For my cataloging, I am currently only using the fields
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dwc:Taxon.dwc:scientificName
dwc:Taxon.dwc:vernacularName
There are many more fields which I should be completing to define the Taxon. For example, for an Australian native orchid I recently photographed, I should be completing all the Darwin core taxon fields as:-
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Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophytes
Class: Equisetopsida
Order: Asparagales
Family: Orchidaceae
Scientific Name: Acianthus exsertus
Vernacular Name:
Genus: Acianthus
Specific Epithet: exsertus
Scientific Name Authorship: R.Br.
Original Name Usage: Acianthus exsertus R.Br. 1810
Identified by: Graham Corbin
Date Identified: 02/05/2021
Theoretically, I could download a list of organism species from an internet checklist site such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (https://www.gbif.org/) and programmatically create a label for each species to correctly fill out the Darwin core xmp. This would make my cataloguing of organism photos much easier as I just need to apply the species label, an identifier label and a location label and I have completed the basic Darwin core cataloguing of the organism.
I see two challenges with this approach.
- According to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, there are currently 2,555,332 identified species, so we would need to create that many labels. We could reduce this by only including some kingdoms such as Animalia or Plantae depending on your interest, but the bottom line is there will be tens of thousands of labels required irrespective of whether we limit the organisms imported. Can the Photo Supreme database support this? Presumably, but this would need testing.
- Taxonomists regularly split, combine and restructure species, so we would need a method of periodically updating the labels to the latest taxonomy.