[Zoobank-list] wikispecies

[Richard Pyle]

Hi Benedikt,

Thank you for the link to Wikispecies. If I understand the purpose of
Wikispecies correctly, it has a somewhat different purpose than ZooBank.
There are many efforts to create a web-based or otherwise electronic listing
of all known taxon names (e.g., Zoological Record, Tree of Life,
Species2000, ITIS, GBIF-ECAT, Species Toolkit, uBio TNS, Glasgow Taxonomic
Name Server, etc.).  I absolutely applaud the efforts of Wikispecies --
particularly that (unlike many of the other efforts), it is completely open
access to content development.  I also think it serves a valuable and
important role in organizing global nomenclatural information. However, from
what I gather looking through the Wikispecies site, it serves a very
different function from what ZooBank is intended for.

Although it would be great if ZooBank eventually contained a complete index
of all zoological names since Linnaeus, that is not its primary (nor
initial) purpose. The purpose is to establish a universal registry of
zoological names, and to incorporate such registration as a *mandatory*
requirement for establishing new names after 200x (tentatively 2007).  The
task of retrospective registration of names established between 1758 and
2008 is certainly a part of the plan for ZooBank, but at this time is not
considered a mandatory component for determining availability of pre-2008
names.

The critical words in the preceding paragraph are "mandatory" and
"availability".  For zoological names, those two words only have meaning in
the context of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
(www.iczn.org), which is charged with the task of establishing and
maintaining the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
(http://www.iczn.org/new%20the%20Code.htm).  These are the zoological
analogues of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, and the
International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, respectively (which are
mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy#Nomenclature).

What makes ZooBank different from other efforts to list, index, catalog, or
register zoological names is that it comes from the ICZN itself.  This is
not to say that it is necessarily "better" or is backed by a superior vision
for the electronic organization of zoological names -- just that it involves
the very rules followed by the scientific community in creating and using
scientific names of animals for more than a century.

There are aspects of Wikispecies that make it unsuitable as a universal
registry for taxon names, as ZooBank is intended to be.  One very basic
problem is namespace uniqueness.  By incorporating the actual taxon name as
part of the namespace in Wikispecies, there is a problem with Homonyms.  For
example, the genus name "Chromis" was independently proposed five separate
times in four separate families between 1801 and 1862 -- and that's just
within fishes (there is at least one other homonym for "Chromis" outside of
fishes).  Also, it's not clear to me whether each name in Wikispecies
represents a "Taxon Name", or a "Taxon Concept", but it seems to be the
latter.  ZooBank is concerned only with Taxon Names.  Related to this,
Wikispecies seems to offer a single complete taxonomic hierarchy for each of
its names (e.g., http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomacentridae -- one of
the families that has had the genus "Chromis" named within it).  While it is
certainly useful in some contexts to establish a single classification for
each name (e.g., ITIS), much of the broader bioinformatics community is
moving towards information management schemes that accommodate multiple
different classifications for each name (to reflect diverse taxonomic
opinion -- both historically and currently). More generally, whereas
Wikispecies is intended as a repository for all manner of relevant
information about taxa, ZooBank is specifically (and intentionally) more
limited in scope to just nomenclatural information.

This is not to say that there are no opportunities for collaboration and
interaction among all of these different efforts which, collectively, will
eventually form the "Catalog of Life". Indeed, the current efforts by GBIF
and TDWG are focused largely on establishing standards and protocols to
allow seamless flow of electronic biological information across all of these
initiatives.  In that sense, I think it would be great if the managers of
Wikispecies remain actively engaged in the broader discussion on taxonomic
data and its exchange and representation via the internet!

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Ichthyology, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/staff/pylerichard.html



> -----Original Message-----
> From: zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org
> [mailto:zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org]On Behalf Of B.M. Mandl
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 7:30 AM
> To: zoobank-list at afriherp.org
> Subject: [Zoobank-list] wikispecies
>
>
> I would like to draw your attention to www.wikispecies.org, an
> open species
> directory run by the wikimedia foundation which was started a year ago
> under almost identical conditions and with a very similar proposal as
> zoobank; in fact, reading your proposal stroke me like reading a more
> detailed version of the proposal I wrote last summer to address people
> interested in such a project.
>
> I don't know to which extent zoobank differs or has already started, but
> you might want to consider to join our efforts.
>
> Wikispecies is wiki-based, i.e. open access and monitored by a set of
> administrators. We are currently still evaluating how to proceed with the
> project in terms of creating templates to structure our content, but
> already have a considerable collection of taxonomic names, literature
> references and links to encyclopaedic articles (at wikipedias in
> different
> languages).
>
> Everybody who wants to join wikispecies is more than welcome!
> Thank you and
> best wishes,
>
> Benedikt Mandl
> Department of Zoology
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 3EJ Cambridge
> United Kingdom
>
>
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