[Taxacom] formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, etc.

[Geoff Read]

On the Global Names index as is — curiously author names with contractions
in them, such as those M'**** ones which started this thread, are
currently jiggering  the response from the search box.  Apostrophes in a
string are evidently not understood/allowed.  M'Intosh might be archaic
but I'm sure there are still present day O'Connor, O'Shea, etc,
taxonomists out there who will be puzzled about that.

After that episode I thought I might check if hyphenated author names and
common accented characters were handled more gracefully - but the site has
stopped responding.

One maybe peripheral use I did find handy was to search for just an author
and epithet in order to get to the basionym combination quickly, when
another database has presented me with only the current combination, and I
need to know the original genus - as I usually do.

Geoff


>>> On 1/09/2009 at 8:36 a.m., "Richard Pyle" <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
wrote:
> [...] Indeed, the "Global Names Index" (GNI), which is part of the
> GNA, exists exactly for this purpose -- to reconcile taxonomic databases
> against each other using clever algorithms and fuzzy matching protocols to
> reconcile taxonomic datasets.  Check it out at www.globalnames.org.  Still
> in development, but it's already quite useful.