rooperc4
commented
6 months ago I think sticking to ITIS codes will work with the new taxonomy. My understanding (and what I've seen so far) shows that the major restructuring occurred at higher levels (e.g. subfamilies and species tended to be grouped the same as they were before). Caveat though, I'm not a coral taxonomist, so the details might escape me. All that said, I think ITIS will work.
Looking at the filtering code, you have definitely captured most all the inverts people would be interested in (especially SFI) in the high resolution database, but in the low resolution database the only coral that shows up is paragorgia arborea and then a huge porifera component and aphrocallistes vastus. I would think these reflect the weight of these groups relative to other groups. So I might be tempted to either leave all the SFI in the high resolution database or pull at higher taxonomic groupings? Probably the first option is easiest.
Because of interest in coral and sponge, I (and others) in the past have written code that groups the various coral sponge by "things we care about as fish habitat" and "things we tend not to care about". I might be tempted to have all the non-commercially important inverts show up only in the high resolution database and then create some tools to group them? So for instance, then a user could group all primnoa together or group all sea whips together. Would this make sense to you? I've already got some versions of this type of table set up for Alaska and I don't think it would be too hard to add in the other regions.
@Lewis-Barnett-NOAA
Lewis-Barnett-NOAA
ericward-noaa
This may have been addressed by the filtering of the AFSC catch data, but I'd like input from @rooperc4 on whether we are capturing enough of the taxa of interest. I also recently learned that much of the coral taxonomy has changed, but hopefully that will be tracked here by sticking to the ITIS codes.