[seek-taxon] Chiroptera

[Robert K. Peet]

Hi Jim,

This sounds like great progress!!

I have had some experience mapping concepts by now, and would be pleased 
to meet with these Chiropterologists, either in person or better yet 
electroniccally, to help them get the hang of it.  We might also get Alan 
Weakley to join in, with the thought that he has done more of this 
mappiong than anyone in the world and could also arrange the concept 
annotation of a batch of plants for which he know has concept maps.

Let me know how I might help.

Best,
Bob

  ======================================================================
      Robert K. Peet, Professor & Chair         Phone:  919-962-6942
      Curriculum in Ecology, CB#3275            Fax:    919-962-6930
      University of North Carolina              Cell:   919-368-4971
      Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3275  USA          Email:  peet at unc.edu
                    http://www.unc.edu/depts/ecology/
                  http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
  ======================================================================

On Wed, 10 May 2006, Beach, James H wrote:

> Bat Concept Enthusiasts:
>
> Here is what I am working on.  We have a decent bat collection here at
> KU and two active mammal curators who have a good general knowledge of
> bat classifications. They work with the MSW editions and know about bat
> concepts--which taxa have changed a lot, which ones haven't, low-level
> changes and high-level changes to the classifications, etc.
>
> I approached them about doing the MSW mapping for us AND also to
> annotate their bat specimens with a name linked to a concept. No bat
> collection in the world is up to date with changes in classifications,
> so this would be an excellent chance to get the MSW of the world
> classifications mapped, likely add some newer smaller ones, especially
> from publications with new species descriptions since 1993 through 2006.
> So in concept (pun intended) we would have the concepts, the mappings
> among classifications and a concept annotated collection of up to 35,000
> specimens.  That should work.  They would use ConceptMapper to map and
> author the concepts, and understand our needs to show the impact of
> queries when using the same name when it represents two or more concept
> circumscriptions.
>
> I am having conversations with them, our admin and HR people about how
> to most expeditiously set this up. We have some options for hired guns,
> a grad student, a collection manager dedicated to the tasks for a finite
> period, a curatorial associate (usually a student hired to do collection
> maintenance stuff), or potentially a piece of a curator or a post-doc.
> There is brainstorming and scoping yet to work out on the people side of
> this, but the mammal curators here see this an exciting collaboration
> possibility with SEEK.  They 'get' our view of concepts and they are
> eager to provide concept-updated specimens.
>
> This might be one way to interest systematists in using concepts --
> offer to collaborate with them on updating their collection annotations!
>
> There is more to work out, and I will continue with that this week and
> next, have a couple of meetings scheduled.
>
> I think we could pay for this out of the SEEK-Taxon budget here, I am
> guestimating that this would be a 3-4 month effort.  I would prefer to
> start tomorrow, but we'll need to see what is reasonable.
>
> Jim
>
>
> _____________________________
> James H. Beach
> Biodiversity Research Center
> University of Kansas
> 1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
> Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
> T 785 864-4645, F 785 864-5335
>
>
>
>

  ====================================================================
  Robert K. Peet, Professor              Phone:  919-962-6942
  Department of Biology, CB#3280         Fax:    919-962-6930
  University of North Carolina           Cell:   919-368-4971
  Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3280  USA       Email:  peet at unc.edu

              http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
  ====================================================================