CREATING & MANAGING TAXONOMY IN THE BDRS Introduction There are two main methods for creating and managing taxonomic structures and content in the Biological Data Recording System (BDRS) The simplest is to import species pages from the Atlas of Living Australia (Atlas). The more complex method is to create the structures and content by hand. BDRS Taxonomy in two parts – the Taxonomic Group and the Taxonomy Page. The Taxonomic Page is the BDRS equivalent of a species profile page in the and contains information about the particular species of interest including images, description, habitat, diet and so on – whatever you want to show to visitors to your site. These profile pages can be developed for all levels of a taxonomic structure including species, genus, subfamily, family etc to whatever level of detail you wish to go to and is appropriate for your audience and useful in surveys. The Taxonomic Group is a flexible grouping classification tool. You can group things by anything you like: For example type - lizards, snakes, skinks, waterfowl, birds of prey, etc; OR or within a family or kingdom: Waterfowl, Herons, Ibis etc, Birds of Prey, Shorebirds and Gulls, Pigeons and Doves, Cockatoos, Parrots and Lorikeets, Robins, Cuckoos, and so on; OR by habitat – wetlands, dry forest etc. Clicking on the taxonomic opens the next level down which is usually a list of species – then Clicking on an individual species opens the selected species profile page. You can group species at whatever level of detail you like, is appropriate for your audience and is useful in setting the context of more formal scientifically driven surveys (vs a casual “any species” sighting record with basic Darwin Core Fields). Most BDRS sites have a field guide or species guide which shows this first level of grouping that provide users with the opportunity to browse your content within the grouping or association framework and which shape and guide their understanding of what your particular projects are all about. This document: Part 1 describes the processes for creating Taxonomy Groups. Part 2 describes the processes for creating Taxon/Species pages.
1: CREATING TAXONOMIC GROUPS The Taxonomic Group is a flexible grouping and classification tool. You can group things by anything you like – for example type: lizards, snakes, skinks, waterfowl, birds of prey, etc Most BDRS sites have a field guide or species guide which shows this first level of grouping. Clicking on the taxonomic opens the next level down which is usually a list of species – then Clicking on an individual species opens the selected species profile page. Instructions for creating or editing a new Taxon Group: Log in to your web site as usual. Click on Admin from the navigation menu and Select Manage Portal, then Manage Taxonomy on the sub-menu Select Add a New Taxonomic Group from the list Tip You can also the Add Taxon Group button on the Edit an Existing Taxonomic Group Page Type a Name Naming is important as it is how people distinguish between groups of objects – for example it is usually better to use common rather than scientific names to improve the usability of the site. In this example we have used “Threatened mammals” Note that you can also add an and/or Thumbnail image for a species representative of your group which will be displayed on the field guide page. We recommend you do this to add visual appeal to your web site and help people understand and differentiate between the species contained within your taxon groups. Continuing with the Threatened Mammals example