Choosing between alternative biological names with uBio

Background

The format and organisation of taxonomic information in the GPDD leaves a lot to be desired.

Queries on compound name entries require the extensive use of wildcards that increase query complexity and reduces efficiency. If I want fields with unambiguous single names I must decide between alternative names.

I am going to use some the biological names services to answer my questions and in doing so I hope to learn more about what each does and how they interconnect, or not, as the case may be.

I began with Phyla in theTaxonomicPhylum field. Three of which have compound names; Chromophyta (Heterokontophyta), Cnidaria (Coelenterata), and Dinophyta (Pyrrophyta).

Universal Biological Indexer and Organizer (uBio)

UBio is collated from a wide range of sources complied by taxonomists and other scientists so data quality should be good. It is a Taxonomic Name Server (TNS) composed of two parts. NameBank stores the names and facts that link names while ClassificationBank stores classifications and taxon concepts. I type the first name, "Chromophyta" into the box and press search. One match, but does it help?

NamebankID is the unique ID of the name in NameBank, the LSID is its resolvable Life Science Identifier. A clickable list of common names given, one of which is "heterokonts", and some information on record insertion. Clicking "view metadata" returns the string,

urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:10129547 Vernacular

This tells me it is a common name. "Heterokontophyta" also returns a single record.

A record with the metadata string,

urn:lsid:ubio.org:namebank:1560200 Heterokontophyta Heterokontophyta 5 Heterokontophyta Heterokontophyta Scientific Name Canonical form Phylum

Therefore, according to NameBank, "Heterikontophyta" is the correct scientific name for the Phylum, but what is the metadata string format and why are Heterikontophyta and Chromophyta not cross-linked if they refer to the same taxon? These questions must remain for another day.

What of the other two name pairs?

Both Cnidaria and Coelenterata appear to be valid scientific names, but the returned metadata does not seem to help me to make an informed decision between the two names. Wikipedia searches provides an answer,

"Cnidarians were for a long time grouped with Ctenophores in the phylum Coelenterata, but increasing awareness of their differences caused them to be placed in separate phyla."

"Coelenterata is an obsolete long term encompassing two animal phyla, the Ctenophora (comb jellies) and the Cnidaria (coral animals, true jellies, sea anemones, sea pens, and their allies)"

A search of ZooBank, the official registry of Zoological Nomenclature, returns no acts for either name. So, Cnidaria it is.

NameBank searches for Dinophyta and Pyrrophyta reveal the latter to be a vernacular name. Again, Wikipedia provides a quick and easily understood resolution to why both names exist. They were classified as both plants and animals! So Dinophyta they are, although on both Wikipedia and the University of California Museum of Palaeotology the phylum is "Dinoflagellata". So, it looks like neither name is correct.

Will other taxonomic name services provide more information than uBio? We shall see.