Developer advice - what term to use for a uninomial?
kehh opened this issue · 0 comments
Hi,
I know DwC is a data exchange format but I'm trying to implement a name management in a system and wanted to try to use the correct term for a property.
The system stores parent names as adjacency lists (using a parent_id field) and also has a taxonRank property for the current rank of the name.
The property I'm looking to add is a uninomial'and that would be used to calculate the scientificName
by using the current taxonRank and parent names.
The TDWG ontology has:
- nameComplete (scientificName without any authority)
- uninomial (A single name without authority down to the level of genus)
There's also the proposed dwc term genericName which might fill this role
I'm imagining the user enters a reference to the parent name, the taxon rank and this uninomial and from there you can calculate what all of the other ranks fields contain.
So:
genus | specificEpithet | infraspecificEpithet | scientificNameAuthorship |
---|---|---|---|
Macropus | Shaw, 1790 | ||
Macropus | fulginosus | (Desmarest, 1817) | |
Macropus fulginosus | melanops | Gould, 1842 |
would be captured as:
parent_id | id | uninomial | taxonRank | scientificNameAuthorship |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Macropus | genus | Shaw, 1790 | |
1 | 2 | fulginosus | species | (Desmarest, 1817) |
2 | 3 | melanops | subspecies | Gould, 1842 |
I'm aware this gets complicated with subgenera and multiple infraspecific ranks below species.
So my question is 'What should I call this field for minimal user confusion" (It's handy to point to / reuse the DwC definitions / labels for fields to explain how they are used)