[tcs-lc] Taxonomic Product or Taxonomic Data

[Roger Hyam]

Hi Paul,

> Do we envisage a tool that will suck up data associated with taxonomic 
> opinions from a number of sources (databases, e-monographs, XML'ed 
> printed sources etc, selected because they are all using the same name 
> or because they all contain the same name in their name set: accepted 
> name and synonyms), push it into our schema and then tell us whether all 
> the sources refer to the same taxon? Or is it something else?

I think what you are talking about here is the role of the 'user agents' 
  who make use of the schema. The schema should be pretty dumb it is 
whether the schema provides enough data to allow other systems to make 
judgments about whether instances of the schema are talking about the 
same thing. The information the applications would need to do this kind 
of thing would not be the same as the information needed to produce 
monographs I presume.

> To close this short post I cannot resist a comment on a phrase in Rogers 
> previous post (with my pedants cap firmly on). He says 'because it is a 
> list of names not taxa'. If by 'name' he means a character string as a 
> product of a nomenclatural act this is by definition a taxon as 
> recognized by the author of the name - remember taxonomy (the 
> recognition of taxa) comes before nomenclature. So, how do we recognize 
> a list of names from a list of taxa? Is it when someone other than the 
> person who published the name uses it?

I don't think it is particularly useful to say that if I say I have 
Narcissus pseudonarcissus L. growing in my garden I must mean Linnaeus' 
original concept of N. pseudonarcissus. (I have never seen his original 
description or type - presuming it has been lectotypified). To presume 
that I am using Linnaeus' concept is probably dangerous. How can I get 
in the head of a man who died over 200 years ago, wrote really bad plant 
descriptions and had never ready the ICBN :)

If I wanted to be specific about recording the occurrence of an 
individual in the sense of Linnaeus I would say.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus Linnaeus according-to Linnaeus 1753

If I wanted to be specific about recording the occurrence of an 
individual in the sense of the flora on my book shelf here I would write.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus Linnaeus according-to Clapham, Tutin & Moore 1989

But the way I use the name is the equivalent of:

Narcissus pseudonarcissus L. according-to NULL

This is the 'nominal' or NULL use of the name. So yes the list does 
signify taxa rather than a strings! But definitely NOT the original 
concept published with the name. That just created the name for use. (We 
may choose to say that all uses of this nominal concept are congruent. 
It certainly makes life a lot easier. But that story is for another thread.)

There are two ways of looking at the mans hypothetical list:

1) it is a list of strings - in which case my original argument stands 
and the names-string-info should be embedded in taxon element to avoid 
erroneous use of the schema.

2) it is a list of taxa - in which case it is not possible to provide a 
list of names (we always mean taxa) and so names should be embedded in 
the taxon element to model the real world.

The more ways I look at this the more it looks like names should always 
be embedded within taxa. (I must be getting close to giving up my 
position and opting for names as top level elements - certainty always 
comes before a fall!)

Can some one raise a case from this story for why it would be better to 
have names separate from taxa in the schema. I am worried that I don't 
have enough arguments against it to hold a balanced view at the moment.

Thanks,

Roger

==============================================
  Roger Hyam
----------------------------------------------
  Biodiversity Informatics
  Independent Web Development
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  http://www.hyam.net  roger at hyam.net
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  T: +44 (0)1578 722782 M: +44 (0)7890 341847
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