University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

In the wiki examples I\'ve been developing I\'ve been trying to model
names using the [TDWG LSID
vocabularies](http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/LsidVocse),
particularly [TaxonName](http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonName).
Roger Hyam has obviously put a huge amount of work into developing
these, and they handle just about everything I need. However, I think
that there\'s one thing missing, namely a way to express the logical
relationship between the parts of a multinomial taxonomic name.  
  
For example, consider the fish [*Chromis circumaurea* Pyle, Earle, and
Greene,
2008](http://itaxon.org/wikidev/Chromis%20circumaurea%20Pyle,%20Earle,%20and%20Greene,%202008),
described by Rich Pyle and colleages (TED have recently posted a [great
video of Rich talking about discovering new species of
fish](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_pyle_dives_the_twilight_zone.html)).
*Chromis circumaurea* is a species in the genus *Chromis*, and in the
TaxonName vocabulary I can represent this relationship using the term
\"genusPart\", which specifies the name of the genus. In a wiki page
this could be a link to a page called \"Chromis\".  
  
But, which \"Chromis\"? There are at least three:  

- *Chromis* Hübner 1819
- *Chromis* Lacepède 1802
- *Chromis* Cuvier, 1814

Only one of these is the fish (*Chromis* Cuvier, 1814). Cases of the
same name being used for different organisms (homonymy) is not uncommon,
so linking to strings isn\'t adequate to express the relationship
between the two parts of the name *Chromis circumaurea*.  
  
I\'d alluded to this issue in my first major foray into RDF and
taxonomic names ([Taxonomic names, metadata, and the Semantic
Web](https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/jbi/article/view/25)), where I
proposed using the Dublin Core term \"isPartOf\" to link the specific
epithet to the genus part. In this case, the link would be between URIs
for the names *Chromis circumaurea* Pyle, Earle, and Greene, 2008 and
*Chromis* Cuvier, 1814.  
  
It\'s a small point, but without some means to link components of a name
we\'re going to struggle to sensibly answer questions such as listing
all the species in a given genus (or, perhaps more correctly, all the
species names that have been published in a given genus).


In the wiki examples I've been developing I've been trying to model names using the TDWG LSID vocabularies, particularly TaxonName. Roger Hyam has obviously put a huge amount of work into developing these, and they handle just about everything I need. However, I think that there's one thing missing, namely a way to express the logical relationship between the parts of a multinomial taxonomic name.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Something's missing from taxonomic name vocabularies