[OSM-talk] Species names

[Fabrizio Giudici]

> Jacek Konieczny wrote:
>  
>
>     On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 05:42:25PM +0100, Jack Stringer wrote:
>     > My rule of thumb would of be label it in english rather that
>     local name.
>     > But that's because I am english. Using latin would put some
>     people off
>     > from tagging Zoos.
>
>     But precise latin specie name is a universal identifier (rather than
>     a „human readable” name), which can be easily translated to local
>     names
>     by automated means. For some species, I guess, there will be no
>     English
>     name, but there may be a local name.  And Latin name will always be
>     defined.
>
As I'm presently working on a semantic application which includes bird 
catalogs, I can say that things aren't so easy (but aren't much harder). 
While the idea of using the latin name (a.k.a. binomial name) is a good 
idea (much better than localized names, that often are ambiguous), there 
isn't a "universal" catalog of names (my experience is limited to birds, 
but I expect my point is valid for other animals too). Instead there is 
a number of different taxonomies around, even though some are more 
commonly used than others (e.g. Clements for birds); probably the most 
complex point is that names don't stay the same in time, as taxonomies 
are constantly evolved and maintained; sometimes a single species name 
changes, sometimes the genus name changes, sometimes two different 
species are grouped into a single one, sometimes what is considered a 
single species with "variants" is split in multiple species.

Thus, a good way to represent a species name would be a triple: 
"taxonomy name", "taxonomy year", "binomial name". Eg.

"Clements", "2008", "Larus canus"

would represent the "Mew gull" (not sure it's called "Common gull" 
throughout the whole world, BTW). This should be enough, and would make 
possible to specialized applications (such as mine) to find the semantic 
equivalence with other taxonomies, localized names and so on.

While this might sound picky, in the Semantic Web perspective it is 
important to be picky.

-- 
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/blog
Fabrizio.Giudici at tidalwave.it - mobile: +39 348.150.6941

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