Reference Manual

of data is identical for all such specimens.
5. Zoo or aquarium specimens are indicated with the place name being the donating institution (entry 16). Wild
caught animals subsequently donated by zoos present a problem with no obvious solution (unless documentation of
collecting site is convincing).
6. Elevational differences at the "same" locality are to be treated as different places (entries 18 and 19). The
simplest format is: keyword, specific landmark, elevation.
7. Broadly descriptive localities (e.g. entries 15 and 23) are difficult to deal with. They may not fit into a
standard geo-political hierarchy and almost always include (at least implicitly) a degree of uncertainty. Marine
collections that fall into this category are perhaps even more problematic. Consider "off Florida", which could be
in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, in Cuban territorial waters, or simply along the coast of Florida. While
this problem is more crucial when entering the locality information itself, we have chosen the appending of an asterisk
('*') to the keyword as the convention for recognizing such place names as different from slightly more distinctive
(but not necessarily more precise) designations such as "Florida" or "Rhodesia". Most viewers of such data should
recognize that convention as some form of variant meaning (as opposed to a coded value that would require
interpretation using printed or automated rules).
8. Grammatically distinctive descriptions of the same locality (e.g. entries 10 and 11) should be lumped to the
same place name. This obviously is a grey area and one that different disciplines and different collections may want
to vary in their interpretation. There are good reasons to be wary of using modern translations of historical
descriptions of places. Only with careful research (travel logs, field notes) can we be certain that the Silver City of
today is the same as the same name of 100 years ago or that the addition of a more precise direction and distance
(entry 10) does not in some way differentiate a locality. But as indicated in rule 3, these are only place names not
references to actual collections made on a specific day. The inclusion of date as part of the actual locality record
ensures that only collections of highly probable identity are referenced by a single locality record.
9. Long keywords (and place names in general) will have to be dealt with as best as possible. Entry 14 shows
one example, in other cases, abbreviations of the specific part of the place name would be better.
10. Completely vague locality descriptions (entry 23) are probably best not assigned a keyword as any phrase
has a high chance of being misinterpreted. The associated catalog number (MCZ 12345) will uniquely link that
locality record with the specimen data. If a series of sequential catalog numbers are unequivocally associated then
a range of catalog numbers (e.g. UMMZ 11223-11230) would form an acceptable entry (presuming that date
information was also identical).
F-3
F: Site Names