species web pages

[Chapman, Alex]

Julia,

As mentioned recently in a previous TAXACOM posting, Western Australian Herbarium's FloraBase web site, http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au presents species pages for the 12,500 vascular plant taxa in WA based on a maintained DELTA dataset.  

The DELTA data is translated into natural language, atomised into component fields and stored in a web-enabled database.  This then allows us to assemble the data into a species description on the fly as the page is requested, together with names data and other standard components such as species images and maps based on vouchered specimens.

Such an approach allows us to present simple forms-based interactive identification from the same descriptive data.  We have very recently added much more detailed generic and family-level descriptive data, also based on a maintained DELTA dataset, from which we will providing a more fully-featured form of interactive identification using the IntKey software.

The primary goal of FloraBase is to provide integrated access to plant names (and associated fields including currency and synonymy), with descriptions, herbarium specimen label data, images and maps.  While parts of FloraBase are based on accepted standards such as DELTA and HISPID (for descriptive data and specimen data respectively) it is more an effective solution based on unique complementary databases, than a generally applicable software environment.

Perhaps you are raising the issue of automatically generating species-level data from specimen-level coding.  This is an extremely interesting area of research and the concept has much merit, primarily because, given robust initial character definition, the descriptive data is persistent and can be compiled into new descriptions as species concepts change (assuming the pool of specimens is managed effectively and redetermined comprehensively).

Certainly DELTA provides tools for compiling higher-level descriptions by amalgamating multiple descriptions of lower rank based on the same character set.  The primary impediment to this general approach is that the initial cost is daunting, even though the long-term benefit is great.  An interesting small case study on specimen-level coding was published on the DELTA Newsletter some years ago.  (See White, H. (1994), Data or concepts - what should we be coding? DELTA Newsletter 11 - http://www.calm.wa.gov.au/science/delta/news/dn10.pdf )


Regards,
Alex
____
Alex R. Chapman                   Email: alexc at calm.wa.gov.au
Editor - Nuytsia              http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au
Research Scientist           Voice/Fax: +61 8 9334 0513 /0515
WA Herbarium - Department of Conservation and Land Management
Locked Bag 104 Bentley Delivery Centre Western Australia 6983  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julia Kirkland Berger [mailto:julia at ALL-SPECIES.ORG]
> Sent: Thursday, 14 August 2003 7:31 AM
> To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
> Subject: species web pages
> 
> 
> greetings:
> 
> the recent discussion and examples of online keys has been 
> informative and
> it is exciting to see the good work devoted to this effort.  but
> it has made me wonder if anyone is also building software/tools for
> generating species web pages from existing data sources--with 
> fields/links
> to label data, images, (of types and in native habitat), 
> descriptions where
> possible, georefs, etc.  ?
> 
> and could this software be generically applied to other taxa 
> with a few tweaks?
> 
> with regards,
> 
> julia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Julia Kirkland Berger
> Director Special Projects, ALL Species
> 415-750-7243 phone
> 415-750-7090 fax
> http://www.all-species.org
> 
> Mail:
> ALL Species
> P.O. Box 29462
> San Francisco, CA 94129
> 
> Deliveries:
> c/o California Academy of Sciences-IZG
> Golden Gate Park
> San Francisco, CA 94118
>