ClassIdentification

The dwc:Identification class

The dwc:Identification is 'the category of information pertaining to taxonomic determinations (the assignment of a scientific name).' In Darwin-SW a determination is applied to individual organisms, assigning them to a Taxon. Taxon is understood to be an instance of a taxon concept or taxon name usage (see the discussion of the Taxon class). A particular individual organism may be assigned several identifications. Each identification should be a separate instance of Identification.

Notes on the Identification class

No distinction is made between the initial identification and subsequent identifications made by persons who "annotate" evidence (e.g. specimens) at a later time. "Identification" in this case is synonymous with "determination"; therefore the person doing the identifying could be referred to as the "determiner" rather than the "identifier" (to avoid confusion with use of "identifier" as in "globally unique identifier").^{1 2 3}

The term identificationReferences is "a list of references used in the assessment to make the determination. The dwc:identificationReferences might include taxonomic treatments, but they might also include something such as an expert range map or a field guide".⁴ identificationReferences is a string literal property populated with a concatenated text list of sources that were consulted. dwc:identificationReferences is distinguished from dwc:nameAccordingTo which is a property of Taxon. nameAccordingTo is intended to convey the publication which establishes the concept by circumscription or description of the characters which delineate the taxon.^{4 2} (See the Taxon class for more on this.)

¹ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001694.html

² http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001703.html

³ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001708.html

⁴ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001704.html

Properties suitable for use in DSW (not a complete list)

Data properties from DwC

• dwc:identifiedBy string literal
• dwc:dateIdentified ISO 8601 date-time string literal
• dwc:identificationRemarks string literal
• dwc:identificationReferences string literal
• dwc:identificationQualifier string literal

Object properties defined in the darwin-sw ontology

• dsw:identifies range dsw:IndividualOrganism
• dsw:toTaxon range dwc:Taxon
• dsw:idBasedOn range dsw:Token (which also may be typed as specimen, image, DNA sample, etc.)
• dsw:idBy range foaf:Agent