The Greek Taxonomic Information System service
Goal: This service will be developed to act as the taxonomic backbone of the LifeWatch Greece infrastructure: a taxonomic ID, the Taxon Identifier Number (TIN) will be assigned to all taxa (/species) registered in the GTIS which will be derived in part from existing systems (see below). Through TINs, any type of information can be linked, e.g. systematic classification, taxonomic description, functional trait information, geographical distribution, registered material in the natural history collections of the museums, regulations, threat status, etc.
Objectives
- To produce and maintain a list of valid species reported from Greece under their current accepted scientific name and their allocated TIN with a simple status of occurrence (Present, Possible, Absent), and a more elaborated one including endemicity and introduction based on European Environment Agency (EEA) and eModNet vocabulary. TINs will be primarily based on the EUNIS EEA database, which will make easier the links with European regulations and initiatives (list of species in Natura 2000 sites, Bird directive, etc.).
- Provide Greek governmental agencies with a validated/certified list of valid species and scientific names to be used in national laws and regulations.
- The list will be built, maintained and disseminated through a scratchpad (SpeLog: speciesgreece.myspecies.info, the domain name may be changed to species.lifewatchgreece.eu). .
- It is not in the objectives of this list to manage classifications and synonyms. Rather, they will be made available through deep links to different species lists resulting from various European and international projects and initiatives: Catalogue of Life (CoL: www.catalogueoflife.org hosted by Naturalis, Netherlands) and Pan-European (PESI: www.eu-nomen.eu hosted by VLIZ – Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium). The links with CoL and PESI will ensure that species will always be designated correctly even if different names (“synonyms”) are used in various regulatory documents. Other systems in Europe may be connected such as the Swedish ArtPortalen (Swedish Species Information Centre and Swedish Environmental Protection, www.artportalen.se).
- Greek common names will be added on opportunistic basis.
- Develop and enact the maintenance routines, procedures and operational support necessary to continuously update the list.
In order to facilitate the interpretation of scientific names that would not be found in CoL or PESI, the infrastructure will host a node for the Global Name Index (from the Global Names initiative: www.globalnames.org). This will offer a more efficient indexation of legacy data because older names are not always included in CoL and PESI.
The status of occurrence of a species in the country will be ascertained by a scientific publication in reference. The bibliographic references will be stored in an existing repository, for instance RefBank for which the infrastructure will host a node to facilitate operations.
Note:
PESI includes 3 components:
- European Register of Marine Species (ERMS): within WoRMS – World Register of Marine Species www.marineorganisms.org. Hosted in VLIZ, Belgium.
- Fauna Europaea: www.faunaeur.org. Hosted in MfN, Germany.
- Euro+Med PlantBase: www.emplantbase.org Hosted in BGBM, Germany.