[Taxacom] ZooBank website

[Karin Kiontke]

Dear all,

I also tested ZooBank with my favorite group, Caenorhabditis. I found 
that of the 44 entries, 11 are misspellings of C. elegans and C. 
briggsae. In addition, there is a listing of a cross between C. 
briggsae and C. remanei, one of a body part of C. elegans, and 4 
valid species appeared twice, and miraculously, Ciona intestinalis 
was transferred into Caenorhabditis. There is also something called 
Caenorhabditis rhabditis which has my own publication attached to it. 
I have no idea how that got into the database (I certainly did not 
write about such a thing). Together with other odd names, the number 
of species which were described in this genus is blown up by more 
than 50% (not to speak of those which are currently regarded as being 
Caenorhabditis). I bet that the same is true for other taxa with 
famous members.
My impression is that such a database needs to be curated to have 
more value. That is a huge work which, as was mentioned before, needs 
the input of the experts on each group. How that can be done 
logistically, I have no idea.

Generally, I also agree that it is very unfortunate that the source 
of these names is cited by the title of a publication. I have no 
access to the Zoological Record, so Zootaxa is partially useless for 
me. That is something quite easy to change (I suppose) and it would 
add value to ZooBank.

In addition, there are other little issues, like the incompatibility 
with MozillaFirefox (at least on my machine).

Well, this is a prototype and we are something like beta testers, I 
assume. Good luck with the next steps to help this fledgling fly.

Regards,

Karin

PS.: I should add that uBio has issues, too when I search for my group.