[Tcs-lc] Taxonomic order anyone?

[Richard Pyle]

> > > I see no way of doing it. Anyone got any ideas?
> > How does capturing this information contribute to concept
> circumscriptions
> > and their exchange?
>
> Nomendcurator supports sequence of lower taxa, as a pair of higher
> taxon pointer and sequence integer.  Both are optional (what is the
> higher taxon of the top taxon?).

Taxonomer captures it too -- I don't dispute that there are reasons to
capture it.  I just don't believe that it has important meaning for taxon
concept circumscription definitions (i.e., TCS).

> The sequence number is used,
> if available, to display multiple hierarhcies side-by-side where the
> same names are algined on a single line when these hierachies order
> names in different ways (more precisely, it is used to back to
> original sequence after re-ordering for comparative display).
> Sequence would be unnecessary if all data comes with perfect
> circumscriptions, but it unlikely happens in some taxa,
> especially in older publications.

How does the sequence of species within a genus tell you anything about the
concept circumscriptions of either the genus, or the species? (Again, not
that it's useless information -- just that it's not an important component
of either concepts, or of names.)

> Display itself is not the business of TCS, but sequence is worth to
> record (and hence transfer) in some cases.  Sequence numbers
> sufficiently small to put into TCS, I guess.  Which one is the biggest
> group having direct lower taxa? Eucalyptus?  Less than four decimal
> digits?

I looked into this a few years ago, and decided that 10^4 was sufficient
(actually, for technical reasons, I treated it as 36^3).  But again, I fail
to see how they relate to concepts or names.

> Sequence is not part of a classification logically, but there are
> publications giving semantics to sequence.  It may be task for
> taXMLit, but I don't want to see almost equivlaent but another schema.
> It is already complicated enough comparing with number of players.

I don't think that is a problem.  I imagine something like taXMLit taking
TCS instances and applying an extention that documents a sequence of them
within a given AccordingTo.

Aloha,
Rich