biotic custom metadata: links to taxa need be adjusted

[myrmoteras]

looking at the new biotic custom metadata, there is a flaw that the link from the taxon is not going to a taxon service but links internally to deposits which have the same taxon.

I think we need to consider what we do with that. Ideally we have a generally recoginzed resolution service, but we don't. So what shall we do?

Link it to something in Plazi, but we have the same shortcoming that we do not have a taxon, but only individual treatments that happen to have the same taxonomic name.
Link to synospecies? But then do we get a PID for the taxon?

[myrmoteras]

email to Tim Robertson

HI Tim
I am not sure, whether you followed last week’s CETAF-COVID19 task force final conference. Anyways, one element that relates to what you write below turned out in two place, though nobody mentioned it explicated, and it seems to hamper all what was presented.

That is the reference to a specimen, and the use of taxonomic names. What both share is that there is not one specimen anymore, and there is not one taxonomic name neither. Both have, as you are well aware, multiple representations, but we the don’t have a way to address the “cluster” you get below, nor the cited taxon with all the related synonyms, misspellings and whatever.

In our case, we now have additional metadata for scientific articles that cite biotic relationships. We have a vocabulary we can use for the relationship. But we can’t link the name of the organism to a reference system, such as the GBIF taxonomic backbone. https://zenodo.org/record/3949088#.XxRWHSgzb8A show this. If would be really a huge advantage if GBIF could come up with a solution. Or do you have a solution that we could use at interim? For example, Rhinolophus macrotis. Shall we just start to use this https://www.gbif.org/species/2432652?
How could GBIF make use of the treatmentCitations that we extract, such as those represented in Synopspecies: https://synospecies.plazi.org/#Rhinolophus+macrotis

These relationships we could provide via the DWCA, which would give you more than just the name relationship, but also the citation of the article, if possible a link to the respective treatments including the data, and whether the synonymy has been made in this article.

There is also the issue of higher taxa, as well as vernacular names.

Cheers
Donat