Automated assembly of a reference taxonomy for phylogenetic data synthesis

Taxonomy and nomenclature data are critical for any project that synthesizes biodiversity data, as most biodiversity data sets use taxonomic names to identify taxa. Open Tree of Life is one such project, synthesizing sets of published phylogenetic trees into comprehensive summary trees. No single published taxonomy met the taxonomic and nomenclatural needs of the project. Here we describe a system for reproducibly combining several source taxonomies into a synthetic taxonomy, and we discuss the challenges of taxonomic and nomenclatural synthesis for downstream biodiversity projects.

分类学与命名规范数据对于所有整合生物多样性数据的项目而言至关重要，因为绝大多数生物多样性数据集均通过分类学名称来标识分类单元（taxa）。开放生命树（Open Tree of Life）便是此类项目之一，其将已发表的多组系统发育树整合为综合性的汇总树。目前尚无任何已发表的分类学体系能够满足该项目的分类学与命名规范需求。本研究详述了一套可复现的多源分类学体系整合方案，用以构建合成分类学体系，并探讨了面向下游生物多样性项目的分类学与命名规范整合所面临的各项挑战。