[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

Mon Aug 29 15:24:07 CDT 2016

Rod said "By combining taxonomic names (“checklists”) and collection data from natural history collections (“occurrences”) it generates species distributions."

Actually, no! That would be so only on the BIG assumption that the occurrence data and the associated identifications are both reliable. For terrestrial invertebrates from most places in the world, that is only true of the few recently revised groups.

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 29/8/16, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic names databases
 To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Monday, 29 August, 2016, 10:05 PM

 Arguably the goal of lists that
 include distribution is what GBIF http://www.gbif.org is doing. By combining taxonomic
 names (“checklists”) and collection data from natural
 history collections (“occurrences”) it generates species
 distributions.
 Regards

 Rod

 On 27 Aug 2016, at 15:50, Dilrukshan Wijesinghe <dpwijesinghe at yahoo.com<mailto:dpwijesinghe at yahoo.com>>
 wrote:

 The World Spider Catalog is excellent for all of the things
 mentioned. One aspect that is less than ideal even in many
 curated lists of species is the inability to search with
 geographic names e.g. countries. Of course curated lists are
 put together by taxonomists for taxonomists and the focus is
 on taxa rather than areas but the most important end user
 IMHO is the local naturalist who wants to generate an
 authoritative list of species for the area he/she is
 interested in. There are some curated lists that go beyond
 type localities and incorporate distribution information for
 each species based on the literature covered but even in
 these cases searching by geographic terms is usually not
 possible (e.g. WSC). (Ironically, when the WSC existed as
 many html files it was possible to do a simple text search
 on each file!)

 I realize this is only tangentially relevant to the current
 thread and I do appreciate the huge effort required to
 include searchable geographic distribution information for
 each species. But I do think that should be the ultimate
 goal for all curated lists of species.

 Priyantha

 Sent from my iPhone

 On Aug 27, 2016, at 9:43 AM, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com<mailto:tonyrees49 at gmail.com>>
 wrote:

 Hello Mary, all,

 The World Spider Catalog (to which Angelo refers) is an
 excellent example
 of doing things well, so far as I can see. First, there is a
 huge effort to
 be comprehensive and a long history of continued releases
 and improvements,
 each citable as needed (see http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/archive/). Second, the
 data, originally as flat files, have been transferred into a
 completely
 reprocessed relational database from 2014 onwards, as well
 as a change of
 agency for intended assured persistence, according to the
 account given at
 http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/introduction.
 Third, all the taxonomic names data
 (with a slight version lag) are added to, and made available
 for download
 via, the Catalogue of Life, see
 http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/details/database/id/29
 ; and last, but
 certainly not least, an email address is given for
 notification of errors
 and omissions. Presumably the same can be made for many
 other, if not quite
 all, Cat. of Life contributors for which we should be very
 grateful in the
 main; speaking from minor past interactions the CoL is
 always interested in
 improving data quality and does strive to replace known
 sources of lower
 quality with higher quality equivalents as and when possible
 (which is the
 principal means at its disposal)

 Regards - Tony (no present affiliation with either World
 Spider Catalog or
 Cat. of Life)

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

 On 27 August 2016 at 22:59, Mary Barkworth <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu>
 wrote:

 A DOWNLOADABLE list of accepted names would be superb
 (synonyms and their
 accepted name would a lovely addition). Perhaps a "Cc-by"
 with date for
 attribution. That would help those of us trying to build
 websites for
 information about the biodiversity of a region.  Yes, I
 realize, the
 derivative product will not then be automatically updated -
 but the
 derivative product (in my case a web site of specimens and
 observations)
 would provide more and more information going forwards and
 people in the
 region who like a particular group of organisms could be
 encouraged to
 check for changes that need to be made.  As it is, a
 web site such as that
 for spiders (animals for which I do not personally care) is
 a huge
 frustration. Thank you for it - but please, a little
 more.  I mention
 spiders but it applies to all curated nomenclatural
 databases.  For my
 purposes, the fact that it is curated means I can trust it -
 and send users
 to it for primary literature.

 Mary
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 ---------------------------------------------------------
 Roderic Page
 Professor of Taxonomy
 Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative
 Medicine
 College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
 Graham Kerr Building
 University of Glasgow
 Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

 Email:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk<mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
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