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Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG)Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of IRMNG?IRMNG, the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera, exists to provide a machine- and human- queryable system that is able to answer some basic questions about organisms based on the genus component (or in around 50% of cases, the genus+species component) of their scientific name.Such questions in the first instance comprise:
How does IRMNG differ from other, apparently comparable biodiversity databases?IRMNG aspires to maximize coverage at the level of genus across all groups, i.e. animal, plants, algae, protists, fungi, prokaryotes, and viruses, both extant and fossil, and also include flags to indicate extant/fossil and basic habitat status as above. Other comparable biodiversity databases are either limited to a single taxonomic group (e.g. Index Nominum Genericorum for plants, Index Fungorum for fungi, Catalog of Fishes for fish, etc. etc.), or to taxa of a particular type (e.g. Paleo Database for fossils, World Register of Marine Species for marine species only), or to taxa from a particular geographic region (e.g. Fauna Europaea, Australian Plant Checklist, Species 2000 New Zealand). The most comparable, broad spectrum initiative (though excluding fossils) is probably the Catalogue of Life, however this omits much detail at genus level (such as genus authorities and genus level synonyms) and in addition presently aims for completeness at species level, so proceeds much more slowly towards completion. Another noteworthy compilation, that of Nomenclator Zoologicus, has excellent coverage of many zoological genus names from 1758-2004 approx., but omits family allocation, habitat flags, and consideration of current taxonomic validity in all but a few cases. The Thomson Reuters Index to Organism names (ION) lists a large number of animal names (over 4 million) but includes many duplicates and name variants which are not flagged as such, while the Global Names Index from the Global Names initiative includes even more names (18 million, from all groups) but again with significant duplication problems, and again lacks the extant/fossil and habitat flags which are a key feature of IRMNG.What is the significance of "Interim" in the IRMNG context?In the context of IRMNG, "Interim" indicates that this is largely a first-pass compilation of data from a wide range of sources which may contain some internal inconsistencies and data errors, that have not subsequently received the degree of scrutiny and validation found in more authoritative, single-group sources. Over time, these aspects of IRMNG should be improved however in the first instance, it is deemed desirable to have a system with the range of IRMNG available for use in the interim rather than wait for all residual taxonomic or data issues to be resolved, or for the appearance of an equivalent compilation from other sources.How has IRMNG been populated?For obvious reasons, IRMNG draws heavily on pre-existing genus level compilations which in a number of cases, have been generously made available to the project by their respective compilers. In approximate order of incorporation, the major sources utilised to date have been as follows:
How complete is IRMNG at this time?This is difficult to answer exactly, since no reliable estimates of total numbers of extant and fossil, valid names and synonyms exist at either genus, family or species level; however the author estimates from a range of sources and guesstimates that there may be a total 6.5–7m published species names to date, of which approximately 2.2m are valid (the latter increasing at around 25,000 per year); 500,000 published genus names of which perhaps 250,000 are valid (increasing at around 2,500 per year); and perhaps 30,000 published family names of which maybe 17,000 are valid, for both extant and fossil taxa. On the basis of these approximations, IRMNG currently includes "most" valid published family names plus a small subset of synonyms, "most" published genus names, both valid and non-valid (485,000 of approx. 500,000, i.e. around 97%), and a subset of species names only at this time (1.9m out of perhaps 6.5–7m, or a little over 28%, though the figure rises to around 50% if synonyms are excluded).How many homonyms / non-unique genus names are in IRMNG?One important function of IRMNG is to indicate, at least as far as data already held, whether a particular genus name is unique or whether it occurs in multiple instances, either between or within the same taxonomic groups. Currently there are almost 69,000 genus-level homonyms (around 29,000 separate names) included in IRMNG, representing around 15% of all names or approx. one name in every 7 (this figure also includes nomina nuda plus a small number of misspellings that accidentally coincide with a different, correctly spelled name). The name with the largest number is probably Wagneria of which there are 12 listed instances in zoology and 2 in botany, of which a maximum of one instance can be valid in either domain with the remainder invalid, of which a subset may be either synonyms (for example replaced by subseqently published new names), or orthographic variants/misspellings of otherwise valid names.What editing is required for IRMNG compilation?The majority of name data (taxon names and authorities) are imported into IRMNG from the relevant data sources without modification, except in the case of database errors apparent from cross-comparison with external sources and a limited amount of authority normalization to produce a consistent "house style" (including expansion of botanical authors for genera when supplied in abbreviated form, to match the format used in Index Nominum Genericorum). Family attribution may be adjusted from that given with incoming data where a more recent, authoritative source is available, and editorial input may be required to decide which source to follow in instances where opinion is divided. Missing data (such as authorities, also nomenclatural/taxonomic comments, and habitat and extant/fossil flags) is frequently added from a variety of supplementary sources and in these cases, editorial decisions are sometimes required as to which instance of a genus name is involved in each case (often self evident, but sometimes not so). Editorial decisions are also required to decide whether two highly similar names and cited authorities in different base datasets represent either the same or different genus publication instances, for example some animal names may also be represented as plants, plants or protists as fungi, corals as sponges, etc. etc., particularly in early literature; where such cases are detected, a decision is then made either to retain both records as separate instances or to combine them into a single record for IRMNG. Editorial input is also involved in determining the status of names from some of the less authoritative sources as either genuine new instances, or as misspellings of names already on the list, in which case a note is added together with a pointer to the name variant deemed to be the correct spelling.What gaps remain to be filled in IRMNG?IRMNG can be deemed complete (at genus level) when:
This is a low level priority for IRMNG at this time, however at present some 221,000 genus names of 485,000 (46%) are flagged as currently valid, and 103,000 (22%) are flagged as non-valid synonmys and are pointed to the relevant valid name instance, leaving 33% without valid/non-valid flags at this time. How is IRMNG currently maintained, and what are its long term development plans?For the initial 10 years of its existence (2006-early 2016) IRMNG has been developed and maintained by Tony Rees with the support of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia, assisted by financial contributions from OBIS Australia, GBIF and the Atlas of Living Australia, and in-kind contributions (in the form of taxonomic data) from multiple sister projects.
In 2016, IRMNG hosting was taken over by VLIZ, the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium, which has agreed to continue the ongoing development of IRMNG in conjunction with the WoRMS and OBIS data systems
which are also hosted there. Co-hosting of IRMNG with other related data systems at VLIZ is anticipated to result in benefits to both IRMNG content and that of other VLIZ systems, as well as utilizing
a standardized IT infrastructure and set of web interfaces across multiple data systems which can continue to be developed further according to future user and editor needs.
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