Tricky Aspects Of Taxonomic Data

Interesting things we encountered in the ant data sets

sp. and its kin

sp., sp-01, undet., etc. all mean "some species in this genus" So, Formica sp. means, some Formica. Often, a data set will have sp-01, sp-02, sp-03. These are separate collections of examples of the genus, but it doesn't necessarily imply that sp-01 and sp-02 are different species. It's unclear. Sometimes the species epithet is left out entirely, which is another version of sp.

spp.

This means 'all species in this genus.' It appears in the data describing the symbiotic relations in ants. For example, we have this:

Oxyepoecus inquilina isInquilinismParasiteOf Solenopsis spp.

Which means that Oxyepoecus inquilina can be a parasite on any type of Solenopsis. Many interesting inference issues arise from this type of proposition.