property: taxonName

[nielsklazenga]

taxonName (property)

Identifier	http://rs.tdwg.org/tcs/terms/taxonName
Type	http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#Property
Label	Taxon name
	required: Yes — repeatable: No
Definition	The accepted name for the taxonomic group.
Usage	taxonName is an IRI term and is required on a TCS Taxon Concept. A Taxon Concept can only have one taxonName.

Comments

The taxonName can be anything from a well-formed scientific name to an informal name, vernacular name, indigenous knowledge label, or even a label containing numbers and/or special symbols, such as are often used for OTUs.

The object of taxonName is an object or IRI, so that it can be reused in other Taxon Concepts. TCS has got the Taxon Name class, which can be used for any type of name, but people are free to use alternatives, e.g. skosxl:Label, if they want to restrict the use of the Taxon Name class to scientific (or scientific-y) names only.

Mapping

TCS	DataSet/TaxonConcepts/TaxonConcept/Name/@ref
TDWG Ontology	http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonConcept#hasName

[jar398]

Does a taxonomicName have to be something that is code compliant or approximately so? For example, would it make sense to put an integer or a UUID in this field?

There are potential 'References' whose TNUs are easy to identify as keyed rows in a table, for example, but not by taxonomicName, either because they lack a taxonomicName (there is no associated code-compliant name given) or because namestrings are used ambiguously (e.g. hemihomonyms within a single Reference with no code designations, or that famous Girault example). I'm wondering if these fit into TCS in any way.

(Am I asking this question in the correct place? - well probably this ought to be in the class's issue, not the property's)

[nielsklazenga]

Thanks @jar398 , yes, I think this is the right place (or an appropriate place at least) and good question.

My opinion is that there should be no restrictions on what can be a taxonName in TCS. I might not like taxonNames with numbers, or indeed anything that is not code compliant, but I think decisions about how names are formatted is something for community implementations or guidelines, not for the standard.

As for whether the things you describe fit into TCS, I think they will have to. Even though people might not want these things in their own systems, they still need to be able to do taxon relationship assertions between them and the taxon concepts in their systems.

[nielsklazenga]

@jar398 , see https://github.com/tdwg/tcs2/issues/42#issuecomment-775808273. I think what you are referring to might fall under OTU in that vocabulary?

[Archilegt]

About the label: Same issue as commented on "Taxon Concept". What makes sense to me is "Taxonomic Name". In Spanish "Nombre Taxonómico" is better than "Nombre de Taxon".

[Archilegt]

Ok, now to the point. This property is unnecessary, as its meaning is encoded in scientificName (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/scientificName). The problem is that the definition of scientificName in Darwin Core is not ZooCode compliant, moreover, it is not even a definition.

In the ZooCode, what is a scientific name is regulated by article 1, and the number and type of words composing a scientific name are governed by articles 4 and 5. Authorship and date of publication are not words composing the scientific names of animals.

Article 4. Names of taxa at ranks above the species group. 4.1. Names uninominal. The scientific name of a taxon of higher rank than the species group consists of one word.

Article 5. Principle of Binominal Nomenclature. 5.1. Names of species. The scientific name of a species, and not of a taxon of any other rank, is a combination of two names (a binomen), the first being the generic name and the second being the specific name.

5.2. Names of subspecies. The scientific name of a subspecies is a combination of three names (a trinomen, i.e. a binomen followed by a subspecific name).

It would be good to add documentation on how it is regulated in other codes, so that we can make progress in a new "Definition: The name of a taxon, conforming to Articles 1 and 4.1 or 5.1 or 5.2 of the ZooCode and... (add other articles/codes here)".

[nielsklazenga]

About the label: Same issue as commented on "Taxon Concept". What makes sense to me is "Taxonomic Name". In Spanish "Nombre Taxonómico" is better than "Nombre de Taxon".

See https://github.com/tdwg/tcs2/issues/1#issuecomment-1026428075.

The important thing is that this is a name (or a label) for a taxon. Again, I think a 'taxonomic name' is something else.

[nielsklazenga]

Ok, now to the point. This property is unnecessary, as its meaning is encoded in scientificName (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/scientificName).

No, scientificName in Darwin Core is a string, while the taxonName property in TCS is an (Taxon Name) object (which can be referred to as a URI). If there is an equivalent in Darwin Core it is scientificNameID. There is a section in the Darwin Core RDF Guide about the problems with ...ID terms and why we cannot use them in most serializations.

dwc:scientificName is equivalent, I think, with taxonomicNameString (#16). We can discuss when we get there whether we borrow the Darwin Core term and change the label, or whether we create a new property.

[nielsklazenga]

Coming back to @jar398's question (https://github.com/tdwg/tcs2/issues/2#issuecomment-889227451);

Does a taxonomicName have to be something that is code compliant or approximately so? For example, would it make sense to put an integer or a UUID in this field?

I will put it on the agenda for one of the coming meetings (not the immediately next one) of the TCS 2 Task Group, as it is a question we come back to every so often and I think it is important to see if we can find a solution we agree on (and if it is too hard we bump it down the track again).

I think that what is important is that OTUs are Taxon Concepts (in the TDWG sense), not whether the string that is used as a label is a Taxon Name or not. So, I would like us to get off the idea that Taxon Concepts need to have taxon names. I think we should seriously consider (actually, adopt) @baskaufs's suggestion (https://github.com/tdwg/tag/issues/22) to use SKOS-XL labels.

The SKOS-XL labels are in addition to, not instead of, what we already have in TCS. The TCS Taxon Name would be understood as a subclass of skosxl:Label, although we cannot say so in the standard. I think this will allow us to use Taxon Name as intended in TCS 1, while at the same time recognising that not all Taxon Concepts have one (as TCS 1 did). Also, we would never have to argue again about whether phrase names and vernacular names are Taxon Names, as it does not matter (I think it never mattered); we all agree that they are all labels. Also, the openbiodiv-o:TaxonomicConceptLabel can be seen as a skosxl:Label, so we can have those without having a term for them in TCS.

In this line, I have also been thinking (quietly) that I would like to rename this property to acceptedName (that is when I had synonyms on my brain). Now I would also be happy with scientificName, which would nicely highlight the difference with the Darwin Core scientificName. [Strictly speaking, this would be a new term, as this property would be skosxl:prefLabel; or maybe the skosxl:prefLabel is the new term.]

Just throwing this out there. I think this will work really well, but next week I might think differently.

[nielsklazenga]

Just noting that I have changed the taxonName property to acceptedName. I think this makes it easier for people to understand what it means, as it is what we normally call it, and is better in the context of TCS. If people have strong objections (and have a good reason for them) it is changed back easily enough.

NOTE (2024-09-21): This has been reverted a long time ago.

[nielsklazenga]

I think that for interoperability of TCS data sets, it would be really good if we make the taxonName required, so that people can rely on a tcs:TaxonConcept always having a tcs:taxonName and tcs:accordingTo. I cannot see a downside either, as people really wanting a string can just us a skosxl:Label with only a skosxl:literalForm or a tcs:TaxonName with only a tcs:taxonNameString.

This will be quite a lot of work to change, so I would like to hear people's opinions first.

Making it not required was probably a solo-action by me and I do not know what I was thinking then. Probably more about principle than usability.

[nielsklazenga]

I noticed that the usage still said the property is required, so I have gone ahead and cleaned up my mess.