[Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)

[Stephen Thorpe]

ION, used with care,?is probably the best source for recent names, Nomen. Zool. is better for older genera, but stops at about 2003 or so. 
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Tell me, Tony, do you give sources for your subjective synonymy and family placements?
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Stephen


________________________________
From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; jim.croft at gmail.com 
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 2:19 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)


Hi Stephen,
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Agreed (?we are still actually quite a long way from that point?) ? however it?s at least a starting point to know what genus names have been published, by whom and when, and in what major groups they reside even if not to family?
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You could of course say Nomenclator Zoologicus supplies this service for animals, and Index Nominum Genericorum/IPNI/Index Fungorum (etc.) for plants, other sources for prokaryotes and viruses. So, IRMNG takes (some of) these sources and rationalises them into a single searchable system; also adds family allocations and taxonomic status (slowly) to then names that lack these, appends species lists as accessible, and so on. The intention is to add value and at the same produce a more useful single resource than the foregoing represent as disconnected components, assist in the detection of intra- and inter Code homonyms, and provide a spell checking (?did you mean?) service for misspelled names. (Also fill some gaps not covered by the sources mentioned). Ah well, onwards and upwards?
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Regards ? Tony.
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From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 12:08 PM
To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); jim.croft at gmail.com
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
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yes, I see that, but when I spoke initially of a comprehensive generic listing of all biota, I meant one that had every genus allocated to a sensible lowest place in the taxonomic hierarchy, based on available literature, so I guess we are still actually quite a long way from that point ... and then comes species (up to 3000 in a single genus) ...
Cheers, Stephen
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From:"Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; jim.croft at gmail.com 
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 2:02 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
?
Hi Stephen,
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Without checking that family in detail, please also bear in mind that a significant subset of genera in IRMNG may not yet be allocated to their family, but (for molluscs in this instance) still reside under ?Mollusca (awaiting allocation)? at this time - http://www.marine.csiro.au/mirrorsearch/ir_search.list_genera?fam_id3222 ? actually the page will take a bit of a long time to load (10k genera in this case, ahem ahem?), also that the family allocations are ?as received? for some groups and may not yet be internally consistent.
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Nevertheless the genera themselves should be locatable in IRMNG in the main if you search by scientific name.
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Regards - Tony
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From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 11:52 AM
To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); jim.croft at gmail.com
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
?
well, I think I was "talking clean", rather than "talking dirty"! There is considerable room for variation even within "clean lists", given the nature of taxonomy. Incidentally Tony, I checked out IRMNG for a random small family of molluscs(Bullinidae), and found it to be less clean than you might think. My preliminary investigations on the family, now put on Wikispecies (http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bullinidae), suggest that there is much greater complexity, even at the genus level, than one might think, particularly for fossil taxa. I have no immediate intention of completing it on Wikispecies for the whole family, as my main focus at present is on N.Z. taxa...
Cheers,
Stephen
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From:"Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; jim.croft at gmail.com 
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 1:38 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
?
Hi Stephen, Jim, all,
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Actually I prefer a conceptual demarcation I got from Rainer Froese some years ago ? there are clean lists and there are dirty lists; dirty lists accept names ?in the wild? as (for example) misspelled in the text of non-systematic papers, museum specimen labels, etc., while clean lists attempt to include only verifiable spellings/orthographies i.e. as in the original publication (or sometimes subsequent published misspellings also). That is not to say that ?clean? lists may not contain a residual small percentage of transcription errors but it should be an order of magnitude smaller than ?dirty? lists. So on that basis, IRMNG attempts to be ?clean? rather than ?dirty? by relying on notionally clean sources, although some bits of dirt do remain (in the main from a couple of early sources used which turned out to be less clean that I expected, but these are gradually being found and fixed, starting with the genera).
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So according to the above categories, GNI, GBIF, OBIS, OZCAM and similar would be ?dirty? lists (no slur intended, that is their function) which can at least be retrospectively cleaned up (i.e. misspellings identified) by reference to suitably ?clean? reference lists, insofar as these exist.
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When ?clean? lists disagree, for example as regards to the spelling or status of a scientific name, then that is a stimulus for a deeper investigation.
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Regards - Tony
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From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 11:15 AM
To: Jim Croft
Cc: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
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though some are definitely more reliable than others ... there isn't one correct answer, but a range of answers?with different levels of stupidity! :)
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From:Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>; "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)

Ah, I see the problem...

There is no such thing a reliable source of names... there are just
sources of names... ;)

jim

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
> Ah, I see the problem ... <snip/>
...Hallan isn't a reliable source for weevil names...