[Taxacom] Practical Taxon Concept Software

[Adorian Ardelean]

Hi Anthony,

Just as an idea ....when I was graduate student at KU, I have 
imagined and developed Syngraph (2001), an application that may be 
able to do at least part of what you need.
http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/graphical_synonyms.htm

The full lists of relationships that Syngraph could manage is 
presented at 
http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/relation_structures.htm
it can handle also confidence in relationships 
http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/confidence_codes.htm
and store nomenclature comments 
http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/adjectives.htm

With Syngraph you could build a graphical display with all taxonomic 
history of a name. This application potentially allows multiple taxon 
concepts and inclusion of the same "name" record in two lists for 
disambiguation of homonyms. I would say Syngraph does not produce 
synonym, but cresonym lists. Because it is hungry for references and 
names cited in references, I infer it is more appropriate for 
taxonomists who have in hand comprehensive bibliographic resources on 
a taxon. I guess it may be also useful for projects who deal with 
taxa at regional scale, but have comprehensive literature for a taxon 
in that geographic region (you could sort missids from literature for 
example and reuse the result of subselected specimens for further 
tests e.g. in ecological niche modelling or something else).

Because Syngraph color-codes each basionym and its subsequent 
citations, the list can also be used as legend for plotting records 
on map  http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/what_is_syngraph.htm
http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/syngraph/beta/hyptest.JPG

This is an old project now; the application had some issues with 
installation on some windows machines. Later a student from IT 
department rewrote parts of this application to make it easier to 
install and to fix some bugs. However, I do not have a copy of it and 
I am not sure what features were preserved. If you consider that this 
is what you actually need and it may be of help for you, please 
contact Dr. Daphne Fautin at KU for further details 
(http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/index.htm).

Giving the amazing development of Internet biodiversity IT domain, 
the occurrence of new standards and various IT solutions around that 
could benefit from such a development, I consider that the place of 
Syngraph is straight in web applications. When I have produced 
Syngraph it was somehow ahead of its time, tough the application had 
a basic module for HTML export of taxon concepts on the web: this 
feature is used to produce graphical synonymies in the Hexacorallians 
of the World website (here is an example for sea anemone Heteractis 
aurora 
http://hercules.kgs.ku.edu/Hexacoral/Anemone2/syndisplay.cfm?seniorid=15). 
Most probably, we will develop a full web application based on the 
same concept.

All the best,
Adorian



Dr. Adorian Ardelean

----------
coordinator of myNature Project http://mybiosis.org

proiectul myNature
str. Rascoala din 1907 nr 12
Timisoara 300325
Romania

http://mybiosis.org/nature/portal.php?pagename=firstpage [a Romanian 
biodiversity-database]
http://mybiosis.org/nature/portal.php?pagename=adorian [CV]
http://mybiosis.org/romanianorchids/ [Romanian Orchids]
http://greendorf.com [botanical illustration]
http://planktonnet.awi.de/ [planktonNet]

Projects in which I was involved:
http://hercules.kgs.ku.edu/Hexacoral/Anemone2/ [Hexacorallians of the World]
http://www.ubio.org [uBio Project]
http://portal.ubio.org [uBio Portal]
http://microscope.mbl.edu [micro*scope Project]
http://starcentral.mbl.edu/biopedia [BioPedia]
http://starcentral.mbl.edu/custar [CU*STAR]