Taxacom: Management of "unnecessary" names in databases
Richard Pyle
deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
Sun Nov 27 22:48:32 CST 2022
2022
Hi Carlos,
Sorry for the delayed reply (I was travelling, and am only just now catching up on email). I haven?t read replies from others yet, but very briefly: the taxonomic databases I manage do not have any ?name? entities in them (I?ve never seen a satisfactory definition of such a thing, as so many people define what a ?name? is differently). Instead, the units I track are Taxonomic Name Usages (TNUs) ? appearances or usages of names within some sort of static documentation (e.g., publication). Thus in my world, a ?name? has no status or properties itself* (because it?s not a ?thing?). Instead, I simply track how people use names. Thus, I never encounter any problems along the lines of what you describe.
*I should note that special instances of TNUs (Protonyms) can serve as proxies for ?names? in a particular way, and this is how I track certain name-ish properties like gender, or whether it?s a noun, adjective, etc.
Aloha,
Rich
Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Senior Curator of Ichthyology | Director of XCoRE
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, HI 96817-2704
Office: (808) 848-4115; Fax: (808) 847-8252
eMail: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
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From: Carlos Alberto Mart?nez Mu?oz <biotemail at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2022 3:22 AM
To: Taxa com <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Cc: uetz at vcu.edu; Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>; Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
Subject: Management of "unnecessary" names in databases
Dear Taxacomers,
Sometimes it happens that scientific names at a given superrank or subrank are subsumed into each other. For a pair of two names, this often means that the only remaining name becomes "unnecessary" as it contributes nothing to the classification.
For example, in a family with two subfamilies, one subfamily is considered to be nested within the other and therefore synonymized. The result is one family with one subfamily, the latter being now "unnecessary" from the classification point of view.
Sometimes it happens that a subordinal name is elevated to order, including a slightly different ending. No new suborders are proposed. The old suborder name is now "unnecessary" for the classification.
How are you handling these "unnecessary" names in your databases? Do you keep them in the backend but make them invisible in the frontend? Do you tag them with some qualifier or status? Do you delete them? Something else?
Kind regards,
Carlos
Carlos A. Mart?nez Mu?oz
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