dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) (08/29/90)
We (Matt McGranaghan, University of Hawaii and I) are working on problems of converting verbal locality descriptions from specimen labels in museums and herbaria into geocoded locations (coordinates). One of the many challenging aspects of this problem is dealing with uncertainty, including ambiguous (duplicate) locality names, mis-spellings by non-native collectors, and uncertainty with respect to current locations of historic collecting or observing localities. In this regard, I was interested in the following note which appeared in The Wilson Bulletin recently: Binford, Lawrence, C., 1990. "The location of the Mexican locality, Valle Real." Wilson Bulletin, 102(1), 150-154. Apparently, the place-name does not occur on recent maps, and yet many important bird specimens were collected there 1824-1829. Binford's article describes how he used various archival sources to track down the location (current position) of the locality (named place). After seeing this, I checked 14 years of "The Auk" (1977-date), and about 8 years each of "The Wilson Bulletin" and "The Condor" (4 issues per year each) and found no previous articles on the subject of pinning down the "location" of a "locality" for avian specimens or observations. I am posting this to request citations for any published articles of this sort. I also would be interested in any other comments on the problem, or interesting "mysteries" about important localities that have not been located. And not just for birds. David Mark dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu