Use Case 5

Use Case 5: Display Connections To Synonymous Concepts (Statically)

Actors

Primary Actor: most likely an individual researcher, ecologist or (more commonly) taxonomist, or an entity intending to view concepts, connections (synonymy, parent/child relations), and statuses according to one or more sources of information that the SEEK Taxon database makes available.

It is part of the process of understanding the meaning of a concept, and the uses of taxonomic names in the taxonomic and ecological literature (including other databases), that one can trace its synonymy connections to other concepts. This "connectedness" among partially or entirely synonymous concepts also serves to reduce the redundancy of separate entries that can nevertheless stand for (virtually) identical meanings. Knowledge of concept synonymy connections can also assist a user in locating relevant specimens and diagnoses. These connections may be "expert-made" or probabilistically calculated. Typically they are circumscribed through the following relations: congruent, is included in, includes, overlaps, excludes (see http://www.bgbm.org/BioDivInf/Projects/MoreTax/standard_liste_en.htm). "Is included in" and "includes" are not considered the same as "is a child of" and "is a parent of" in this (synonymy) context. One species concept may for example be more inclusive in terms of its associated specimens than another species concept that refers to a subset of that larger set of specimens, without the latter being a "child" of the former.

Flow of Events

Pre-conditions

The Primary Actor has already queried the SEEK Taxon database with a name and obtained a listing of matching concept short-hands - e.g. Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997 - one of which is selected for complete concept entry viewing.

Basic Flow

Having viewed the complete entry of a concept, the Primary Actor now selects an option "display connections to synonymous concepts".
He or she can specify whether the returned listing should be restricted to "expert-made" connections among concepts, or also include probabilistically calculated ones.
A listing is returned to the user, often containing multiple entries of the sort "concept 1 is congruent (or e.g. partially overlaps) with concept 2, according to author I and reference A". That is, the user views a listing of concept synonymies, not just name synonymies.
In the case of SEEK calculated connections, each entry of synomyny relations to other concepts will come with a probability value.
Based on the results, the user may choose to view the complete entry (not just the short-hand) of a connected synonymous concept.

Examples

A taxonomist wants to view the synonymy connections of the previously selected concept "Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997". One of the returned entries lists: "Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997 overlaps with Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. USDA Plant List Version 2003, according to expert taxonomist Jones, USDA Plant Service 2003". Upon viewing the latter USDA concept in full detail, the users sees that USDA includes a hickory variety in its concept of Carya ovata that FNA places elsewhere.
Alternatively, the query returns the entry: "is congruent with Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Chapman, Flora Southern US 1883, according to the SEEK synonymy algorithm, with a probability of 95%". Viewing the latter concept entry may assist in understanding the similarities on which this value is based.

Post-conditions

Again, the concept "short-hands" displayed in the listing of concept synonymies should ideally indicate how much information is attached to the complete concept entries, e.g. whether they include specimen listings, or have been connected by "experts" to multiple alternative classifications.

Alternative Flows

A query for connections to synonymous concepts may be restricted to the initially selected set of "preferred views", or target a larger set. Calculated concept synonymies may be based on all available criteria (name, reference, rank, specimens, diagnoses, etc.), or just a subset of them.

Further Details

See other Use Cases involving or expanding on queries.

Non-functional Requirements

An intelligent, interactively usable algorithm to achieve name-to-concept matching; and presumably a minimum set of expert-made connections.

Issues

Synonymy connections can sit on top of core taxonomic concepts, in the sense that various entities can agree about the validity of concepts yet disagree about their synonymy connections. This situation is more complicated for parent/child connections, where certain disagreements about connections amond parent and child concepts necessarily result in new parent concepts (...).

History

25 March 2004: (NMF) Use Case created from previous Word document.

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This page last changed on 30-Jun-2004 13:04:39 PDT by LTER.stekell.