HTML, Latin, diagnoses, electronic publication

[Mike Dallwitz]

                                                               25 March 1999

> From: "JOSEPH E. LAFERRIERE" <josephl at AZTEC.ASU.EDU>

>>> I shall gladly pay you $10 if you can write a plant description
>>> entirely in HTML
>
>>  You can find about 2000 plant descriptions in HTML at
>>     http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/www/data.htm
>
>   My statement stands. I do not owe you the $10.

Actually, I was hoping for $20000.
N.B. <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="joke"> :-)


The most important aspect of these descriptions (and others of animals and
viruses) is not their language, but that they are comprehensive,
comparative, and generated from databases. This is relevant to several
subjects that have been discussed on this list recently.


Latin Descriptions

Descriptions can be produced in Latin (or any language) by translating the
character list. This is more work than translating a single description, but
once it has been done, descriptions can be produced by people with no
knowledge of Latin.


Diagnoses

> From: Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at BBA.DE)

> If a new taxon is described, a printed key for either all taxa within the
> next higher rank, or for at least 10 taxa within that rank. The taxa
> selected should be those considered closely related with the new taxon.

> From: JOSEPH E. LAFERRIERE (josephl at AZTEC.ASU.EDU)

> The task in describing a new taxon is and should remain distinguishing
> between the new taxon and ALL existing taxa. Many existing Latin
> diagnoses distinguish between the new taxon and one existing taxon.

Using the program Intkey, it is easy to generate diagnoses separating a
taxon from all the other taxa in a database, and with any required degree of
separation. These diagnoses are usually quite short. For example, their
median length for Leslie Watson's Angiosperm-families database (containing
580 taxa) is 5 characters.


Electronic publication

> From: Erast Parmasto (e.parmasto at ZBI.EE)

> It is very useful when differences of a new species from the known
> related ones are given in full. But what is lacking in most old and many
> new descriptions is: What Has It Common With Related Species! As a
> result, when you want to include the new species into your data matrix
> for a preliminary cladistic analysis, many important characters are not
> mentioned at all (for the new species).

It's not generally practical to publish comprehensive, comparative
descriptions in hard copy, and in any case, they are not very useful in that
form. It would be better to publish the diagnostic descriptions mentioned
above in hard copy, to satisfy nomenclatural requirements, and publish the
full descriptions and database electronically. Nomenclatural discussion
could also be omitted from the hard-copy publication, and included in the
database - see, for example, the 'Festuca of North America' database at the
above URL.

A lot of nomenclatural confusion could be avoided or cleared up by the
availability of good descriptive databases. This is also exemplified by the
'Festuca of North America' database, and it's accompanying paper:

    Aiken, S. G., Dallwitz, M. J., McJannet, C. L., and Consaul, L. L.
    (1997). Biodiversity among Festuca (Poaceae) in North America:
    diagnostic evidence from DELTA and clustering programs, and an INTKEY
    package for interactive, illustrated identification and information
    retrieval. Can. J. Bot. 75, 1527-1555.

Mike Dallwitz

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
Phone: +61 2 6246 4075   Fax: +61 2 6246 4000
Email: md at ento.csiro.au  Internet: biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/