[SEEK-Taxon] RE: LC/TCS - How many schemas?

[Kennedy, Jessie]

Hi Walter

>
>yes and no. 
always ;-)

>The act of
>identifying a specimen is of course always the process of assigning the
>specimen to a taxon, i.e. a concept. 
agree

>However, ABCD deals with existing
>data sources, where this is rarely explicitly stated. 
yes and I guess so do many other systems

>If so, it is
>currently handled as part of the event of making the identification (as
>identification reference, or, in fact, as the identifying person [see
>Paul's sec. reference issue]), simply because in specimens the
>(biological) taxon is not the only outcome of an identification. 
>
so I interpret htia as you saying that when someone identiifes a specimen wihtout specifying the relevant taxonomic framweork, one could infer that they are really saying that this is their concept of the name?

To me this is still an identification or usage, not really an intentional (re-)definition of a taxon and should therefore be treated differently to intentional taxon definitions as found in floras etc.

What we were trying to propose is that identification should always be to a taxon (as you suggest) but if all you have is a name then this should be treated as a (nominal)concept - i.e. one with a name but without a definition. This would let us deal with legacy data but be explicit that we don't know exactly what was meant by the name other than what we can infer (that because it has this name it must in some way be related to the original concept (i.e. the first publication of that name with type declared and description recorded). It would also let us encourage people to move forward and improve the current practice by getting into the habit of referencing the taxonomic framework for the name which was used in the identification and allow us in the first place to have lists of usable concepts to build on, rather than simply name usages which we can't infer anything much from.

Jessie