5. The "preferred taxon view"

The model allows for a multitude of homonymous potential taxa to coexist in the database. Although this is deemed necessary for an effective storage of information about plants, it is confusing for the user of plant information. A possibility must therefore be included to establish a preferred taxon view of the database, in which one potential taxon takes preference over all other defined potential taxa.

Potential taxa are defined by means of reference citations, which may include informal references as well as literature citations (see chapter 7). In the context of the checklist, a reference citation may for example consist only of the name of the taxonomic coordinator and a title like "IOPI checklist coordinator, 1996. A hierarchy can be established by means of the entity "Taxonomic Coordination and Preference", which defines which reference (and thus, which potential taxon) takes priority. Here, a priority list of references is defined which must be followed whenever conflicts have to be resolved to obtain a preferred taxon view of the data. For the checklist, this has the additional advantage of making it possible to include standard references like taxonomic treatments as coordinator references.

Information affected by the Taxonomic Coordination History is detailed in Diagram 12.


Diagram 12: Data affected by the "preferred taxon view"



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