[tdwg-content] Taxonomic name usage files

[Richard Pyle]

Good questions!  Note that the stuff I was describing isn’t just GNUB; it’s embedded in the DwC terms as well.  And the few elements that are missing from DwC are embedded in TCS.  The main other aspects are the Reference metadata (the ill-fated TDWG Reference standard; now looking towards NLMS), and Agents (most people I know follow FOAF). Other than those, the main missing holes (in both GNUB and DwC) are the Appearance stuff, and perhaps a more robust approach to the relationshipAssertion stuff.

 

Maybe a task for TCS 2.0?

 

Once the standards fleshed out, I imagine the way to implement this stuff in new literature is via something along the lines of Pensoft’s PWT (now arpha): http://arpha.pensoft.net/  The natural group to focus on this would be PLAZI, which has been going gangbusters in recent months on capturing structured treatments from existing literature. [Pssst… Donat…. That’s your cue….]

 

Rich

 

From: Nico Franz [mailto:nico.franz at asu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2016 11:58 AM
To: Richard Pyle
Cc: Gaurav Vaidya; greg whitbread; tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; vocab at noreply.github.com; Michael Rosenberg (Faculty)
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Taxonomic name usage files

 

Thanks, Rich, for catching me up.

 

   So then if we can apparently cover a good bit of ground (with what I assume you'd call a "smart [or the only] way of implementing GNUB"), this does raise the question of how to bring this as close as possible to the peer-review/publication process where an author team may be motivated to express their intentions related to name usages in various explicit, structurally recorded ways.

 

Best, Nico

 

 

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org> wrote:

> 1. Given a multitude of well established and precise historical name usages, I explicitly don't want to commit to one in particular
> that my present usage is congruent with, or not. (Indeed, I kind of think this is what the name withOUT a sec. does, "explicitly").

Yes! Exactly!

> I choose to be vague - any past usage is ok with me, here.

During the TCS days, this is what we referred to as a "Nomenclatural Concept", which is roughly the sum/average of all historical treatments, more or less (ambiguity and vagueness deliberate/intentional).

> I think we can presently model the vagueness (by integrating on the strings alone), but not the deliberateness thereof (in contrast to other situations where vagueness is not intended)?

Yes - a TNU without any relationshipAssertions.  Basically, the only implied associations with other TNUs is via the Protonym link (i.e., a Nomenclatural Assertion).

> 2. Franz. 2010. Revision of Apotomoderes (Insecta: Coleoptera). => Actually, "Insecta" here is more of a social concession to an outdated data filing paradigm than
> a claim to an active speaker role (related to name usages that I actually care about). I am not intending to apply my taxonomic expertise to "Insecta";
> that is *out of scope* (though the string is being written).

So... in that case, the question is whether to represent "Insecta" as used in Franz 2010 as a scientific name, or  vernacular name (two different ways of modelling names, as the latter do not have structured Codes).  Even if you fall on the side of using it as a scientific (taxon) name, you can still create a TNU for it.  In the spirit of Walter's pioneering work on this stuff, TNUs only represent "potential" taxa.

Aloha,
Rich

 

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