easy - the individualCount should be 7.

The definition of the sex term (without looking for clues in the Comments)
might be seen as a little ambiguous, "The sex of the biological
individual(s) represented in the Occurrence. Recommended best practice is
to use a controlled vocabulary."

Strictly speaking, there is no single sex that matches the biological
individuals in this example lot Occurrence record, and so the sex fields
should be left blank.

There are a number of terms in Darwin Core whose definitions suggest that a
list (formatted with ' | ' as a separator) be used to match multiple
values. Though it might seem that sex could be one of these terms, it isn't
currently. Again this argues for a single value for sex from a controlled
vocabulary.

The biggest problem is with the Comment on the sex term, which gives an
example with different semantics from what the definition says - namely "8
males, 4 females". I pose that this is an error and must be corrected.

Yet, all hope of retaining information in the Occurrence record is not
lost. To capture the richness of the information in the multi-sex lot
example, I would recommend the use of dynamicProperties.

How should one populate Darwin Core terms for a record of 2 males and 5
females in a single lot? I would do this:

sex = null
individualCount = 7
dynamicProperties= { "count of males":2, "count of females":5 }

Hope that makes sense.

Since this topic has arisen from multiple independent sources, I would like
to formally propose changes to the sex and lifeStage terms to remove the
spurious examples. Today begins a minimum 30-day public commentary period
to close on 5 March 2015 if no dissenting opinions are made in this public
forum.

Here is how the new terms would appear if the changes are accepted:

Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/sex
Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/
Label: Sex
Definition: The sex of the biological individual(s) represented in the
Occurrence. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
Comment: Examples: "female", "hermaphrodite", "male". For discussion see
http://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/dwc:sex
Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines:
Status: recommended
Date Issued: 2008-11-19
Date Modified: 2015-02-05
Has Domain:
Has Range:
Version: sex-2015-02-05
Replaces: Sex-2009-04-24
Is Replaced By:
Class: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence
ABCD 2.06: DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/Sex

Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/lifeStage
Namespace: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/
Label: Life Stage
Definition: The age class or life stage of the biological individual(s) at
the time the Occurrence was recorded. Recommended best practice is to use a
controlled vocabulary.
Comment: Examples: "egg", "eft", "juvenile", "adult". For discussion see
http://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/dwc:lifeStage
Type of Term: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Refines:
Status: recommended
Date Issued: 2008-11-19
Date Modified: 2015-02-05
Has Domain:
Has Range:
Version: lifeStage-2015-02-05
Replaces: LifeStage-2009-04-24
Is Replaced By:
Class: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence
ABCD 2.06: DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/MycologicalUnit/MycologicalSexualStage
or
DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/MycologicalUnit/MycologicalLiveStages/MycologicalLiveStage
(Note DwC spec uses ”MycologicalLifeStage” or
DataSets/DataSet/Units/Unit/ZoologicalUnit/PhasesOrStages/PhaseOrStage


Cheers,

John
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