Australian National Species List: name identifier management and linkages

Abstract

The Australian National Species List (AuNSL) is the provider of names and taxonomy for significant national biodiversity data infrastructures including the Atlas of Living Australia, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, the Biodiversity Data Repository, and the Species Profile and Threats Database. The AuNSL mints persistent identifiers for names covered by the codes of nomenclature and name-like objects such as phrase names. To ensure sustainability of identifiers, a mapping service is provided to always resolve all AuNSL identifiers including historical and deprecated forms. Names are used as the building blocks for recording taxon name usages and taxon concepts. We provide services for matching, disambiguation and taxonomic resolution of names. The AuNSL does not exist in a vacuum and supports identifier mappings to external resources and related systems such as the International Plant Name Index (IPNI), Zoobank, the Biodiversity Heritage Library. To enable this integration, persistent identifiers from original and/or significant sources are required and this data is currently limited and incomplete within the AuNSL. To address this issue, we need to look backwards for improved ways of matching to existing persistent identifiers and forward to improving capture of taxonomic novelties and name-like objects and their identifiers.