Taxonomic System Research Articles

Use cases for Taxonomic Name Services

Catalogue of Life Plus (CoL+) was started in 2017 as a collaborative project between the Catalogue of Life (COL), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Barcode of Life Database (BOLD), Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) and representatives from natural history museum collections. The participants jointly recognized a need for the wider biodiversity community to coalesce around common and coordinated approaches for mobilizing and inter-linking biodiversity data and information across a range of scales, themes and types. The Catalogue of Life was identified as being the clear choice to deliver taxonomic services to support these partners. Taxonomic services refer to solutions that address challenges inherent to scientific names: the ubiquitous, and often sole, contextual linkage between a biodiversity data object and the taxon to which it is linked. Without access to expert-mediated taxonomic knowledge, biodiversity data networks risk integrating or delivering biodiversity data that is incomplete or may not make taxonomic sense. As a globally comprehensive and expert-mediated taxonomic resource, the Catalogue of Life is well-positioned to provide the underlying data and services to address these challenges and support a broad community of stakeholders. With financial support from the Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility, the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture as well as technical support from GBIF, CoL+ represents an effort to stabilize the Catalogue of Life checklist products and refine a roadmap for future services -services that must be informed by the needs of users. The COL+ initiative provides an opportunity to document and understand the requirements of both Col current users and a wider future user base. Key to any expansion is ensuring a clear understanding and the appropriate response to user needs. This includes not only the requirements of "taxonomic data consumer" stakeholders, such as those listed above, but also the needs and motivations of the expert taxonomic community behind the current and future Catalogue of Life. This session will focus on reviewing the user requirements of a diverse community of both taxonomic data producers and consumers and organizing these stories into a set of categories from which we will identify clear and useful tools and services. These will establish the basis for a compelling roadmap for the Catalogue of Life as an enabling foundation to an interlinked and global biodiversity data infrastructure.

Taxonomy for evaluating the site-specific applicability of one-dimensional ground response analysis

Because one-dimensional (1D) ground response analysis remains the state-of-practice for geotechnical earthquake engineering, one crucial task is to identify whether the response of a site can be modeled well by 1D analysis. In this study, ground response analyses incorporating 1D transfer functions (TF) and the H/V Spectral Ratio (HVSR) technique are carried out for 34 downhole array sites and used to develop a taxonomy that assesses the suitability of 1D analysis for a site. The empirical HVSR is used to identify the first-mode resonant frequency of the site, and the within and outcrop TF are used to distinguish true outcrop-resonances from pseudo-resonances. The taxonomy is focused on capturing outcrop-resonances rather than pseudo-resonances because pseudo-resonances are an artifact of downhole array sites and are not present in the outcropping analysis of non-downhole array sites. Using the proposed taxonomy, 69% of the sites are considered suitable for 1D analysis, which is a much larger percentage than found in other studies. This more favorable result is a direct result of considering only true-resonances in the assessment of 1D applicability. This taxonomy system is developed using downhole array data but it can be applied to any site (even non-downhole array sites) in which the empirical HVSR curve and shear wave velocity profile are measured, making it easily applied in engineering practice.

Estudio de Necrosoles y suelos de cementerio

Este artículo muestra las aproximaciones interdisciplinarias que integran conocimientos respecto a los suelos de cementerios contemporáneos y antiguos e inhumaciones clandestinas que producen interés científico bio-geo-arqueológico, forense reciente, lo anterior es lo que compila el estudio de los Necrosoles. Las investigaciones al respecto, plantean interrogantes pedogenéticos, antropogénicos, morfológicos, de características físico-químicas y microbiológicas. Así los Necrosoles se definen con precisión e incluyen en propuestas para sistemas taxonómicos locales y mundiales. Los suelos de los cementerios tienen propiedades físico-químicas y microbiológicas variables, antrópicas, temporalidades e insumos orgánicos e inorgánicos exógenos y predominancia de procesos de cambio ambiental. Actualmente, las necrópolis en las urbes y la proximidad a fuentes de agua e impactos de estos suelos en la salud pública y ambiente, se evalúan en investigaciones científicas. También aumenta el interés por las características de entierros ilegales de cuerpos humanos e integración de herramientas pedológicas y forenses. Revisamos los estudios de Necrosoles y el desarrollo de la investigación científica experimental ligada a efectos e implicaciones de entierros humanos

Human Evolution Theory Is But A Wittgenstein Language-Game

Wittgenstein in the Blue Books speaks of our craving for generality in connection with our tendency to look for something in common to all the entities which we assume under a general word or term. According to him, misconceptions arise when we tend to look for something ‘common’ to all the entities which we then associate with a general term indicating quality or property. Taking note of this insight of Wittgenstein, we note that our propensity for generalization is what buttresses the mode of inference in the human evolution theory. Clearly, the theory uses concepts anchored on a constellation of terminology belonging to Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games,” i.e. “family resemblances,” “form of life,” “move,” and “grammar.” Complex taxonomic systems (phylogenic trees) have been constructed founded on a linguistic-conceptual hybrid, i.e. the term ‘family resemblance’ mixed with the term ‘common ancestry.’ With phylogeny as (false) ‘evidence’ of common ancestry, action was then propelled by the words ‘family resemblance’ in the sense in which ‘objects,’ e.g. fossil skulls found in geological sites dated millions of years old, resemble ‘modern’ skulls. The biological concept of ‘forms of life’ can be pitted against Wittgenstein's "form of life" concept. The latter is the cultural environment in which the language game occurs, and is applicable to the "community which is bound together by science and education" (Wittgenstein, 1969, p. 38e). Insofar can we consider this ‘community bound together’ as a fertile ground for the culture of semiotic practices. The existing ‘scientific’ theories of the origin of man are the outcome of a reality built by the action motivated or boosted by the notional use of words. The ‘language’ of phylogeny, on closer analysis, is really simply a categorization based on ‘family resemblance’ in extended application through the use of the words ‘ancestral taxon.’
 References
 Darwin, Charles, 1859. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray
 James Joyce, 1922. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber.
 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, In Wittgenstein, Docherty, 1991. The Blue and Brown Books : Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigation,’ Philosophy 8 Jan 1991
 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1921. Tractatus Philosophicus-Logicus. Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. Tr. Charles Kay Ogden. GB: Lund Humpries
 Online sources:
 https//www2.palomar.edu>homo2
 https:www.researchgate.net
 https:en.m. Wikipedia.org/wi
 www.signosemio.com/wittge
 https: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree of life (biology)
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_biology; retrieved 11 August 2018
 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maoyan_Zhu
 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2407115

Perceived quality of products: a framework and attributes ranking method

ABSTRACTPerceived quality is one of the most critical aspects of product development that defines the successful design. This paper presents a new approach to perceived quality assessment by examining its elements, decomposed into a structure with the bottom-up sensory approach from the level of basic (‘ground’) attributes, covering almost every aspect of quality perception from the engineering viewpoint. The paper proposes a novel method for perceived quality attributes relative importance ranking, resulting in the balanced perceived quality of the final product within the given conditions. The proposed method helps to reach the equilibrium of the product’s quality equation from the perspective of design effort, time, and costs estimations. The authors introduce the Perceived Quality Framework (PQF), which is the taxonomy system for perceived quality attributes and the core of the attributes importance ranking (PQAIR) method. The research outcomes are based on findings of the qualitative exploratory study, including European and North American premium and luxury automotive manufacturers. An empirical structural validity test was performed to assess the usability and rigour of the proposed method. The results indicate that perceived quality evaluation can be significantly improved during all stages of product development.Abbreviations: PQF: Perceived Quality Framework; PQAIR: Perceived Quality Attributes Importance Ranking; TPQ: Technical Perceived Quality; VPQ: Value-based Perceived Quality; OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer.

The e-Flora of South Africa – restructuring data to comply with Darwin Core standards for inclusion into the World Flora Online

The e-Flora of South Africa project was initiated in 2013 by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) in support of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC, 2011-2020). South Africa's flora consists of ca. 21,000 taxa of which more than half are endemic. South Africa will contribute a national Flora towards Target 1 of the GSPC ("To create an online flora of all known plants by 2020"). South Africa's contribution is ca. 6% of the world’s flora of which ca. 3% are endemic and therefore unique. South Africa’s electronic Flora is comprised of previously published descriptions. South Africa’s e-Flora data forms part of the Botanical Dataset of Southern Africa (BODATSA) that is currently managed through the Botanical Research And Herbarium Management System (BRAHMS). To date, South Africa’s e-Flora data (http://ipt.sanbi.org.za/iptsanbi/resource?r=flora_descriptions) represents 19,539 indigenous taxa, 79,139 descriptions of distribution, morphological, habitat and diagnostic data, and 27,799 bibliographic records. The e-Flora data was recently published online using the Integrated Publishing Toolkit and henceforth harvested by the World Flora Online (WFO) into the portal. A series of challenges were encountered while manipulating descriptive data from BRAHMS to be ingested by the WFO portal; from taxonomic issues to data quality issues not excluding compliance to data standards. To contribute to the WFO portal, the taxa in BODATSA has to match with the taxa in the WFO taxonomic backbone. Once there is a match, a unique WFO taxon identifier is assigned to the taxa in BODATSA. This process presented various challenges because the WFO taxonomic backbone and the taxonomic classification system that is used by South Africa (South African National Plant Checklist) does not fully correlate. The schema used to store taxonomic data also does not agree between BRAHMS and WFO and had to be addressed. To enable consistency for future, a detailed guideline document was created providing all the steps and actions that should be taken when publishing an e-Flora, managed in BRAHMS, to the WFO portal. The presentation will focus on matching taxonomic classifications between BRAHMS and WFO; dealing with character encoding issues and manipulating data to meet Darwin Core standards.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AFTER 1945: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

ABSTRACTMuch has been said about what philosophy of history should be. This bibliometric assessment of research in the philosophy of history examines what scholars in this field have actually produced. The study covers a dataset—a subsection of the bibliography of the International Network for Theory of History—of 13,953 books, articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other scholarly publications, encompassing materials written in seven different languages published between 1945 and 2014. This material was classified according to a multilayered system of taxonomy consisting of keywords representative of themes discussed in the field. Separate quantitative analyses were made to elucidate characteristics about the publication outputs in the field in the different language groups. Changes in paradigm, often referred to as “turns” or “trends,” have been mapped in this study, according to a quantitative analysis of the most recurrent keywords within a five‐year interval, which give an indication of the most debated themes in each period. ∗Religion/theology/secularization∗ is the most frequent keyword during the period 1945 to 1969, followed by ∗Marxism/historical‐materialism∗1 from 1970 to 1984, in what can be considered a second period of the field. Although many of the key publications of the linguistic turn were written within this second period, our dataset shows that it is not until the third period (1985–2014) that their writing goes on to influence other authors in the field.

PSYCHIATRIC INTERVIEW OF PATIENTS WITH CANCER

Background. Psychiatrists providing consultation in cancer centers need to understand the patient’s mental health without possibility of collecting data on the objective case history and follow-up.Purpose: to analyze the modern methods of assessment of psychopathological disorders in cancer patients.Material and Methods. Publications indexed in PubMed and devoted to the analysis of defense mechanisms, strategies for overcoming challenges, responses to acute and chronic stress, and support for family members of cancer patients were analyzed.Results. Modified psychosomatic interviews used for cancer patients, attachment styles, coping strategies, and defense mechanisms were described. The taxonomic system of the most common mental disorders in modern psycho-oncology was presented.Conclusion. The modified psychiatric interview, during which the defense mechanisms, coping styles, coping reactions with acute and chronic stress, methods of functioning of cancer patient’s family are assessed, allows a psychiatrist to obtain essential information about psychopathological status of a patient within the first (and often the only) appointment. A multidimensional diagnostic approach helps to assess the involvement of various damaging factors in a patient’s current mental status. Conclusion made by a psychiatrist in terms of the taxonomic systems of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems (ICD) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) allows him to provide information to an oncologist in a uniquely interpretable (standardized) form.

Taxonomical Investigation on Some Species of Genus Allium Based on the Pollen Morphology

Aims: The aim of this research was to investigate the morphological characteristics of the pollen grain of some species of genus Allium.
 Methodology: The pollen grains were examined by using Light Microscopy (LM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and the pollen grains of one species under Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM).
 Results: The pollen grains were oblate and medium in shape and size. The pollen ornamentation of exine surface, exine ornamentation on sulcus edge, lumina number in the exine surface and the state of pollen grain apex in the examined species were different. Semitectate and columellate ectexine with discontinuous endexine were seen in the pollen wall structure (sporoderm). The dendrogram obtained from the pollen characters in SEM observations by using the numerical taxonomy system (NTSYS) software placed the studied species in two types.
 Conclusion: Our palynological dendrogram can be used for segregation the sections and subgenera taxonomical levels in the studied species of genus Allium and confirmed the phylogram of the recent phylogenetic research.

Animals vs. artifacts: Which are more diverse? [Opinion

Our count of living species remains incomplete. In the 250-plus years since Carl Linnaeus set up the modern taxonomic system, we have classified about 1.25 million species, about three-quarters of them animals. Another 17 percent are plants, and the remainder are fungi and microbes. And that's the official count — the still-unrecognized number of species could be several times higher still. • The diversity of man-made objects is easily as rich. Although my comparisons involve not just those proverbial apples and oranges but apples and automobiles, they still reveal what we have wrought. • I begin constructing my parallel taxonomy with the domain of all man-made objects. This domain is equivalent to the Eukarya, all organisms having nuclei in their cells. It contains the kingdom of complex, multicomponent designs, equivalent to Animalia. Within that kingdom we have the phylum of designs powered by electricity, equivalent to the Chordata, creatures with a dorsal nerve cord. Within that phylum is a major class of portable designs, equivalent to Mammalia. Within that class is the order of communications artifacts, equivalent to Cetacea, the class of whales, dolphins, and porpoises, and it contains the family of phones, equivalent to Delphinidae, the oceanic dolphins. • Families contain genera, such as Delphinus (common dolphin), Orcinus (orcas), and Tursiops (bottlenose dolphins) in the ocean. And, according to GSM Arena, which monitors the industry, in early 2019 there were more than 110 mobile-phone genera (brands). Some genera contain a single specific species — for instance, Orcinus contains only Orcinusorca, the killer whale. Other genera are species-rich. In the mobile-phone realm none is richer than Samsung, which now includes nearly 1,200 devices. It is followed by LG, with more than 600, and Motorola and Nokia, each with nearly 500 designs. Altogether, in early 2019 there were some 9,500 different mobile “species”—and that total is considerably larger than the known diversity of mammals (fewer than 5,500 species).

What You Probably Didn't Know about Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON)

Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON - bison.usgs.gov) is the US Node application for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the most comprehensive source of species occurrence data for the United States of America. It currently contains more than 460 million records and provides significant augmentation and integration of US occurrence data in terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems. Publicly released in 2013, BISON has generated a large community of stakeholders and they have passed on a lot of questions over the years through email (bison@usgs.gov), presentations and other means. In this presentation, some of the most common questions will be addressed in detail. For example: why all BISON data isn't in GBIF; how is BISON different from GBIF; what is the relationship between BISON and other US providers to GBIF; and what is the exact role of the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS - www.itis.gov) in BISON.

Identification of taxonomic and thematic relationships: Do the two semantic systems have the same status in semantic dementia?

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Disequilibrium between the taxonomic and thematic semantic systems was previously hypothesized in participants with semantic dementia (SD), without rigorously assessing their ability to identify the two types of semantic relationships. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to directly compare the ability of 10 participants with SD, 10 participants with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and 20 controls to identify thematic versus taxonomic relationships.Methods: Participants performed an explicit forced-choice picture-matching task in which they had to determine which of two pictures of choice was semantically related to the target picture. Target pictures could display natural or artifact objects. Each target was presented once with a taxonomically related picture and once with a thematically related picture.Results: Analyses of correct thematic and taxonomic matches as a function of target domain showed that the performance of the two groups of patients differed in the taxonomic conditions but not in the thematic conditions, demonstrating a relative preservation of thematic knowledge in SD. Additional correlation analyses further indicated that the particular status of thematic relationships in SD was even stronger for artifact concepts.Conclusions: Results provide evidence of the heterogeneous nature of semantic knowledge disruption in SD, and could be regarded as being consistent with the existence of two neuroanatomically and functionally distinct semantic systems. Results further stress the relevance of performing a more detailed and complete assessment of semantic performance in participants with SD, in order to capture the impaired but also preserved aspects of their knowledge.

Monophyletic status of European morphogenera of the subfamily Candoninae Kaufmann, 1900 (Ostracoda: Candonidae) in relation to their mtDNA phylogenies

Abstract The subfamily Candoninae Kaufmann, 1900a is one of the most taxonomically difficult and species-rich lineages of non-marine Ostracoda. It is widely distributed, inhabiting all kinds of surface and subterranean waters, but its taxonomy remains unclear and generic relationships ambiguous due to a number of homoplasies. To verify the morphology-based taxonomy and monophyly of the European morphogenera of Candoninae we propose the analysis of the mitochondrial fragment encoding cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI). We investigated 75 individuals of 25 species representing eight of 13 extant genera of Candoninae known from Europe. The phylogenetic analyses revealed a complex pattern of relationships and a noteworthy incongruence with the currently used taxonomic system. The monophyletic status of the morphogenera CandonaBaird, 1845, FabaeformiscandonaKrstić, 1972, and PseudocandonaKaufmann, 1900a appeared questionable, but instead monophyly of some species groups distinguished morphologically within these genera seemed to be confirmed in our study. The phylogenetic position of some other morphogenera remained unresolved. Our analysis, focusing on well-supported nodes, nevertheless revealed a handful of salient points on the evolution of Candoninae that deserve further investigation.

Taxonomy and Systematics in Biodiversity Informatics: Lessons learned from ichthyology and general perspectives

Although still strongly intertwined, taxonomy and systematics are diverging more and more in their paradigms, methods, and agendas: it is not possible to consider them as synonyms anymore. While taxonomy remains an analytical science based on abductive reasoning (trying to find the historical pathways leading to present species delineations), systematics diverged as an information science since the rise of computers: summarizing, organising, and exposing taxonomical, biological, and ecological data, information, and knowledge in the most efficient ways, with respect to various targeted audiences. One could even consider synonymising biodiversity informatics with systematics instead! Schematically, this led to two different types of information systems: one dedicated to pure taxonomic and nomenclatural data; one oriented to record life-traits. Obviously, the latter must be built along reliable taxonomic backbones, therefore the former should have been built before the latter. It did not happen as exemplified in fishes by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS) and related, Catalog of Fishes, and FishBase, and later the databases of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), or for aggregators with Catalogue of Life and e.g., GBIF, Encyclopedia of Life. This has created some confusion for end users, “which system should I use” being their regular question with the invariable answer, “it depends”. In the absence of a formal preexisting taxonomic information system, each biodiversity information system has developed its own way to manage its taxonomic backbone with more or less impact of taxonomists. For fishes, we are not far from reconciling the various systems, and data to knowledge flows are becoming clearer, but it is not without unnecessary extra work. A real breakthrough is necessary to move from a collaboration stage to a cooperative stage, where systems are interconnected (not necessarily integrated) in such a way that the same taxonomic work is not repeated over and over to synchronise the systems. The difficulty is that taxonomic information systems must be designed for the needs of taxonomists, while their resulting classifications and the way they are exposed must fit the needs of systematics/biodiversity systems purposes, and by extension of the rest of scientific domains and the society in general. Conditions for this breakthrough to happen are discussed. The breakthrough does not reside in only one action but rather is the result of multiple simultaneous advances in the theory of taxonomy, its (mathematical?) formalization and informatics implementation, technology (although progress in that domain may be well in advance over others), data entry, networking, and sociology of science. The "potential taxon" concept (Berendsohn 1995) led to important theoretical progresses but its actual implementation lags behind in many systems, due probably to the huge effort of data entry it requires. Data entry is certainly a part that was neglected at the beginning of biodiversity informatics, because it has to be sustained endlessly, while the development of new systems was seen as more rewarding in time-limited frameworks. This has been corrected at least for occurrences and specimens, with the development of national and international digitization programs. Besides, the development of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and text extraction technologies is quite promising for taxon information. As in all complex situations with many interacting dimensions (e.g., fisheries management in ichthyology), progress must be balanced among all dimensions to have effective results for the overall domain. Among others, issues in sociology of sciences, for instance, must be addressed to make significant progresses. In particular the way data, information and knowledge are published, and jobs delineated and careers evaluated, must still be seriously reviewed in the light of information system development.

Little to no inbreeding depression in a tapeworm with mixed mating.

Meta-studies on hermaphrodites have found a negative relationship between primary selfing rates and levels of inbreeding depression (ID) and, thus, generally support purging in inbred systems. However, in plants, high among-taxa variance in ID results in no difference in the mean ID between outcrossing and mixed-mating taxa. Selective interference likely explains high ID among mixed-mating taxa, whereas low levels of ID among mixed-mating taxa are not as stressed. Among animal hermaphrodites, primarily molluscs, there are little data on mixed-mating systems. To fill a taxonomic and mating system gap, we tested for ID in a mixed-mating tapeworm, Oochoristica javaensis. We provide a direct estimate of ID across infection of an intermediate host by comparing selfing rates at two life history stages. We found little to no evidence for ID, and the level of ID falls in line with what is reported for highly selfing species even though O.javaensis has mixedmating. We discuss this result within the context of kin mating in O.javaensis. Our results emphasize that primary selfing rates alone may be insufficient to classify the inbreeding history in all species when testing for a relationship to ID. Mixed-mating taxa, and possibly some outcrossing taxa, may exhibit low levels of ID if biparental inbreeding is also driving purging. We advocate that ID studies report estimates of inbreeding history (e.g. FIS or identity disequilibrium) from nature-derived adult samples to provide context rather than relying on primary selfing rates alone.

Genetic Similarity of Three Durian (Durio zibethinus Murr.) Populations from Nias Island Sumatera Utara Based on Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR)

Genetic similarity of 3 durian poulations [Nias Kota (NK), Nias Induk (NI), and Nias Barat (NB)] had been evaluated based on Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers. The objectives of this study were to assess the genetic similarity of three durian population. There were 10 durian samples from each population. The genomic DNA was amplified using 4 primers (DzMTb021, Dz621, Dz535, and Dz504). All of locus had 100% of pholymorphism except Dz621 with 33.33% pholymorphism. Dendrogram was cosntructed using Unweighted air-Group Method Arithmetic (UPGMA) based on Numerical Taxonomy and Multivariate System (NTSys) computer program. The result showed that the ten sample were not clustered within their populations. Genetic similarity of 30 durian from three population was 63%, and genetic similarity of durian within NK, NI, and NB population was 72, 74, and 59% respectively. The similarity of NK and NI population ws the highest when compared to NB.

Identifikasi Sifat, Ciri, dan Jenis Tanah Utama di Pulau Lombok

TA descriptive research aimed to identify the characteristics and name of main soils in Lombok Island was carried out through field observation for soil profiles and landform and laboratory analyses for soil physical and chemical properties. The type or name of soil was defined by using The National (Indonesian) Soil Classification System (2014), Soil Taxonomy (SSS-USDA, 2014), and World Soil Reference (FAO, 2014). There were 4 main types of soil in Lombok Island, which were Litosol, Aluvial, Kambisol, and Vertisol; and a fairly developed soil in limited spots was Mediteran. Based on the soil taxonomy system, those soils were respectively equivalent to Orthents, Fluvents, Undepts, Underts, and Udalfs; whereas based on the soil system of FAO, were Leptisols, Fluvisols, Cambisols, Vertisols, and Luvisols. The main characteristics of Litosol/Orthents/Leptosols Lombok were shallow solum (< 25 cm on the rocks or lithic contacts), coarse textured (sandy), nutritionally deficient, very low CEC (< 5 cmolc.kg-) and C-organic content (< 1 %). Aluvial or Fluvents, were mainly utilized as paddy soil, consisting of several layers which it clay and C-organic content were changed irregularly with depth, CEC of top soil (Ap) was medium (5–10 cmolc.kg-), and it was relatively fertile. Kambisols or Undepts was fairly deep (consisting of 40 – 60 cm of A and B horizons,), loamy textured, fairly fertile, CEC was medium, and C-organic content was low – medium (1–2 %). Vertisol or Uderts was characterized by a significant swell-shrinking properties, clay textured, extremely hard to be cultivated, high CEC, Ca, and Mg, and relatively fertile soil. Mediteran or Udalf was a further developed soil (solum > 100 cm), clay translocation has been occurred from upper (E) to lower horizons (Bt), CEC was fair, and it was relatively fertile soil. In conclusion, the pedologic development of soils in Lombok Island was relatively slow due mainly to the low–moderate rainfall, and the soil types were dominated by Litosols, Aluvials, Kambisols, and Vertisols, and Mediteran in small area. In order to provide a complete reference for the characteristics of main soils in Lombok Island, it necessaries to define mineralogy composition through X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) of the clay fractions of the soils

Social-ecological relations among animals serve as a conceptual framework among the Wichi

Although there is now wide agreement that across diverse cultures, taxonomic systems of organization are not necessarily the only prevailing framework for the animal kingdom, evidence concerning alternative frameworks, including ecological frameworks, remains sparse. Here, we begin to fill this gap by examining children and adults from an indigenous Wichi community in the Chaco forest of Argentina. We ask which organizing principles the Wichi invoke when organizing animals native to their forest (tshotoy). The results reveal that Wichi adults and children represent tshotoy primarily on the basis of ecological relations that become increasingly specified from with development. Moreover, the results reveal a pervasive import of social relations. Responses unveil a social-ecological framework that is well aligned with Wichi native epistemology. This new evidence, which underscores the potency of social relations within an ecological framework, also begins to map out a developmental path along which cultural knowledge grows.

Supporting 21st Century Taxonomy and Society Through Collaborative Cataloguing of the World's Species

Biological sciences have for more than 250 years depended on the nomenclatural system established by Carl Linnaeus to assign names to the world's species. These names can be considered to be a pre-digital effort to associate species, as key biological concepts, with globally unique identifiers. All sciences and all other human endeavours that relate to biological organisms have depended on this system to enable international communication and connect essential knowledge for taxonomy, conservation, agriculture, pest and disease management, trade and many other fields. Unfortunately, the scale and complexity both of life on earth and of the continued efforts by taxonomists to describe the millions of species on earth have prevented subsequent Linnaeus' followers from attempting to deliver a comprehensive catalogue of named species. Instead, many millions of names have been published throughout a vast and disconnected multilingual literature. Experts studying particular groups of organisms are likely to be familiar with the history of naming for their species of interest, but the dream of a fully interconnected naming system has remained elusive. In the last 25 years, major efforts have sought to address this need by assisting experts in collating the scattered information on scientific names and organising it in a consistent way. Most significantly, Species 2000, working in partnership with the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), has led development of the Catalogue of Life (CoL). CoL is the most comprehensive and authoritative global index of species currently available. It consists of a single integrated species checklist and taxonomic hierarchy. The Catalogue holds essential information on the names, relationships and distributions of over 1.8 million species. This figure continues to rise as information is compiled from diverse sources around the world. However, CoL is still far from complete, with several important megadiverse groups mostly lacking. Additionally, some segments of the Catalogue require major work to resolve synonymy or to incorporate recent names. As a result, there is still no complete checklist of the world's species. Recognising the important role and efforts of many others that are aligned with this vision, including the existing nomenclatural databases (IPNI, Index Fungorum, ZooBank, etc.), other significant international checklist initiatives (especially WoRMS and World Flora Online) and many regional and national checklist databases (some with official status within national regulations), it is clear that a more collaborative model is needed to accelerate completion of this global catalogue. The benefits from achieving this will be significant, reducing wasted efforts in repeated databasing of the same core information on names and species, maximising the benefits from contributions of taxonomists and others to improve coverage and completeness, offering confidence to researchers and to data infrastructures in interpretation of all scientific names, facilitating community discussion and assessment of divergent perspectives on species classification, and providing a framework for documentation and communication of information on biogrography, species traits and interactions, conservation status, etc. In particular, the global information resource and national versions should be complementary and all products should benefit equally from new additions and corrections. Likewise relevant experts should be empowered to contribute freely to maintaining and improving this critical biodiversity data infrastructure. Achieving these goals will require innovative tools and community models that enable the international taxonomic community to contribute their expertise efficiently and ensure that information entered is never lost, only improved. This session is to refine this vision and contribute to planning for a comprehensive collaborative taxonomic catalogue.

The Semantic Field Book Annotator

Biodiversity research expeditions to the globe’s most biodiverse areas have been conducted for several hundred years. Natural history museums contain a wealth of historical materials from such expeditions, but they are stored in a fragmented way. As a consequence links between the various resources, e.g., specimens, illustrations and field notes, are often lost and are not easily re-established. Natural history museums have started to use persistent identifiers for physical collection objects, such as specimens, as well as associated information resources, such as web pages and multimedia. As a result, these resources can more easily be linked, using Linked Open Data (LOD), to information sources on the web. Specimens can be linked to taxonomic backbones of data providers, e.g., the Encyclopedia Of Life (EOL), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), or publications with Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). For the content of biodiversity expedition archives, (e.g. field notes), no such formalisations exist. However, linking the specimens to specific handwritten notes taken in the field can increase their scientific value. Specimens are generally accompanied by a label containing the location of the site where the specimen was collected, the collector’s name and the classification. Field notes often augment the basic metadata found with specimens with important details concerning, for instance, an organism’s habitat and morphology. Therefore, inter-collection interoperability of multimodal resources is just as important as intra-collection interoperability of unimodal resources. The linking of field notes and illustrations to specimens entails a number of challenges: historical handwritten content is generally difficult to read and interpret, especially due to changing taxonomic systems, nomenclature and collection practices. It is vital that: the content is structured in a similar way as the specimens, so that links can more easily be re-established either manually or in an automated way; for consolidation, the content is enriched with outgoing links to semantic resources, such as Geonames or Virtual International Authority File (VIAF); and this process is a transparent one: how links are established, why and by whom, should be stored to encourage scholarly discussions and to promote the attribution of efforts. the content is structured in a similar way as the specimens, so that links can more easily be re-established either manually or in an automated way; for consolidation, the content is enriched with outgoing links to semantic resources, such as Geonames or Virtual International Authority File (VIAF); and this process is a transparent one: how links are established, why and by whom, should be stored to encourage scholarly discussions and to promote the attribution of efforts. In order to address some of these issues, we have built a tool, the Semantic Field Book Annotator (SFB-A), that allows for the direct annotation of digitised (scanned) pages of field books and illustrations with Linked Open Data (LOD). The tool guides the user through the annotation process, so that semantic links are automatically generated in a formalised way. These annotations and links are subsequently stored in an RDF triplestore. As the use of the Darwin Core standard is considered best practice among collection managers for the digitisation of their specimens, our tool is equipped with an ontology based on Darwin Core terms, the NHC-Ontology, which extends the Darwin Semantic Web (DSW) ontology. The tool can annotate any image, be it an image of a specimen with a textual label, an illustration with a textual label or a handwritten species description. Interoperability of annotations between the various resources within a collection is therefore ensured. Terms in the ontology are structured using OWL web ontology language. This allows for more complex tasks such as OWL reasoning and semantic queries, and facilitates the creation of a richer knowledge base that is more amenable to research.