[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

In a nutshell: some species level synonyms are homotypic (or objective) - based on the same type - and others are heterotypic (or subjective) - based on different types, which in the opinion of someone at some time are interpreted as belonging to the same species concept - but others may have different opinions (or revise their own through time) according to available evidence and their interpretation of it. Then we have the usage of the same name for multiple specimens or observed occurrences which are later interpreted to represent more than one real taxon (pro parte synonyms and misidentifications); also synonymy / divergent opinions at different ranks (e.g. see the fossil hominids for many cases - Homo neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens neanderthalensis being an old one, plenty of new ones too). All complex things to model with simple 1:1 or 1:many "fixed" relationships, unfortunately...

Regards - Tony
________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Geoff Read [gread at actrix.gen.nz]
Sent: Saturday, 16 May 2009 6:01 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

>>> On 15/05/2009 at 6:38 p.m., Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com> wrote:
> Two of the reasons behind the use of scientific names are:
> 1) They are more stable than common names
> 2) The are more precise
>
> If you wanted to plot all the occurrence records of *Puma concolor* in
North
> America you would have to
> combine all the data under all the different scientific names. That is
> assuming that those observations
> are accurate to species.
>
> Also, I did not mention that despite general agreement that we have one
> metapopulation between Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin,
> there is not general agreement over whether that should be called *Aedes
> triseriatus* or *Ochlerotatus triseriatus.*

My point was that both these differences are trivial, they are not real
"different scientific names", and thus poor examples for your plan. The
link is the epithet in both, derived from the basionym, and I betcha the
biologists that work on them happily talk about their 'triseriatus'
experiments and 'concolor' distribution data. Shades of the LITU.  Search
software should be able to pull together the data on them easily.

Ok, assuming we DO have real unlinked scientific names.  Say it's one
where a near universally used 'beloved' name has a minor rival of totally
different word string that's unfortunately the senior synonym.  Strife
does ensue. I would simply give each a unique identifier in the 'system',
and can't see any need for a third 'invented' identifier which purports to
resolve a concept authoritatively but is not founded on anything tangible,
and may just reflect someone's snap judgment opinion. Both of the above
names will have basionyms and types, and that's where the 'species
concepts' come from. Then there would be an identifier for the publication
where the beloved name was 'sunk'. Those are the three essential elements
that must be linked - somehow. Simply linking bare name strings in some
resolver page is just speculation, but dangerous because of its minimalist
nature.  Without context, it seems authoritative - god-like derived, but
actually could be nonsense - there's a lot of misleading nonsense out
there I find.


Geoff



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