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Houston 2010

In April 2010, Jackie Lees and Paul Bown organised and ran a NERC funded workshop in Houston on Late Cretaceous nannofossil taxonomy.

During this, an undertaking was made to add Cretaceous taxa to the Nannotax system. This will be a major expansion of the system, so some discussion of how to do this and how we would like to see the system develop is timely. Please add comments to this page &/or you can also comment back to Jackie directly via e-mail & she will add your comments to the discussion. 

Prospective Timetable for development of Cretaceous pages

  • End June 2010 - agreed species list produced to provide skeleton of nannotax pages
  • End June 2010 - modified Nannotax input format agreed
  • End August 2010 - initial inputs, so we have product to show at INA13 in Yamagata
  • Sept 2010 - Working Group meeting at INA13 in Yamagata
  • Early 2011 - Working Group meeting in Houston 2011 – Feb/March or alongside AAPG

Current Nannotax-active Working Group members (with indication of input responsibility - note that not all taxa are covered - feel free to volunteer!)

  • Jackie Lees & Joerg Mutterlose – polycycloliths, holococcoliths and editorial overview
  • Jim Bergen – Retamediaformis, Percivalia, Gorkaea, Rhagodiscus
  • Jamie Shamrock – eiffellithids
  • David Watkins – Prediscosphaera, braarudosphaerids
  • Jean Self-Trail– Lithraphidites, Microrhabdulus, Rucinolithus, Assipetra
  • Richard Howe – zeugrhabdotids, inc. Reinhardtites
  • Kevin Cooper – Chiastozygus, Tranolithus
  • Liam Gallagher & Matt Hampton – arkhangelskiellids
  • Todd Boesiger – Cylindralithus, Stoverius, Rotelapillus
  • Jason Crux – Corollithion, stradnerlithids
  • Sudeep Kanungo – cretarhabdids, retecapsids
  • Rich Denne - Watznaueria, Cyclagelosphaera, Manivitella
  • Osman Varol - nannoconids
  • Mitch Covington & Jim Pospichal - Biscutaceae
  • Simon Cole & Brett Woodhouse - podorhabdids

Standardized fields/headings to facilitate input from multiple contributors

Please comment on the suggested templates sent by Jackie via e-mail - if you want to see these, just let me (Jackie) know. Jeremy can rearrange the site so we can see pics next to text - see http://milichiidae.info/category/classification/costalima-myrmicola for an example.

Wish list

1. Taxon lists Desire to have complete (i.e. including synonyms), searchable species & genus lists, & information on all species, but with authoritative information concerning validity, synonymy, useage. For example, see approach in Dinoflaj – valid taxa in bold, synonyms, previous combinations in quotes or similar. Flag junk!

2. Any chance of ‘similar species’ images being opened at the same time to enable comparison?

3. Quicker, easier navigation

4. Boolean search capability, i.e. searches on multiple terms, e.g. Miocene – discoasters – datums

5. Could we make use of Clustrmaps to give a visual display of geographic distributions?

Additional thoughts (Paul Bown)

Validation/management

Open ‘Comments and images’ will be reviewed by appropriate ‘authoriser(s)’ and may then be added to / migrated to Gallery or appropriate text field. We probably should think about an organised board of specialists that cover the entire strat. column, cf. PBDB for organisational/management model. We now have Paleogene and Cretaceous Working Groups, so we should probably aim to set up Neogene-Quaternary and Triassic-Jurassic counterparts. Something to discuss at Yamagata.

Comments

Thu, 06/05/2010 - 01:30 — Jeremy Young
Jeremy Young's picture

houston 2010 - wish list

It is really encouraging that there is so much support for developing the nannotax system in general and specifically for producing Late Cretaceous coverage. The feedback I have had indicates that the current site is well-used by industrial micropalaeontologists, research students and undergraduate students and I really hope we can develop it as a prime online source of data on nannofossil taxonomy.

Wish list

1. Taxon lists Desire to have complete searchable species lists and information on all species but with authoritative information concerning validity, synonymy, useage. For example, see approach in Dinoflaj – valid taxa in bold, synonyms, previous combinations in quotes or similar. Flag junk!
- the dinflaj site is very impressive but it has been produced from the Fensome and Wiliams (2004) catalog which actually is a better synthesis of dinoflagellate taxonomy than we have for nannos. We can learn a lot from the dinoflaj system but we re not in a position to easily impement something similar.

2. Any chance of ‘similar species’ images being opened at the same time to enable comparison, cf. nannoware?
- this is not easy to add in like that automatically but a good addition to the wish list for the site. What can be done easily, as I have done to some extent for the Neogene in nannotax is to add tables comparing species to the genus pages. It would also be entirely possible to add discussion and images of similar species in species pages.

3. Quicker, easier navigation?
- clearly we need to do this. The automatically generated taxonomy tree and the search box do work but they are a bit clunky. For the Neogene I have added a hand-crafted menu and multiple links in the higher taxonomy pages, which provide faster alternative navigation methods but it would certainly be useful to add fast navigation methods independent of any taxonomic knowledge - and the more content we have the more worthwhile this will be.

4. Boolean search capability, i.e. searches on multiple terms, e.g. Miocene – discoasters – datums
- this is at the top of my wishlist for site development (as opposed to site expansion). I want to enable searching of the database by a combination of taxonomic group and geological age. It will require some programing effort but I am trying to get the funding to implement this.

Final comment - I am sorry there are no instant solutions to any of these requests, but as we increase the content in the site then it will become ever more worthwhile to improve the functionality. In the interim a google search on the vast majority of Cenozoic nannofossil taxa will give a nannotax link on the first page, so we are not doing too badly

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