Think about stable nub ids for accepted taxa, not names

10923
Reporter: mdoering
Type: Task
Summary: Think about stable nub ids for accepted taxa, not names
Priority: Minor
Status: Open
Created: 2012-03-08 10:27:16.884
Updated: 2015-03-02 15:18:06.096
        
Description: There has been requests from users (e.g. Pedro Machado Monteiro see comment) to keep a stable accepted taxon id.
In case a currently accepted names becomes a synonym in the future, the id of the former accepted name should now point to the newly accepted name, thus still pointing to the same "taxon concept", not just the name.
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Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Created: 2012-03-08 10:29:11.328
Updated: 2012-03-08 10:29:11.328
        
From: PNPG - Pedro Machado Monteiro [mailto:monteiropm@icnb.pt]

I'm trying to adopt an unique identifier for species (not for species names), from a global taxonomic and/or biological database, to use as a key in domestic (and non profit) databases.

Till now, the most suitable identifiers I've found are the NCBI's
Taxonomy ID, and the GBIF's taxonconceptkey in the "Darwin Core
records" (2nd line in the upper table)

Unfortunately the former doesn't cover several species of my databases.

As for the latter, it seems to vary within the same species, depending on the synonym chosen:

For instance , when I search data for Discula leacockiana in
http://data.gbif.org/search/Discula%20leacockiana

The result is
Discula leacockiana  Synonym for Hystricella leacockiana

Then, the taxonconceptkey in the "Darwin Core records" is not the same for these 2 names: it is 5783346 for Discula leacockiana, and 4565467 forHystricella leacockiana.

How can I have just one Id for one species ?


Pedro Monteiro

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yes, indeed we have separate identifiers for the accepted and the synonym records. If you want an identifier for the entire taxon simply use the accepted one.
Just to avoid confusion - in case the currently accepted name becomes in the future a synonym of some other name, the identifier will still refer to the same name. So it will refer to the synonym and not the then newly accepted name.

Markus Döring

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So there is no unique identifier for the taxon itself? Perhaps some other global database (besides NCBI) uses that kind of ID?

Pedro Monteiro