Seed samples as LivingSpecimen, MaterialSample, and/or Organism

[dagendresen]

@dagendresen : Thanks for the detailed use case! I've never considered a use case like this before, so I found it helpful to see how well my own thinking of these various entities/classes work when modelling a novel (to me) situation as you describe.

I think I understand your description to involve several generations of the plants -- correct? In other words, Material (1) seeds from wild/on-farm are collected at Event (Location+Time) 1. Collectively, the seeds represent an instance of "Organism" (which accommodates more than one individual, when appropriate), and their presence at the collection Event constitutes an Occurrence. I'll call these Organism1, Event1 and Occurrence1.

If I understand correctly, these same seeds are moved to a different location at a different time at (2), which means the same Organism1 intersects with a new Event (Location+Time; Event2), and hence yields Occurrence2. Correct?

This next step is where I'm a bit unclear. Do I correctly interpret this part:

collected seed material is multiplied through seed multiplication ex situ (grown on lands at agricultural field stations and new more numerous seeds harvested) and included in a seedbank

...to mean that the originally collected seeds (Organism1) are germinated and grown and bear new seeds of their own, and those new seeds are then harvested for distribution to a seedbank? If so then this second generation of seeds represent a new instance of Organism (Organism2), and the same place but different time (Event3), and hence represent a new Occurrence3? We could also document the original (now grown) Organism1 at Event3 as representing Occurrence4.

Your step 3 seems to be a situation where Organism2 is now relocated again (other parties/seedbanks), at a new Location+Time (Events), and new Occurrences accordingly. Each new generation represents a new Organism, and each new documeted instance of the Organism at Location+Time (Event) constitutes a new Occurrence.

It seems to me that the key piece of information you need to track is the pedigree of the Organisms. I'm sure Zoos with breeding programs and in-situ evolutionary/ecological studies need to track this same kind of information, and there are at least two ways to do that in DwC: either in a simple way via dwc:associatedOrganisms, or in a more structured way using dwc:ResourceRelationship, with a value of dwc:relationshipOfResource something like "mother of" (as given in the example here).

The other issue raised by your use case is the fuzzy boundary between dwc:Organism and dwc:MaterialSample. I still wrestle with that, and I honestly haven't figured out yet how to draw that line, other than "alive" vs. "dead". I'm not sure if that question is part of this Issue, or needs to be explored in a new Issue.

Originally posted by @deepreef in #302 (comment)

[dagendresen]

Sorry - Did not intend to open this issue, wanted only to refer to it here: tdwg/material-sample#4 (comment)