[SEEK-Taxon] Question about EML

[Shawn Bowers]

Hi,

I recently found this statement in the methods section of an EML document:

   	"Nomenclature for common names follow the 1987 edition of the
	National Geographic Society's field guide, 'Bird's of North
	America'. Species codes used are those of the American
	Ornithologist's Union. The USFWS Checklist OF Vertebrates, 1991,
	was used to quantify scientific names from the common names."

Can anyone help me interpret what these two sentences mean, and how I 
might use the Taxon-group work to "understand/resolve" the actual 
species references in a dataset based on the above sentence? Here is a 
snippet from the corresponding dataset with the only those columns that 
refer to something "taxonomic". (Note that there are actually 23 columns 
in the dataset and about 165 rows.)


class  tax_order      family    sci_name        aoucode  commonname
-----  ---------      ------    --------        -------  ----------
aves   anseriformes   anatidae  aix sponsa      wodu     wood duck
aves   apodiformes    apodidae  chaetura vauxi  vasw     vauxs wift
aves   ciconiiformes  ardeidae  ardea alba      greg     great egret
...

I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between 
the concept XML schema and it's use for "registering" or "mapping" this 
data set to information captured in the concept work.  For example, if I 
want to search for datasets based on taxonomic concepts.

(You have to be patient with me because I am clueless about these 
issues), but it seems like the common name and aoucode represent 
redundant information: the aoucode is some kind of convention for 
representing the common name, and the class/tax_order/family/sci_name 
uniquely identifies the common name? How would one align this dataset 
with an instantiated taxon concept schema -- in particular, what 
information would need to be available in the instantiated concept schema?

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Shawn