Topic 3: (Fauna Europaea and gender agreement) GUIDs for Taxon Names and Taxon Concepts

[Donald Hobern]

Only because we do need to be able to generate binomials and trinomials
correctly.  Yde indicated that Fauna Europaea somehow does this.  I agree
that this does not stop us using the epithet as the primary unit, but I
would like to know whether the epithet carries with it a set of dormant
gender variants ready to be activated when it gets associated with a new
genus - and should we really be tracking the gender of each genus as part of
our data exchange model?

To make this more relevant: If we chose (at least for zoology) to equate our
nomenclatural objects with epithets rather than binomials, how do we expect
applications to use these objects?  Are there any special use cases that we
need to consider?  (Even if there are, they may not include any special GUID
behaviour, in which case we can ignore them here.)

Donald

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Donald Hobern (dhobern at gbif.org)
Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability
Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel: +45-35321483   Mobile: +45-28751483   Fax: +45-35321480
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-----Original Message-----
From: Taxonomic Databases Working Group GUID Project
[mailto:TDWG-GUID at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle
Sent: 07 November 2005 10:04
To: TDWG-GUID at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: Topic 3: (Fauna Europaea and gender agreement) GUIDs for Taxon
Names and Taxon Concepts

Hi Donald,

You asked Yde:

> Can you explain a little more about how you handle epithet agreement
> ("gender unequivalencies") in this system?  I realise this is tangential
> from the main GUID discussion, but it does seem to be a complication
> to the task of treating the epithet as the primary unit.

My question to you: why would epithet gender agreement be a complication to
the task of treating the epithet as the primary unit? I'm not sure if I
follow.

Aloha,
Rich