Taxonomy ITIS Species Classifier

[dwalt]

Identifying the classifier of a species or sub-species is important in understanding the classification. This can be important when there is a divergence of opinion in classifications, to understand what classification the author used in species identification.

Recommend the ITIS download include the name and date of the classifier as a date instance. The name of the classifier can be put in the description field. Suggest using "adopted" for a dateType.

• Add taxonAuthor to itis response
• Add updateDate to itis response
• Display taxonAuthor as part of search result details
• Display date updated as part of search result details

[hmaier-fws]

It looks like ITIS calls this the taxonAuthor See: https://services.itis.gov/?q=tsn:180328

[jwaspin]

@dwalt I added a checklist of things that I did as part of this. I wasn't sure exactly what you were saying here so for now I just grabbed those fields and am displaying them in the results.

[dwalt]

Update date may have been a poor choice of names. I think the date here was intended to be an approximate year of classification. In the case of Puma concolor, the classifier would be Linnaeus and the date of classification was 1771. If there were changes to the classification we would like to know the date of last classification change. I'm not sure we can get this from ITIS.

[hmaier-fws]

There is an added complication in that ITIS includes the date as part of the "taxonAuthor" field. But, also that not all taxa include the publication date (this is actually the publication date of when the species was first described in the scientific literature). See the entry for Salix rotundifolia var. dodgeana this does not include a publication date and is also an example showing multiple authors (the initial description by "Rydb." and a later reclassification by "A.E. Murray")

The reason the names are handled differently is that this is not an issue of "classification" (biological taxonomy) but one of naming conventions (biological nomenclature). The naming of plants, animals, and bacteria are under the jurisdiction of different entities, with different rules and conventions. The same is true of "classification" (taxonomy); it's possible that a single organism could be classified differently, depending upon the system used (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_systems_of_plant_taxonomy).