Achieving additivity of structured taxonomic character data by persistently linking them to preserved individual specimens

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In a precursor project, we have implemented a workflow on the EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) Platform for Cybertaxonomy, a comprehensive taxonomic data management and publication environment. The aim was to organise the links between (a) investigated samples of individual organisms, (b) research data obtained from them, (c) specimens of these individuals deposited in research collections, and (d) taxon assignments ("identifications") of the investigated individuals. On this basis the proposed project will optimise the taxonomic research process with respect to delimitation and characterisation ("description") of taxa. The angiosperm order Caryophyllales will provide exemplar use cases through cooperation within the Global Caryophyllales Initiative. The workflow for sample data handling will be extended to include two functionalities connected with each other: First, recording and storing character data (data on genoptypic and phenotypic characters of any type, here focusing on morphology) in structured form in character and character state matrices for individual specimens instead for taxa, shall allow to generate taxon characterisations by aggregating the data sets for the individual specimens included. Semantic web technology will be used to establish and continuously elaborate expert community-coordinated exemplar vocabularies with term ontologies and explanations for characters and states. Second, persistent linking of specimen-based character data sets with the individual specimens preserved in research collections via standard exchange formats shall guarantee a high visibility and instant re-usability of these character data. Taking into account that taxon concepts frequently change during the knowledge generation process in systematic biology, additivity of character data from specimen to taxon level therefore greatly facilitates the construction, extension as well as the reproducibility of taxon characterisations from changing specimen and character data sets.