I’m looking to do some work on Rhododendron again and so have had to dig out the old digital copy of my PhD thesis. I have mangled the MS Word files together using OpenOffice derivative NeoOffice. For the record here is a PDF version of it. Molecular and Conventional Data Sets and the Systematics of Rhododendron L. Subgenus Hymenanthes (Blume) K.Koch (5.2 megabytes).
I put this talk together for a meeting just in case I needed to elaborate on a point in one of my reports. I never used it but post it here for the record.
The slides are pretty self explanatory. The rules of nomenclature applied by some studious nomenclaturists lead to a change in the official name of a protected rodent. A name that has been stable for years. Who does this name change help? What purpose does it serve outside of playing the nomenclatural game?
Your comments are most welcome -especially if you are rodent specialist.
I just wrote 500 words explaining the relationship between Taxonomy, Nomenclature and PESI for use in the PESI portal. Here they are:
The process of creating a classification of life is split into two parts. Firstly experts decide which species exist. This process is called taxonomy. Secondly the experts work out what to call the species they recognise. This is called nomenclature.
The relationship between taxonomy and nomenclature is complex. Continue reading »
The Frog in the Pond
Sometimes two things cross your desk at the same time and they say more than either one of them would on their own.
Firstly I was looking for a list of British birds and happened across the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) list of bird names and how they have changed between 1923 and 2007. This is most delightful list as it shows the English names are as stable as the scientific names – or both are equally unstable. If it hadn’t been for an attempt to standardise the use of the hyphen the English names would have been much more stable in my opinion (though by no means totally static). Here is a quote: Continue reading »
I finally submitted deliverable D4.3 for the PESI project and in the great tradition of putting my outputs on my blog here is a PDF copy: Application and Adoption of Taxonomic Standards.
This will be of interest to those involved in taxonomic and nomenclature projects as it shows our collective attempts to get to grips with GUIDs and RDF probably in a more political than technical sense. It advocates the use of Darwin Core Archive format as proposed by the GBIF ECAT project.