Documentation: Material group or Organism (pack)

[MortenHofft]

It might be nice with clearer guidelines about when something is a group vs an organism, since the dwc example referenced for organisms also includes groups of animals, e.g. a pack of wolves. Perhaps it is clear when you sit with the data, but I think I would appreciate an example of where to draw the line

[tucotuco]

I think the line is pretty easy with Organism. A wolf pack in which there are no individually identified members is just an Organism with organismScope='pack'. There is no reason to make a MaterialGroup without the group having members. In the case where there is a pack and some individuals are identified, I think I would still always keep it in the context of an Organism - one for the wolf pack, one for each identified wolf, and an EntityRelationship between them. This would be robust against the community deciding not to model Organisms as MaterialEntities.

But then what are the characteristics of a MaterialGroup and when to use it. I think the simple answer is, "Whenever Organism can't work." Thus, MaterialGroup would work for a big catch in a trawl and for subsets of that catch divided by characteristics that are not characteristics of an Organism with scope larger than an individual, such as sex, lifeStage, reproductiveCondition, etc.

Does that help?