Semantic Vernacular System: an Observation-based, Community-powered, and Semantics-enabled Naming System for Organisms.

The Semantic Vernacular System is a novel naming system for creating named, machine-interpretable descriptions for groups of organisms. Unlike the traditional scientific naming system, which is based on evolutionary relationships, it emphasizes the observable features of organisms. By independently naming the descriptions composed of sets of observational features, as well as maintaining connections to scientific names, it preserves the observational data used to identify organisms. The system is designed to support a peer-review mechanism for creating new names, and uses a controlled vocabulary encoded in the Web Ontology Language to represent the observational features. A prototype system is under development in collaboration with the Mushroom Observer website. It allows users to propose new names and descriptions, provide feedback on those proposals, and ultimately have them formally approved. This effort aims at offering the mycology community a knowledge base of fungal observational features and a tool for identifying fungal observations and further provides a prototype example of how other communities may use a semantically-enabled portal to evolve community naming systems.