[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

[Tony Rees]

Thanks for the clarification, I was trying to understand why all the names
in the 2006 version of LepIndex (also the 2016 Cat. of Life) have no
parentheses around authorities but maybe that just is or was a quirk of
that version of LepIndex.

On a separate tack, from this thread currently it seems that IRMNG is a
consumer of "sub-optimal" LepIndex content at species level for most of the
species names in this group (around 160,000 current names - not all valid -
as previously noted) but I do not see why it cannot also over time become
an assembly point for upgraded data if individuals would like to take
charge of, say a particular family of family group (probably excluding the
butterflies for which I am presently pursuing some additional options),
which could then be fed back to CoL if desired to improve content there
(the VLIZ persons are already doing that for subsets of WoRMS data so the
path is already in place). Of course if there are other options to do this
I am not ramming it down anyone's throat but I thought I would make the
offer since that is basically the way that WoRMS works already, with
subsets of the data being exposed with their own branding and identity and
responsible authors clearly identified, see for example this page
describing the World Foraminfera Database, which is simply the relevant
subset of WoRMS content:

http://www.marinespecies.org/foraminifera/

As I say, the infrastructure to do this is already in place at VLIZ so
there should be no problem about deploying it over selected portions of
IRMNG content as desired. Alternatively, interested parties could simply
arrange permissions to work away on small parts of IRMNG as desired (all
edits are credited) but then some arrangements would have to be made to
exclude such portions from automatic overwrite by ostensibly newer, but in
fact older, CoL data (for example) as and when that is refreshed (again not
really a problem with adequate warning).

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://about.me/TonyRees