For developers

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See the wiki on antcat.org instead

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Database

Taxon models

Hierarchy¹

• Taxon²
  • Family
  • Subfamily
  • Tribe
  • Subtribe³
  • GenusGroupTaxon²
    • Genus
    • Subgenus³
  • SpeciesGroupTaxon²
    • Species
    • Subspecies

_{¹ indentation indicates subclassing}

_{² abstract class}

_{³ outside of the "main progression"}

Notes on some special cases

Class	Description
Taxon	The main class. All taxa at all different levels are saved in the taxa table, using Single Table Inheritance (STI).
Family	There's only a single family (Formicidae) in AntCat / ant taxonomy; parts of the code relies on hardcoded values to make this class work. 99% of all taxa in AntCat belong to this family, exceptions include for example Syntaphus (family Braconidae), which is stored in the database with the status "excluded from Formicidae". (TODO explain family_id: nil / incertae_sedis_in)
Subtribe	...

Main progression / parent taxon

The "main progression", from the lowest rank and up: Subspecies -> Species -> Genus -> Tribe -> Subfamily -> Family. So, a subspecies has a parent, which is a species, which has a parent... etc.

However, this leaves Subtribe and Subgenus outside of this "main progression"..... TODO

Language

Uncountable/irregular nouns

Singular	Plural
taxon	taxa
genus	genera
subgenus	subgenera
species	species
subspecies	subspecies

Glossary

Word	Explanation	Wikipedia
nomen nudum	[Latin for "naked name"; plural nomina nuda], type of invalid name	Nomen nudum
incertae sedis	[Latin for "of uncertain placement"], denotes taxa whose relationship with others is unknown or undecided	Incertae sedis
homonym	A name for a taxon that is identical in spelling to another name	Homonym (biology)
synonym		Synonym (taxonomy)#Zoology
type locality	The geographical location where a type specimen was originally found	Type (biology)#type locality
valid name		Valid name (zoology)
ICZN	International Code of Zoological Nomenclature	International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

TODO: junior synonym, senior synonym, collective group name, obsolete combination, original combination, type name, type specimen, biogeographic region, locality, protonym, authorship.

Italics

Higher ranks (family, subfamily, tribe, subtribe) are not italicized, but ranks at genus-level and below should be italicized (genus, subgenus, species, subspecies).

There are few "descriptive rank abbreviations" (I don't know the word for this) like "subsp.", "var." and "sect." – meaning "subspecies", "variety" and "section" – that are found in older names. These are not written in italics. They are however not used in modern ant taxonomy except when referring to the old name, and all such names have been automatically migrated to new names without the abbreviations (at least I think this is the case). Examples:

• Acantholepis capensis var. canescens
• Acromyrmex balzani subsp. myersi

Forms

Moved to https://antcat.org/wiki/5