Corresponding authors: Walter G. Berendsohn (
Academic editor:
One of the major design features of the Common Data Model (CDM) is the ability to store and handle taxonomic concepts (a.k.a. “potential taxa” -
A major driver of the critical appreciation of the concept problem in databases has been the conservation community. Progress in taxonomy may rapidly erode the validity of taxon-name based species conservation information. For example, in the context of periodic publication of Red Lists the tracing of changes in the circumscription, which may directly impact the conservation status of a group of organisms. So it is not a coincidence that the Federal German Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) has been an important funder or projects aimed at further investigating and solving this problem
The problem is particularly evident when dealing with Red Lists of organisms. Since 1971 the BfN regularly publishes Red Lists, the aim is to publish those in 10-year intervals. These are lists of taxa (normally species) with data on their conservation status - including the assigned category of threat (from extinct to unproblematic), further specification of risk factors for threatened species, distribution information, Germany's responsibility for the conservation of the taxon, etc. (
In the context of the "Red Lists 2020" project (2011-15), the German Red Lists held by the BfN have been imported into the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy. The data are held in 3 Platform instances (databases), one for animals, one for plants and one for fungi (including lichens). Tools developed by BfN staff (G. Ludwig, pers. comm.) allowed to establish concept relations between the different editions - for example, the concepts from 8 publications (including floras) covering plants are included and inter-linked in the respective database. The BfN and the newly established German Red List Centre have decide to use the EDIT Platform to manage the taxonomy of Red Lists in Germany. A new project ("Kooperation Checklisten") will start to develop the tools for the handling of new editions of the checklists, among them a simplified checklist editor, a distribution data editor, and a concept-relation editor (including a wizard-like interface). These tools will be fully browser-based in order to allow wider participation in the editing process. Since conservation is legally a responsibility of the German states, an important issue is to trace and document not only taxon state-level distribution, but also concept differences of checklists used by the state governments against the federal list. A joint management of the taxonomy, allowing differing concepts (and legal applications of names) is seen as a means to further develop consensus about the classification of German organisms, including the necessary updates brought about by new knowledge.
Walter G. Berendsohn
Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany