Searching for ALA records in Arctos
This HOWTO is aimed at users searching for information about the
specimens held at the University of Alaska Museum of the North
Herbarium (ALA).
Enter the Arctos search page using this link to limit your search
to ALA collections (vascular, cryptogams, fungi and algae).
Searching for specimens by taxonomy
From most to least specific:
- 1. To search for specimens with latest (current) identification
matching your query name:
- In the main search page, enter your query name in the
Identification box, with the kind of match required (‘match’ for
exact match).
- 2. To search for specimens with any identification (latest or prior)
matching your query name:
- First, search for the name in the Taxonomy Search (there is
no way to do this search via the main search page).
- In the name’s ‘Usage’ section, click on ‘Used in Accepted
Identifications’. A search will start.
- To exclude the most current identification, edit the ‘ID Order’
field from ‘>0’ to ‘>1’ (or any other desired filter) and click
‘Submit Query’ to search again.
- 3. To search for specimens with any identification matching
your query name, and identifications to a synonym of your query
name:
- In main Search page, the Customize Search and Results
dropdown at the top of the page, select ‘Customize or Manage
Profile’. Click the ‘Taxonomy’ check box under ‘Search Options’
and then click ‘Use Selected’.
- Do not enter anything in the Identification box. Instead,
- In ‘Taxon Term’ enter your name preceded by ‘%’ (for ‘contains’),
- In ‘Type or Rank’ enter ‘synonyms’ (the field name of the list
of synonyms for a taxon from WFO),
- In ‘Source’ enter ‘UAM Plants’
- 4. To search for specimens with any identification related in any
way to your query name:
- Use the ‘Any taxon, ID, common name’ search box. This will
search all classifications, common names, and the Arctos names
relationships tables for your search term (more). [search
argument = ‘taxon_name’]
- A specimen in Arctos must have at least one taxonomic
identification, but may have several identifications corresponding
to the history of annotation labels on a physical specimen.
- The current, primary identification has order of 1. Previous
identifications may be ordered 2, 3, etc., or may be numbered 0
for deprecated or incorrect identifications.
- All identifications are linked to a scientific name, but the Arctos
name itself does not include the author string. For some ALA
records however additional information about the author string used
in the determination was stored in either a verbatim
identification attribute (displayed in a box below the scientific
name), or using the Arctos A {string} structure (displayed as the
name in bold). Our goal is to eventually record the author strings
(where specified on the label) for all name usages.
- Metadata about a name comes from a classification (or taxonomy)
which includes the usual hierarchical classification for biological
names (kingdom, phylum, etc.). For ALA we prioritize the ‘UAM
Plants’ classification, derived from the World Flora Online
(WFO). To see the classification, click the ‘eye’ symbol under
the name.
- The WFO classification also includes synonymy details about the
name, for particular author strings. Because the Arctos name
does not specify the author string, it cannot directly be related
to another name via synonymy, but where the author string is known
(from the label image, verbatim identification field or ‘A
{string}’) the WFO classification can be consulted for the synonymy
details. The ‘synonymy’ field in the WFO classification can also be
searched (see above). This field contains, for each taxon, a
concatenation of the taxon’s own name, and names (with author
strings) of other taxa that are sunonyms fof the entry’s name; see
example of Spirea crenata.