Abstract
Cyber-taxonomy of name usage has focused primarily on producing authoritative lists of names or cross-linking names and data across disparate databases. A feature missing from much of this work is the recording and analysis of the context in which a name was used—context which can be critical for understanding not only what name an author used, but to which currently recognized species they actually refer. An experiment on recording contextual information associated with name usage was conducted for the fiddler crabs (genus Uca). Data from approximately one quarter of all publications that mention fiddler crabs, including 95% of those published prior to 1924 and 67% of those published prior to 1976, have currently been recorded in a database. Approaches and difficulties in recording and analyzing the context of name use are discussed. These results are not meant to be a full solution, rather to highlight problems which have not been previously investigated and may act as a springboard for broader approaches and discussion. Some data on the accessibility of the literature, including in particular electronic forms of publication, are also presented. The resulting data has been integrated for general browsing into the website http://www.fiddlercrab.info; the raw data and code used to construct the website is available at https://github.com/msrosenberg/fiddlercrab.info.
Highlights
There are numerous projects focused on making literature on taxonomic names more accessible and useful [1]
Literature Summary This project would have been extremely difficult without access to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and its excellent collection of taxonomic literature
U. albimana and U. iranica are endemic to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf respectively, with U. annulipes found in the surrounding oceans
Summary
There are numerous projects focused on making literature on taxonomic names more accessible and useful [1]. For the last 40 years, it’s been recognized that what used to be called Uca vocans consists of a complex of closely related species; Uca vocans sensu stricto is found throughout parts of the western Pacific Ocean, while the species found in the Indian Ocean (including Madagascar) to which Hoffmann refers is today known as Uca hesperiae Crane, 1975 Because this is not an issue of synonymy and priority, without understanding the context in which the name was used, it is both difficult for automated approaches to correctly identify the species that Hoffmann studied and to recognize that these two papers refer to different species as we understand them today
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