Using the BioNET species sighting data standard

[jrfep]

Check standards at:

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/bionet-species-sighting-data-standard-version-6-1

Recommendations from Phil:

The relevant fields from the standard are
Unique identifiers

• speciesID
• speciesCode_Synonym
• scientificName

References to current taxonomy

• taxonID
• currentScientificNameCode
• currentScientificName

For names that are current, you will notice the following for the relevant unique fields

• taxonID=speciesID
• currentScientificNameCode=speciesCode_Synonym
• currentScientificName=scientificName

However, for synonyms, these values will be different. For this reason, there can be potentially multiple rows in the web standard that have the same value of taxonID, currentScientificNameCode and currentScientificName as there will be a row for the current name plus additional rows for each of the synonyms.

For this reason, you should NOT match on these fields, but instead you should match any incoming data on the unique fields:

• speciesID
• speciesCode_Synonym
• scientificName

If you have used CAPS codes in the past, then the most reliable match should be matching your CAPS code to
SpeciesCode_Synonym

The reason for this is that it is longstanding policy in the management of CAPS codes to never delete codes. However, minor changes to typography and spelling can be made whilst keeping the same CAPS code. So it would be expected that there may be some mismatch in the scientificName field if your CAPS list was acquired some time ago.

Once you have done a match on SpeciesCode_Synonym you can run a query to look for differences in the Scientific Name field to confirm that all are in fact simple changes to typography.

For supplies of data from other sources that have not used CAPS codes (eg from other researchers, organisations etc) you should match on scientificName.