Introduction - ClassificationBank

Stores taxonomic opinion in the form of classifications, synonyms and citations.

Expert opinion extends NameBank by describing different taxonomic concepts and serving their representative structural, synonymic, and bibliographic elements to enhance information organization and retrieval. ClassificationBank addresses the concept problem by allowing different expert opinions to be expressed within a single system.

ClassificationBank derives it's basic name and reference information from NameBank. NameBank records are combined with expert metadata to represent different expert opinions concerning taxonomic concepts such as a species or a classification of species. Different experts may express different views on the classification and circumscription of the same nominal taxon. ClassificationBank stores these different opinions and serves them as output data objects in a standard output format. These metadata can be used to assist in the organization, indexing, and retrieval of biological data objects.

Expert	Names	Classification	Synonyms
Expert A 1 taxon	Gorilla gorilla	Family Hominidae Subfamily Homininae Tribe Hominini Subtribe Hominina     Genus Gorilla               Species gorilla	Gorilla gorilla berengi Gorilla gorilla graueri Gorilla gorilla gorilla
Expert B 3 taxa	Gorilla gorilla berengi Gorilla gorilla graueri Gorilla gorilla gorilla	Family Pongidae    Genus Gorilla      Species gorilla        subspecies berengei        subspecies gorilla        subspecies graueri	no synonyms

Taxonomic concepts can get complicated quickly and there are many was of modelling them. ClassificationBank is one of many taxonomic models and, in general, different systems exist for different, legitimate reasons. ClassificationBank is separated from NameBank specifically so that these different models can share the same set of underlying name facts.

See:

Taxonomy of extant apes and humans

Mountain Gorillas of the Virungas

Western and Eastern Gorillas: Estimates of Genetic Distance

Great Apes Survival Project