Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Elie Mario Saliba (elie.saliba@mnhn.fr), Régine Vignes Lebbe (regine.vignes_lebbe@sorbonne-universite.fr)
Received: 30 Aug 2021 | Published: 31 Aug 2021
© 2021 Elie Saliba, Régine Vignes Lebbe, Alain Dubois, Annemarie Ohler
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Saliba EM, Vignes Lebbe R, Dubois A, Ohler A (2021) Zoonom: Gathering the concepts of zoological nomenclature in an electronic thesaurus. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 5: e73705. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.5.73705
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Zoological nomenclature, the discipline of taxonomy responsible for managing the scientific names of animal taxa, takes its roots in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, and has been governed by an international Code since the beginning of the 20th century. Like any other scientific discipline, it has developed its own vocabulary, which has gotten increasingly complex with time.
However, it sometimes lacks clarity in its terminology. New terms have been defined by various authors to reduce ambiguity or replace existing problematic terms. To make these new terms, but also terms used by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (the Code), accessible, an electronic Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) thesaurus was created, called Zoonom.
Zoonom was built using an open-source thesaurus-making software, Opentheso. Opentheso complies with the most recent standards i.e., ISO 25964-1 (
Zoonom contains 920 terms (excluding terms from the same word families, like plurals), distributed within 794 concepts, 404 etymologies and 58 references. It is divided into 20 collections and covers every aspect of zoological nomenclature, from theoretical nomenclature to taxonomic publications. Find the link to a downloadable file in the description of Zoonom.
The thesaurus can be used as a classical glossary, using the search bar, or in alphabetical order, but this is not its only feature. Gathering different terms under a single concept also offers the possibility of refining the terminologies, and thus accessing a less ambiguous equivalent term. A richly developed vocabulary enables better labeling of particular names or situations in databases, software, or in the context of Semantic Web.
As an example, let’s focus on the concept of nomen dubium. It is defined by the Code as “a name of unknown or doubtful application” (
Zoonom is destined to be updated at least once a year. Any relevant propositions of new concepts are highly welcomed. We are especially looking for terms widely used in a part of the taxonomic community, or associated with a particular taxon, but unknown or obscure outside of these applications. Crosslinking the common concepts with the NOMEN OWL ontology (
In conclusion, Zoonom should help provide a better understanding of zoological nomenclature and assist in the curation and management of databases by offering improved tags and definitions.
SKOS, RDF, vocabulary, Opentheso
Elie Mario Saliba
TDWG 2021