Wikidata:Property proposal/is an individual of a taxon

is an individual of a taxon

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Natural science

   Done: individual of taxon (P10241) (Talk and documentation)

Description	individual (animal, plant) which is classified as a certain taxon
Data type	Item
Domain	items should be P31/P279* of organisms known by a particular common name (Q55983715) or maybe individual organism (Q110224119).
Allowed values	values should be P31/P279* of taxon (Q16521).
Example 1	Moja (Q12038481) → western lowland gorilla (Q876500)
Example 2	Borovice u Žibřidic (Q26789614) → Pinus sylvestris (Q133128)
Example 3	Methuselah (Q590039) → Pinus longaeva (Q1116374)
Planned use	corrections in the domain of protected trees in the Czech Republic, maybe some other corrections of things that currently trigger property constraints
See also	instance of (P31): that class of which this subject is a particular example and member; different from P279 (subclass of); for example: K2 is an instance of mountain; volcano is a subclass of mountain (and an instance of volcanic landform) parent taxon (P171): closest parent taxon of the taxon in question animal breed (P4743): subject item belongs to a specific group of domestic animals, generally given by association
Wikidata project	Wikidata:WikiProject Taxonomy

Motivation

I recently discussed this at Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2021/12#Linking_specific_plant/animal_individuals_to_their_species with no opposition, but really not a lot of feed-back either. I am proposing to solve this long-standing problem using a new property. Currently there is considerable chaos in marking taxonomic identity of individuals:

• Moja (Q12038481) has instance of (P31) : western lowland gorilla (Q876500), which has subclass of (P279) : animal (Q729). Sounds straightforward but are really all animal taxa supposed to be subclass of (P279) : animal (Q729)?
• Borovice u Žibřidic (Q26789614) has instance of (P31) : Pinus sylvestris (Q133128) but that isn't subclass of anything, it's just a taxon item, and it triggers a constraint warning. What would be a proper step there?
• Sunny (Q14744025) has instance of (P31) : Portuguese water dog (Q38559) which has subclass of (P279) : dog (Q144), which is however not a taxon item at all and is not linked to Canis familiaris (Q20717272) or Canis lupus familiaris (Q26972265)
• Methuselah (Q590039) isn't linked to Pinus longaeva (Q1116374) at all as far as I can see.

Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 13:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject Taxonomy has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 13:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support --Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 13:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment A couple of questions:
  • Is is applicable to humans? I imagine not, so perhaps clarify.
  • Why not just use instance of? I really support the use of P31 for that. No problem with multiple P31 statements. TiagoLubiana (talk) 17:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment A couple of answers:
  • "should all animal taxa be subclass of (P279) : animal (Q729)?" --> yes, that is the meaning of subclass of. See this article for clarifications.
  • " Pinus sylvestris (Q133128) isn't a subclass of anything," --> It has a parent taxon (P171), which is a subproperty of (P1647) subclass of (P279), so, at least in theory it does have a superclass, though implicit.
  • Yes, common names x species are a mess. In my opinion, when the group is an exact match of a taxon, they should be merged. One may argue, though, that some dogs are not Canis familiaris, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wild_dog. TiagoLubiana (talk) 17:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
    • @TiagoLubiana: P31 would be a solution and it is true that parent taxon (P171) is really sort of like subclass of (P279). But an item that isn't explicitly subclass of anything cannot currently be used as a value in P31. See how it looks in Borovice u Žibřidic (Q26789614) - it triggers a property constraint violation (value-requires-statement constraint (Q21510864)). I am not sure if there's concensus that we should just ignore this violation and use taxa as values in P31 as you suggest. I am interested to see what others think of this. Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 20:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
      • @Vojtěch Dostál: the property constraint violation is a bug, as parent taxon is formally a type of subclass of (see Property:P171#P171$6fb788c6-4e81-8398-3a1a-68f8b98a8943). Subproperties are undermodelled (briefly discussed at Wikidata:Property proposal/term in higher taxon with @ArthurPSmith:). I am also interested in see the general thoughts on that. Thanks, TiagoLubiana (talk) 11:08, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
•  Support except for humans. --- Jura 12:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
• @Vojtěch Dostál, TiagoLubiana, ArthurPSmith, Jura1: WikiProject Taxonomy has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead.  Done as individual of taxon (P10241). UWashPrincipalCataloger (talk) 23:22, 5 January 2022 (UTC)