Morphbank Terms and Definitions

ABCD: Stands for Access to Biological Collection Data. A naming schema that may be used by Morphbank in future versions.
Administrator: There are very few individuals given administrator privileges. An administrator has complete access to all data and in addition can add/modify and/delete news, base or master tables. Only someone with administrative privileges can add new users and create groups for which there is no associated taxon. Those with administrative privileges have all rights in all groups and are responsible for managing the entire Morphbank system.
Angle: In Views section, the location of the camera with respect to the specimen for photographing
Basis of record: At the time of collection, the specimen was categorized as an observation, a living organization, a specimen, a germplasm/seed
Browse: Traverse the database tree by taxon hierarchy, alphabetical taxon name, image, view, specimen, locality, collection or publication.
Collection name: Name given to a collection by the collection's creator
Collections: Groups of specimen images or any objects in Morphbank assembled from the Morphbank database by Morphbank members for the purpose of manipulating, viewing, or storing for future use.
Character Collection: A kind of Morphbank collection that contains tools to define a character and its states.
Collector name: Person(s) who collected the specimen that is referenced in Morphbank. (Or photographed - if the Object is an Observation captured by still image or video)
Contributor: Person having the authority to release the images for publication into morphbank.
Coordinator: Associated with roles within a group, a coordinator has the same privileges as Lead Scientist and each group may only have one Coordinator. In order to be assigned a Group Coordinator, you must have lead scientist privileges for that group or have been assigned by the Morphbank administration. A coordinator can add and remove members from the group, change a user's role, as well as request spin-off groups to be developed with assigned coordinators. The coordinator can appoint another lead scientist in the group as a coordinator. Coordinators have access to the group module and members who fall in the taxonomic range assigned to the group.
Darwin Core: The Darwin Core (sometimes abbreviated as DwC) is a standard set of field definitions designed to facilitate collection, integration and exchange of natural history specimen information. Morphbank uses many of the Darwin Core-defined fields.
Date collected: The date the specimen was collected
Delivered uploading: Morphbank offers a service called delivered uploading. We provide an already prepared Excel Data Entry Workbook and the corresponding user's manual. The contributors can deliver to Morphbank a CD or DVD containing images and an Excel^© Data Entry Workbook populated with information.
Determination: The taxonomic category of the specimen
Developmental stage: Growth phase of specimen
Download: The user receives data from a remote computer.
External links: References the ability of the Morphbank database to store URL website links associated morphbank objects.
Fair Use Web Site: The images in Morphbank that are not password protected can be used for private, education, research or other non-commercial purposes for free, provided that the source and the copyright holder are cited.
Form: Choose a description of the morphotype of the specimen (emergent, parthenogenetic, queen, worker,...). Use "Indeterminate" if you do not wish to apply a specific morphotype designation to the specimen. In taxonomy, a morphotype is a specimen chosen to illustrate a morphological variation within a species population.
ftp, smtp: File Transfer Protocol (used for transferring files over the internet), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (used for transferring email from one server to another)
Group id, User id, Specimen id, View id, Locality id, Image id, Publication id, Annotation id: Morphbank-issued unique identifying numbers
Groups: Groups are comprised of users of the Morphbank system that share a common interest in a specific taxonomic area.
Guest: user role that has read only access privilege in the group where they have the "Guest" role.
GUI: "Pronounced gooie" - stands for globally unique identifier (or graphical user interface).
GUID: "Pronounced goo id" - stands for globally unique identifier.
Imaging: Technique used to capture photo of specimen such as auto montage, transmitted light; bright field, etc.
ITIS: Integrated Taxonomic Information System: database maintained by the US Department of Agriculture and used by Morphbank as the main taxonomic name server.
Jpg (jpeg), .tif (tiff): Joint Photographic Experts Group (pronounced jaypeg), tagged image file format -- Morphbank-accepted file formats for images.
Lead Scientist: Same privileges as scientist but on all objects owned by the group to which the user belongs. A lead scientist can also be a coordinator or group manager and therefore manage users and their permissions in a group. For now, a lead scientist sends a request to the Morphbank team for creation of a group.
Locality: Detailed information about where a specimen was collected or observed.
Login: Enter in a Morphbank issued user id and password for the purpose of adding /modifying or viewing restricted data.
LSID: Life Science Identifiers -- the GUID widely used identification scheme for the Life Science domain.
Modified Darwin Core Standard: A naming standard currently used by Morphbank.
Morphbank: Open web repository of images serving the biological research community.
Morphbank Blog: Keep up-to-date with the latest happenings at Morphbank and contribute your input.
My Manager: Morphbank's newest (beta) user-interface giving users easy access to and control over their objects in Morphbank.
NCBI accession numbers: National Center for Biotechnology Information accession numbers
Object: Referring to an image, specimen, locality, collection, annotation, etc.
OTU: Operational Taxonomic Units are representations of the organisms being compared. Units might include specimen(s) or taxon name(s).
Primary TSN: Morphbank issued taxonomic serial number identifies the user's specific area of expertise.
Privilege TSN: Morphbank-issued taxonomic serial number representing the highest Taxonomic Name for which a Morphbank member has expertise. It is primarily used in identifying which groups for which they may have membership.
Publication: Referring to any publication entered into the Morphbank system that may be related to other objects in Morphbank such as an image, specimen, locality, collection, taxon name etc.
Published: Referring to Morphbank related objects such as an image, specimen, locality, collection, etc. When an object is released in Morphbank for worldwide viewing.
Record: Referring to an image, specimen, locality, collection, annotation, etc. Any Morphbank object.
Roles: Categories of users within Morphbank groups such as guest, scientist, lead scientist, coordinator, and administrator. Roles are used to determined privileges that a user has within a Morphbank group.
Scientist: User role that has the authorization to add/modify/delete Specimen, Image, View, and Locality as well as annotate released images within their taxon or images not released and owned by the group they belong to.
Search: Find specific data through queries using keywords or id numbers
Secondary TSN: Morphbank-issued taxonomic serial number representing the area in which the user has an alternate area of expert knowledge.
Sex: Gender of specimen
Sort: Arrange or order groups of information with a common interest into a sequence.
Specimen part: Pertains to a view that contains a portion of a specimen
Stage: The Developmental Stage, i.e., the age class, reproductive stage, or life stage of the biological individual referred to by the record. Examples: "juvenile", "adult", "nymph", the developmental growth phase of a specimen.
Submit: Upload data to a remote computer. (E.g. clicking the "submit" button on the Add Image screen will upload the image to the Morphbank database.
Submitter: Person entering the data into Morphbank (may be the same person as the contributor).
Tab or comma-delimited text files: ASCII data files where the fields are separated by a tab or comma character. Used for upload of data into Morphbank.
Taxon: Scientific name of the specimen
Tools: Header Menu button in Morphbank directing the user to: Submit, My Colletions, My Manager, Select Group, Account settings, and Log Out.
Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN): The ID number of a specific taxon in the ITIS database.
(Temporary) Morphbank Number: A sometimes temporary Taxonomic identification number assigned by Morphbank to a taxon name added to Morphbank. These numbers always begin with 999. Some of these names will eventually be in ITIS and the Morphbank 999...number will be changed to the ITIS TSN assigned to the name. Otherwise the 999 number is permanent.
TWiki: A structured Wiki site. One is currently used by Morphbank developers to gather information about future version requirements.
Type Status: A code indicating a particular kind of specimen. Morphbank uses nomenclatural types as defined by ICBN and the ICZN.
Upload: The user sends data to a remote computer.
View: A view specifies the criteria under which a photograph was taken. Specific details are included here about: what is in a given image (specimen part), the orientation of the camera with respect to the object being imaged (view angle), preparation of the specimen for imaging (imaging preparation technique) as well as the sex, form and life stage of the specimen in the image.
Wiki: A type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration (defined from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

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