Low confidence taxonomic identification

[cperaltab]

According to Darwin Core Terms descriptions in https://dwc.tdwg.org/list/#dwc_identificationQualifier the following example should be:

Take an example specimen named Pterois cf. volitans. The associated occurrence record would have the following taxonomic information:

scientificName = Pterois
identificationQualifier = cf. volitans (delete volitans, here you use only cf.)
specificEpithet = leave blank (fill in with volitans)
scientificNameID = the one for Pterois
taxonRank = genus

This example is in this section of the OBIS manual: https://manual.obis.org/common_qc.html (5.6.6 Low confidence taxonomic identification).

[EliLawrence]

I took a look at the DwC examples and term definitions more thoroughly and I believe the example in the manual is correct.

The definition for specificEpithet is "The name of the first or species epithet of the dwc:scientificName." In the Manual example, the name in scientificName is just Pterois, so there's no specificEpithet to record.

Regardless I also think whatever taxonomic information comes after the qualifier should be placed in identificationQualifier, i.e. using only "cf." would be incorrect. Even in the DwC definition for identificationQualifier it lists "aff. agrifolia var. oxyadenia" as an example that could be used for this field, it doesn't just indicate "aff." or "cf." as examples, but the entire string after the qualifier. The whole example is given as:

aff. agrifolia var. oxyadenia (for Quercus aff. agrifolia var. oxyadenia with accompanying values Quercus in genus, agrifolia in specificEpithet, oxyadenia in infraspecificEpithet, and var. in taxonRank)

Which if we were populating it for OBIS, I believe it would be recorded as:
scientificName = Quercus
identificationQualifier = aff. agrifolia var. oxyadenia
specificEpithet = blank
infraspecificEpithet = blank
scientificNameID = the one for Quercus
taxonRank = genus

The difference here is that for OBIS we recommend populating scientificName with:

.. the lowest possible taxonomic rank that can be determined, preferably at species level or lower, but higher ranks, such as genus, family, order, class etc. are also acceptable...Additionally, scientificName should only contain the name and not identification qualifications (such as ?, confer, or affinity), which should instead be supplied in the IdentificationQualifier term..

@ymgan you and I have talked a lot about this section of the manual together, any thoughts?

[ymgan]

Thanks Carolina and Liz Liz!! Ahh ... I can only say that the Darwin Core documentation is confusing ... We had a lot of discussions on this here and all the comments below.

At this point in time, I agree with Liz that the example in manual is currently consistent with what I understood from Darwin Core documentation.