Darko Yaa Adarkwa, Voss Olaf, Uetz Peter
Center for Biological Data Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. .
3Soltaustraße 14, 21029 Hamburg. .
Zootaxa. 2022 Dec 13;5219(5):421-432. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5219.5.2.
Species are usually described by morphological terms. In order to simplify and shorten descriptions these are often abbreviated (e.g., SVL for snout-vent-length). However, there has been no systematic attempt to define and standardize such terms or their abbreviations. Here we present an initial list of 594 unique abbreviations from a total list of 1,223 abbreviations collected from >50 reptile species descriptions, resulting in a non-redundant list of 344 abbreviations. Most of these abbreviations describe either meristic characters such as scale counts (46%) or measurements such as SVL (snout-vent-length) (30%). The remainder describe presence/absence states, colors, or formulas such as ratios. We highlight the common problem of synonyms and homonyms, i.e., different terms and abbreviations for the same character or the same term for different characters. We propose to standardize definitions of terms and abbreviations in future species descriptions. In order to future-proof species descriptions for machine-readability such as text-mining, standardization is needed for all species descriptions in biology, not just reptiles.
物种通常用形态学术语来描述。为了简化和缩短描述，这些术语常常被缩写（例如，SVL代表吻肛长）。然而，尚未有人系统地尝试去定义和规范这些术语或其缩写。在此，我们从50多种爬行动物物种描述中收集的1223个缩写词列表里，给出了594个独特缩写词的初始列表，最终得到了一个包含344个缩写词的无冗余列表。这些缩写词大多描述的是数量性状，如鳞片计数（46%）或测量值，如SVL（吻肛长）（30%）。其余的则描述存在/缺失状态、颜色或比率等公式。我们强调了同义词和同音异义词这一常见问题，即同一特征有不同的术语和缩写，或者不同特征有相同的术语。我们建议在未来的物种描述中规范术语和缩写的定义。为了使物种描述具有面向未来的机器可读性，如文本挖掘，生物学中的所有物种描述都需要进行标准化，而不仅仅是爬行动物的描述。
