[Zoobank-list] meeting place

[Richard Pyle]

Hi Wolfgang,

I have much to discuss on this topic, but am currently on a ship in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, with limited bandwidth. There are two subcategories of what you are discussing; both of which are currently in the works.

One category is a technical infrastructure to support the deposition of TaxonName Usage instances, anchored to GUIDs. The scope includes all treatments of taxon names, and the first priority is to focus on those treatments that involve Code-governed Acts (which are mostly what you refer to as "Pure" names). But the scope also includes what you refer to as "Applied" names. This technical infrastructure is the Global Names Usage Bank (GNUB), part of the Global Names Architecture (GNA), currently in development by a number of entities (GBIF, EOL, NBII, Index Fungorum, IPNI, Landcare Research, etc.) GNUB is intended to be fully open-access, and (ultimately) mirrored on dozens or hundreds (or thousands?) of servers around the world. With luck, it will be the common GUID-issuing entity for initiatives such as Index Fungorum, ZooBank, CoL, EoL, GBIF, etc., etc. A lot of progress has been made on this effort in the past several months, and I hope to report in more detail soon.

The second category is the many taxon-specific nomenclator efforts in Zoology (Catalog of Fishes, Hymenoptera Name Server, Diptera database, etc., etc.) There was a meeting with many representatives of these nomenclators in Paris two years ago, and that set a process in motion which we hope to push forward over the next several months.

I'm sorry I do not have more time to comment further, but I will do so after I return, at the end of August.

Aloha,

Rich

?

________________________________

From: zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org [mailto:zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org <mailto:zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org> ] On Behalf Of faunaplan at aol.com

Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 9:24 PM

To: zoobank-list at afriherp.org

Cc: iczn-list at afriherp.org

Subject: [Zoobank-list] meeting place

Dear all,

taxonomic names are the fundamental keys all across biodiversity informatics, but improved access to vital biodiversity knowledge is impossible without ZooBank. 

PURE and APPLIED nomenclature: PURE names are unambiguously fixed to type material, whereas APPLIED names are applied to taxonomic concepts/ opinions that can be ambiguous. Pure names are like perfectly fixed tags, but applied names need to be interpreted: An important difference.

Like the Code, ZooBank must take care of the basic PURE nomenclature, primarily. However, ZooBank cannot do that without massive support from authoritative databases keeping track on APPLIED nomenclature. Who can provide that? By now, we should have learnt that it does not come automatically by scanning etc Only taxon experts can provide reliable records, - machines need expert stewards that take a look at what they are producing. Let us stop that nonsense production by industrialized automatic "name object" harvesting & interpreting tools!

Remember what Bill Eschmeyer wrote: >We need a "Database" central -- an electronic "meeting place" for people making taxonomic databases< 

That's it! 

The central role of ZooBank and the roles of all those taxonomic databases out there would become clearer & more productive if we had that meeting place!

Why not start it now, together with ZooBank. Why not send invitations to those people who are making or planning to make taxonomic databases? I guess there are many who do not even know about the ZooBank list. 

Best wishes,

Wolfgang Lorenz, Tutzing, Germany

?