Allow HigherTaxaLookup to map a name to multiple synonyms

17517
Reporter: mdoering
Type: NewFeature
Summary: Allow HigherTaxaLookup to map a name to multiple synonyms
Priority: Major
Status: Open
Created: 2015-03-24 13:24:34.05
Updated: 2015-03-24 13:26:02.243
        
Description: The HigherTaxaLookup is used to compare higher taxa of classifications, most importantly used in the nub lookup. It maps higher taxa that are potentially overlapping in their concept to each other so that a comparison can be simply string based. For example the family synonym Compositae is mapped to Asteraceae which is the accepted name in our backbone. Synonym mappings are loaded from the backbone itself or the online resources:
http://rs.gbif.org/dictionaries/synonyms/

which are maintained in github:
https://github.com/gbif/rs.gbif.org/tree/master/dictionaries/synonyms

Currently a name can only be mapped to one accepted name, but especially in higher taxa there is a large amount of taxa that partially overlap or which are sometimes used at different ranks.

Modify the lookup and its usage so that the accepted "name" becomes a set of names. Comparison then happens between 2 sets of names and produces  true if one member is shared, thus there is the possibility that the concepts denoted by the 2 compared taxa matches.]]>