2.0 Release of Taxonomic Name Resolution Service

The iPlant Collaborative is pleased to announce the latest release of the Taxonomic Name Resolution Service (TNRS; http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org).

TNRS is a web service for correcting and standardizing plant names. It has been developed in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis’ Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) working group, and others. The features new to TNRS 2.0 include:

• A "Parse names only" mode that returns separate components of the name submitted, without correction.

• An adjustable match score threshold.

•  An option to "Constrain best match by higher taxonomy". This option constrains the best match to fall within the higher taxon submitted, even if a better-scoring name in a different higher taxon is available. This prevents unwanted matching to most homonyms, as well as to unrelated taxa with spuriously similar names. To take maximum advantage of this feature, we recommend users submit the family name in front of the species name, separated with a space. To revert to the original matching algorithm based on spelling only, turn this option off in the "Change Settings" panel.

•  Improved matching of species submitted under non-APGIII families.
  For example, "Bombacaceae Ceiba pentandra" is correctly resolved to "Ceiba pentandra" in the Malvaceae,
  even with "Constrain best match by higher taxonomy" turned on.

• More warning flags for results requiring manual inspection.

• Support for user-submitted ID. You may now submit a numeric ID along with each name submitted by using the file upload utility, and checking the box "my file contains an identifier as first column". This enables easier and more reliable linking back to original data.

• Improved performance.

We invite you to learn more about TNRS 2.0 at http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org/about.html and to use it at http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org/ to standardize the plant taxonomic names across the datasets you use.

The next phase of TNRS development will focus on providing support for additional taxonomic sources and more performance enhancements.