[Nhcoll-l] difficult locality label

[Jan Beccaloni]

HI Doug,

I feel your pain, particularly when I come upon labels which only say 'India'..........

Jan

Janet Beccaloni MA, BA Hons.
Senior Curator
Chelicerata (Arachnida, Xiphosura, Pycnogonida), Myriapoda, Tardigrada & Onychophora
Division of Invertebrates
Department of Life Sciences
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 5BD
0207 942 5309


From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega
Sent: 15 February 2022 01:03
To: nhcoll <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] difficult locality label


While curating today, I came across a fair-sized series of specimens with one of those locality labels that make you pull out your hair. It typifies most of the worst of this sort of label, in its combination of useless vagueness (the only recognizable place name is the country) and hopeless specificity (it gives the name of a privately-held property, rather than a town or some other place name that would appear on a map).

To wit:

ZAMBIA

"Amorotis Farm"

15.ii.1972, S.C. Cruickshank

Host: on citrus

Don't bother Googling; either the farm name is badly misspelled, or it is no longer extant, and has never been recorded in a document that is on the web. There is also a Mr. S.A. Cruickshank who works with farmers in Zambia, but that's a different person entirely.

It's not crucial for us to know more precisely (for genetic work, just Zambia is probably sufficient), but it seems a shame to have the potential to know exactly where these specimens are from but be compelled to exclude them from georeferencing (a point with an error radius of 700 kilometers is really more likely to confuse people than be helpful, as so few people check error radii when consulting online records).

A disproportionate number of the specimen records of this general nature in our collection are from ranches or farms, from many different countries, and even within the US. They are, not surprisingly, almost impossible to track down once they change hands or go defunct (e.g. "6 mi W Stanton Ranch HQ, Santa Cruz Island", which is not helpful when the ranch was a few miles in diameter and the few buildings were razed or repurposed decades ago), and not always trivial to locate even if still operating.

Asking here is a long shot, but I'd also be curious as to any tricks people might know for this type of locality (ranches and farms), even if it doesn't solve this particular case. I do know, and make frequent use of, the Fuzzy Gazetteer (http://isodp.hof-university.de/fuzzyg/query/), but that's more useful for mistranscriptions or bad handwritten labels. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a very helpful tool.

Thanks,

--

Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum

Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega

phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)

             https://uk01.l.antigena.com/l/fjizo8nVfZviouqi4CXJjC6Cii_13MBd5NC_R3KlbaMvcey-jsLP_~jc1lyIvHX4Pz9n4DgTe2sZ_9FyHq7DcYPN~dLG3i8fmGn1I_52NksHk3eAbndvHAsIrMKkvzwXbd2Z6~woXj-~jzVj-kj

  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness

        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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