Cargando…
Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts
Abstract. Scientific names of biological entities offer an imperfect resolution of the concepts that they are intended to represent. Often they are labels applied to entities ranging from entire populations to individual specimens representing those populations, even though such names only unambiguo...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Pensoft Publishers
2014
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4109484/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25061375 http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.420.7089 |
_version_ | 1782327880886255616 |
---|---|
author | Lepage, Denis Vaidya, Gaurav Guralnick, Robert |
author_facet | Lepage, Denis Vaidya, Gaurav Guralnick, Robert |
author_sort | Lepage, Denis |
collection | PubMed |
description | Abstract. Scientific names of biological entities offer an imperfect resolution of the concepts that they are intended to represent. Often they are labels applied to entities ranging from entire populations to individual specimens representing those populations, even though such names only unambiguously identify the type specimen to which they were originally attached. Thus the real-life referents of names are constantly changing as biological circumscriptions are redefined and thereby alter the sets of individuals bearing those names. This problem is compounded by other characteristics of names that make them ambiguous identifiers of biological concepts, including emendations, homonymy and synonymy. Taxonomic concepts have been proposed as a way to address issues related to scientific names, but they have yet to receive broad recognition or implementation. Some efforts have been made towards building systems that address these issues by cataloguing and organizing taxonomic concepts, but most are still in conceptual or proof-of-concept stage. We present the on-line database Avibase as one possible approach to organizing taxonomic concepts. Avibase has been successfully used to describe and organize 844,000 species-level and 705,000 subspecies-level taxonomic concepts across every major bird taxonomic checklist of the last 125 years. The use of taxonomic concepts in place of scientific names, coupled with efficient resolution services, is a major step toward addressing some of the main deficiencies in the current practices of scientific name dissemination and use. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4109484 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Pensoft Publishers |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-41094842014-07-24 Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts Lepage, Denis Vaidya, Gaurav Guralnick, Robert Zookeys Research Article Abstract. Scientific names of biological entities offer an imperfect resolution of the concepts that they are intended to represent. Often they are labels applied to entities ranging from entire populations to individual specimens representing those populations, even though such names only unambiguously identify the type specimen to which they were originally attached. Thus the real-life referents of names are constantly changing as biological circumscriptions are redefined and thereby alter the sets of individuals bearing those names. This problem is compounded by other characteristics of names that make them ambiguous identifiers of biological concepts, including emendations, homonymy and synonymy. Taxonomic concepts have been proposed as a way to address issues related to scientific names, but they have yet to receive broad recognition or implementation. Some efforts have been made towards building systems that address these issues by cataloguing and organizing taxonomic concepts, but most are still in conceptual or proof-of-concept stage. We present the on-line database Avibase as one possible approach to organizing taxonomic concepts. Avibase has been successfully used to describe and organize 844,000 species-level and 705,000 subspecies-level taxonomic concepts across every major bird taxonomic checklist of the last 125 years. The use of taxonomic concepts in place of scientific names, coupled with efficient resolution services, is a major step toward addressing some of the main deficiencies in the current practices of scientific name dissemination and use. Pensoft Publishers 2014-06-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4109484/ /pubmed/25061375 http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.420.7089 Text en Denis Lepage, Gaurav Vaidya, Robert Guralnick http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Lepage, Denis Vaidya, Gaurav Guralnick, Robert Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title | Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title_full | Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title_fullStr | Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title_full_unstemmed | Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title_short | Avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
title_sort | avibase – a database system for managing and organizing taxonomic concepts |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4109484/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25061375 http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.420.7089 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT lepagedenis avibaseadatabasesystemformanagingandorganizingtaxonomicconcepts AT vaidyagaurav avibaseadatabasesystemformanagingandorganizingtaxonomicconcepts AT guralnickrobert avibaseadatabasesystemformanagingandorganizingtaxonomicconcepts |