1 Reply by BDeed

  • BDeed
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  • From: Bolton
  • Registered: 01-03-2011
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Re: Taxon Grouping

I'm new to the forum so i apologise in advance if my comments have been covered elsewhere, i have done a quick search.

I am currently working a lot with Marine Records, in extracting them from the database i have been using a boundary and in the case of 'Marine birds' using the Seabird 2000 checklist. However for other marine species there doesn't seem to be a single complete list i can match up to and i am currently having to remove non-marine species by hand.

This is not really a problem for most groups, however for molluscs and crustaceans in particular it is becoming more time consuming, and with the prospect of an increase in these types of records i would like to know if there is an easier way, which surely there must be!

Also, i am curious if it would be possible in the future to separate marine molluscs and marine crustaceans as has been done with mammals?

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

2 Reply by sallyrankin (edited by sallyrankin 02-03-2011 08:16:56)

  • sallyrankin
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Re: Taxon Grouping

One thing you could try is using a rucksack to control what taxa are included in your report. Create a rucksack containing the required taxa and open it prior to starting the report wizard. Then when selecting a Check List, note that with a rucksack open two additional options are available at the end of the list: Current Rucksack and Current Rucksack (Expanded), select one of these and all the taxa in the rucksack will appear in the Available box. Select all taxa by clicking the double headed arrow to move all of them from the Available box to the Selected box and proceed as normal with the report.

Take care to ensure that all the taxa you want included in a report are in the rucksack. The xml report St03 Number of observations per species should help with this (Reports – Run – System Reports – Statistics – St03) as it will list all the taxa for which you have observations and the number of observations for them. It would probably help if this was modified to include taxon group. You may find it easier to create the rucksack manually by placing the keys from St03 in it using, say Notepad.

Sally Rankin, JNCC Recorder Approved Expert
E-mail: s.rankin@btinternet.com
Telephone: 01491 578633
Mobile: 07941 207687

3 Reply by BDeed

  • BDeed
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Re: Taxon Grouping

Hi Sally, thanks for your reply.

I have already started work on a rucksack, and have been getting the Taxon key off a report, the problem is we may soon be getting a lot more records in (1000s) and i seem to have no way to differentiate in the first place as to which are marine species and which are terrestrial.

I am currently manually filtering (going through each questionable species individually), then taking the keys of the remaining species, checking them against what i already have and adding them to the rucksack. However, this currently means i can only report on what is in the rucksack and if we receive records of marine species i have not been previously aware of, which is highly likely, then they will not be reported on.

I was unaware of the St03 report though and that may save some time where we already have the Obs so thanks for that!

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

4 Reply by CharlesHussey

  • CharlesHussey
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Re: Taxon Grouping

Dear Ben,

My sympathies! Within the Dictionary, we asign recommended names to what we call 'input groups' and we have separate groups for marine and non-marine molluscs and marine and non-marine crustacea, etc. I don't think that you can easily employ these groups within Recorder but if you go to the NBN Gateway and chosse the 'Browse Species' function you can see (and possibly cut and paste) lists for thsese groups.

There is a version of Recorder called 'Marine Recorder' that JNCC has. You could e-mail Paul Robinson (Paul.Robinson@jncc.gov.uk) and see if he can help you. Alternatively you could go to an external resource such as ERMS http://www.marbef.org/data/erms.php or PESI http://www.eu-nomen.eu/portal/

Charles Hussey

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!) smile

5 Reply by BDeed

  • BDeed
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Re: Taxon Grouping

Charles,

Thanks for that, i shall definitely be taking a look at those lists!

Also if anyone would like what will very probably be a very chunky rucksack of marine only species, i am more than happy to share.

Ben

Natural History & Biodiversity Data Enthusiast

6 Reply by MikeWeideli

  • MikeWeideli
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Re: Taxon Grouping

The 'Ulster Museum and Marine Conservation Society Marine Directory' (Taxon_List_Key NBNSYS0000000116)  does contain a fairly comprehensive, but  now incomplete list of marine taxa.   You could use this as a basis for your own list. I would hesitate to suggest that you put all the taxa in this list in a Rucksack as there are 90,000 plus species in the list, but you could select  the groups you are interested in using the Taxon_Group. Traditionally some molluscs have been treated as marine when in fact they are pulmonates (eg. Otina) so you may have to allow for these depending on whether you personally consider them marine or otherwise.  In terms of  a query for an XML report,  if you assume that everything that has a link to Taxon_List_key NBNSYS0000000116 is marine then you will probably not be too far off. For example the following in an XML report  would return most of the marine taxa in your database, and it could be made more accurate by adapting it to pick up certain taxon groups and other specified dictionary lists. 

SELECT TD.TAXON_OCCURRENCE_KEY,  ITN.ACTUAL_NAME FROM TAXON_DETERMINATION TD
INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME ITN
ON ITN.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = TD.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY
INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME ITN2
ON ITN2.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY
= ITN.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY
INNER JOIN TAXON_LIST_ITEM TLI
ON TLI.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = ITN2.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY
INNER JOIN TAXON_LIST_VERSION TLV
ON TLV.TAXON_LIST_VERSION_KEY = TLI.TAXON_LIST_VERSION_KEY
WHERE TLV.TAXON_LIST_KEY = 'NBNSYS0000000116'

Mike Weideli

MikeWeideli's Website