Taxonomic cross-mapping tool v2 -- Instructions

This tool supports the creation, inspection and querying of four pre-imported checklist pairs from the Droseraceae, Solanaceae, Gracillariidae and Phasmida groups, extracted from different editions of the Catalogue of Life Annual Checklist.

The demonstrator supports the following phases of using the tool:
  1. Selecting a checklist pair for "interlinking" (the initial processing step) using SPARQL queries.
  2. Selecting an interlinked checklist pair for further inference of relationships using SWRL rules.
  3. Selecting a checklist pair on which inference has been performed, and retrieving taxa that have a selected inferred relationship (at present, congruent, includes or overlaps).
  4. Selecting a checklist pair and searching for a scientific name in the first checklist, retrieving any relationships between taxa in the first checklist that include that name and corresponding taxa in the second one.
You may wish to examine the pre-prepared cross-maps before considering to run the cross-map creation process.

Example using a pre-prepared cross map for the Solanaceae data set

The following steps will take the reader through the process of inspecting a previously-prepared cross-map and querying it for a taxon specified by scientific name. (The user may also re-create these cross-maps, if desired, following the steps illustrated further down this page.)

  1. Go back to the HOME page, and click on the "cross mapping results" link
  2. Select the "Solanum" and "congruent" radio buttons, and click on the "Retrieval" button. (This time the set of taxa inferred to be congruent is non-empty.) You'll see a list of congruent taxa
  3. Go back to the HOME page, then click on the "Search" link
  4. At the search page, select the "Solanum" set, type in some name such as "Solanum nigrum" and click the Search button

Note that many of the relationships are currently categorised as "overlaps" relationships, simply because this is the most general of the three that the software is able to infer. (Congruent and includes are special cases, in that one or both of the something-in-A-and-not-in-B and something-in-B-and-not-in-A regions of the non-overlapping parts are empty.) More refined inference rules, currently under development, will be able to turn more of these overlaps into something more precise.

Example using the Droseraceae data set

The following steps will take the reader right through the process of creating the cross-map, inspecting it and querying it for a taxon specified by scientific name:
  1. Visit http://litchi.cs.cf.ac.uk:8080/CrossMapDemo2/
  2. Click on the "Droseraceae" radio button and then the "InterLink" button
  3. After a little while a table appears, indicating the names that occur in both checklists, and identifiers for the 2009 checklist (c11) and 2008 checklist (c12)
  4. Select the CoL20110606Droseraceae radio button at the bottom and then click on the "Inference" button
  5. After another little wait you should see a page with a "Retrieval" button. Select the "Droseraceae" radio button and one of the relationships (perhaps the "includes" one) and click the "Retrieval" button. You will see a table indicating the taxa in 2009 (c11) that have been determined to include some corresponding taxon in 2008 (c12).
  6. Click on "HOME" (at the top of the window) and try to search for taxa containing some name of your choice, by clicking on the "Search" link
  7. On the search page, select the "Droseraceae" radio button, typing in a name such as Drosera filiformis, and clicking on the "Search" button
Visit http://litchi.cs.cf.ac.uk:8080/CrossMapDemo1/ (older version)