[Zoobank-list] Re: Zoogle versus ZooBank, ECat, Species2000, ITIS, uBio, etc.

[Yde de Jong]

Dear all,

I belief that ZooBank is certainly not in competition, because the 
main objective of ZooBank is an index of nomenclatural acts, 
including nominal taxa, not the building of another universal 
catalogue of species names. This is a quite distinct, unparalleled, 
and relevant (for basic cross-referencing) effort so far.

As an example: I am surprised to see Species2000 listed as a partner 
of ZooBank. Firstly Species2000 is not the actual owner of the data, 
but a data collector, however, more important is that in the current 
Species2000 data set nominal species, for instance, can't be 
discriminated from other species names. Also genus-group names (as 
such) and other relevant taxonomic details like type designation, 
which are often present within the source databases, are not 
included. What counts for Species2000 matters for all universal name 
catalogues I know. Therefore I suggest ZooBank to cont(r)act the 
original data custodians for data sets to upload ZooBank and to 
exclude intermediates when possible.

More in general I find it confusing within this ZooBank context to 
see ECAT, the Catalogue of Life (CoL), Species2000 and ITIS often 
distinctively mentioned, because ECAT is coupled to the Catalogue of 
Life (CoL) and the CoL is Species2000 plus ITIS. Listing them 
separately suggests exclusive initiatives.

Kind regards,

Yde