Internal Taxonomy

Overview

Taxonomy within MOL has received careful attention. Requirements for the MOL include the need for interoperability with numerous external informatics projects through taxonomy. In addition, MOL has the requirement that species concepts need to be discrete while maintaining the ability to change to reflect expert opinions. To fit these two needs, it has been planned that MOL will adhere to external taxonomic authorities. It is difficult to pick a single authority for all species, as a result, MOL will take large portions of its internal taxonomy from several different taxonomic authorities. Mapping across taxonomies will be ideal, but at times MOL will need to sacrifice some interoperability in favor of reflecting current biological knowledge.

Taxonomy Stage 1

The first implementation of taxonomy within MOL is based completely on the Animalia within COL. Processing layers to fit the internal taxonomy is ongoing.

Taxonomy Stage 2

Portions of the internal taxonomy will be replaced before layer processing is completed. For example, if it is decided that the 2010 Birdlife International Checklist has a better authoritative list of birds species, only the bird portion of the internal MOL species list will be replaced.

Taxonomy Stage 3