Exploring historical trends using taxonomic name metadata.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Authority and year information have been attached to taxonomic names since Linnaean times. The systematic structure of taxonomic nomenclature facilitates the ability to develop tools that can be used to explore historical trends that may be associated with taxonomy.

Results

From the over 10.7 million taxonomic names that are part of the uBio system 4, approximately 3 million names were identified to have taxonomic authority information from the years 1750 to 2004. A pipe-delimited file was then generated, organized according to a Linnaean hierarchy and by years from 1750 to 2004, and imported into an Excel workbook. A series of macros were developed to create an Excel-based tool and a complementary Web site to explore the taxonomic data. A cursory and speculative

SUBMITTER: Sarkar IN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2408592 | biostudies-literature | 2008 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature