Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema

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Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema

• Robert Kukla

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Transfer Schema

• Taxonomic units of interest?
• Which details do we need to record?
• What relationships between them?
• Crucial question
• What kind of structure to accommodate the above?

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XML

• Marked up text lttaggttextlt/taggt
• Nesting of tags leads to tree structure
• Supports many character encodings, typically
  Unicode (UTF-8).
• Large number of tools to explore and manipulate
  XML.
• e.g. validity of the XML file can be checked.

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Schema Diagrams
Sequence
Choice
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Design Conventions

• Element Names
• start with upper case letter
• first letter of each component capitalised
• Attributes
• start with lower case letter
• composite names discouraged
• Repeated elements
• ContainerElements (e.g. ltItemsgt for ltItemgt)
• Attribute id (unique) so they can be referenced
• Complex elements
• ltItemgt ltItemSimplegt ltItemDetailedgt

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Top Level
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MetaData
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Voucher
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Publication

• Attribute type (required)

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Top Level
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Concept - Definition

• Opinion about a group of organisms
• by a person or group of people
• has a name/label
• definition
• record is available
• time stamped

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Attribute type (required)

• Own concepts the author of the publication is
  also the author of the concept. The significance
  is that all available information about these
  concepts exists in the datasource for
  transcription. They can be
• Original concepts where a new name has been
  created
• Revision the results of a re-classification
  (e.g. combining or splitting) of existing
  concepts
• Referenced the author of the publication
  relates his own concepts to concepts from other
  authors. The provided information might be
  incomplete or incorrect.
• Vernacular common use of a name by a group of
  people not well defined but often referenced

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TaxonConcept
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Name
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AccordingTo
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Relationships

• homotypic synonymy
• heterotypic synonymy
• no synonymy
• lineage
• vernacular

• Attribute type (required)
• congruence
• inclusion
• pro-parte inclusion
• overlap
• exclusion

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SpecimenCircumscription

• Attribute type (optional)
• Type
• Holotype
• Selectotype
• Others?

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TaxonConceptCircumscription

• Attribute type (required)
• incomplete

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Summary