Useful to know, thanks.

Brian

My apologies - for some reason I'd missed this post.

I think it is unlikely that many people will have recorded against the Higher Designations List (with it being a status list), however, if they have, the records will be repointed to exactly the same name on another list (a preferred list if the same name occurs on one, if not another non-status list). Not something we do lightly but the only solution here.

Best wishes,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Thanks for the round up.

Just one question (which does not affect us personally), but what are the implications if someone has records entered against the JNCC Interpretation of Higher Level Designations List and that list is then removed? Will those records still be able to be reported against and if the report includes listing the list the record was entered against will it show a blank?

Thanks

Brian

Just to round things off, this problem was caused by the JNCC Higher Designations List.

The Preferred_Name field for this list has been incorrectly populated in the past and has been used to point a name (e.g. Chiroptera) to all the constituent species (including Pipistrellus pipistrellus).

The Preferred_Name field in the Index_Taxon_Name table is populated from the list the original Taxon_List_Item_key is on. The Recommended_Taxon_List_Item_Key is populated separately using Nameserver primarily.

Therefore, it is quite possible that the query that Charles originally ran will return multiple rows IF a list is badly synonymised.

It also means that the Preferred_Name and the Recommended_Taxon_List_Item_key in the Index_Taxon_Name table will not always marry up.

This is how this table was intended to work and there’s little scope for changing this without creating problems with Recorder.

The most likely solution will be to remove the JNCC Higher Designations list as part of the next dictionary update. The next update will also include improvements to the Nameserver table which should also improve synonymy generally.

Hope this makes (some) sense!

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

For info - this problem relates to some bat entries which have an incorrect preferred name in the taxon_list_item table.

We still need to look at this in more detail, but should be able to fix this problem as part of the next dictionary update.

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Brian

Charles

I too get the same 21 codes as Charles when running the code in Charles' message.

We are running version:

6.9.3.102 of 13 Nov 2006

Brian

I confess to knowing very little about the inner workings of Recorder, but this looks like a small bug to me - I would expect there to be just the one recommended TLIK for Plecotus auritus, but potentially two for Pipistrellus pipistrellus (one for the sensu stricto interpretation and one for sensu lato).

If you are getting the expected results for most other taxa, then I suspect that this is down to the way that the nameserver has been employed (assuming that you are referring to Recorder 6). Sarah or Steve - could the synonymy from both the nameserver and index_taxon_name have been combined by mistake for these species?

Sorry that I can't be of more help,
John

I think Charles is right, there should only be one recommended key for all the Pipistrellus pipistrellus entries otherwise they are not identified correctly as synonyms of each other. This applies within and across lists. Unless of course the name Pipistrellus pipistrellus can be applied to 2 different things (not the case as far as I know!).

I’ve managed to have a very quick look at this.

As I understand it, I would expect there to be more than one recommended_taxon_list_item_key here – one for every list this species occurs on.

There also appears to be some aggregation occurring too. For example, within the list of recommended_taxon_list_keys for Pipistrellus pipistrellus there is a key for Chiroptera.

Run the following query to see what I mean:

select TLI.taxon_list_item_key, TLI.Taxon_version_key, TL.Item_name, TLV.Taxon_list_version_key, T.Item_name, t.authority
from taxon_list_item TLI
inner join Taxon_version TV
on TLI.Taxon_Version_key = TV.Taxon_version_key
inner join Taxon T
on TV.Taxon_key = T.taxon_key
inner join taxon_list_version TLV
on TLI.taxon_list_version_key = TLV.taxon_list_version_key
inner join Taxon_List TL
on TLV.Taxon_list_key = TL.taxon_list_key
where TLI.taxon_list_item_key in
(
select distinct recommended_taxon_list_item_key as taxon_list_item_key
from index_taxon_name
where preferred_name = 'Pipistrellus pipistrellus'
)

Having said that, there does appear to be some duplication, for example there are three recommended_taxon_list_item_keys for the ‘JNCC Interpretation of Higher Level Designations’ list which look identical.

However, I am at the edge of my knowledge on the species dictionary here so I’ll need speak to Steve and get back to you.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the new version of Recorder 6 (for example when producing reports in the report wizard) with use the Nameserver table in the first instance for synonymy, and then the Index_Taxon_Name table if an entry does not yet exist in this table.

Hope this makes some sense!

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

select distinct preferred_name, recommended_taxon_list_item_key
from index_taxon_name
where preferred_name = 'Pipistrellus pipistrellus'

I get the following results back:

preferred_name    recommended_taxon_list_item_key
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    EHSSYS0000000581
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000094681
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000142091
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000143852
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000146665
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000146691
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000154169
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000154576
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000172745
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000172993
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000172997
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000175671
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0000175923
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NBNSYS0200003611
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0000332505
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0000332675
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0000332720
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0000377356
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0000527962
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0001684425
Pipistrellus pipistrellus    NHMSYS0001771253

It looks like this taxon and some others (I've noticed various bats so far) aren't getting their recommended_taxon_list_item_keys mapped properly (there should only ever be one recommended key per taxon, surely?).

Update: Plecotus auritus is the other taxon I have found that seems to have several RTLIKs