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

[Richard Pyle]

> and should we really be tracking the gender of each genus as part of
> our data exchange model?

Good question.  The Catalog of Fishes does, and I have found it to be
EXTREMELY useful.  The other parameter necessary for algorithmic
gender-matching of species epithets to genus names is whether the species
epithet is proposed as a noun, or as an adjective (not always obvious or
self-evident). Only adjectives change to match the gender of the genus --
nouns preserve original orthography.  At least that's how it works in
ICZN-land.

> 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?

Appilcations would use them only in the context of a usage instance (wherein
the rank, parent name(s), and orthography are indicated as attributes of the
usage instance). As stand-alone objects, they would default to their
original usage instance (i.e., original genus, original orthography,
original rank).  Authorship (and certain other Code-governed properties)
would be preserved as attributes of the Name object, and the rest would be
stacked on the usage instance.  This fits in nicely with Jessie's campaign
within TCS to encourage using names only in the context of a "SEC" (concept
definition usage) -- and not as stand-alone "nominal concepts" -- whenever
possible.

> Are there any special use
> cases that we need to consider?

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "use cases", but
autonyms/nominotypical names (i.e., same epithet, same rank-group, different
rank) certainly need to be dealt with as "special case" -- but I think that
is true regardless of whether coming at it from the botanical or zoological
perspective.

Rich