A major gap in the biodiversity knowledge graph is a connection between taxonomic names and the taxonomic literature. While both names and publications often have persistent identifiers (PIDs), such as Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) or Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), LSIDs for names are rarely linked to DOIs for publications. This article describes efforts to make those connections across three large taxonomic databases: Index Fungorum, International Plant Names Index (IPNI) and the Index of Organism Names (ION). Over a million names have been matched to DOIs or other persistent identifiers for taxonomic publications. This represents approximately 36% of names for which publication data are available. The mappings between LSIDs and publication PIDs are made available through ChecklistBank. Applications of this mapping are discussed, including a web app to locate the citation of a taxonomic name and a knowledge graph that uses data on researcher ORCID ids to connect taxonomic names and publications to authors of those names.

BACKGROUND: The scientific names of plants and animals play a major role in Life Sciences as information is indexed, integrated, and searched using scientific names. The main problem with names is their ambiguous nature, because more than one name may point to the same taxon and multiple taxa may share the same name. In addition, scientific names change over time, which makes them open to various interpretations. Applying machine-understandable semantics to these names enables efficient processing of biological content in information systems. The first step is to use unique persistent identifiers instead of name strings when referring to taxa. The most commonly used identifiers are Life Science Identifiers (LSID), which are traditionally used in relational databases, and more recently HTTP URIs, which are applied on the Semantic Web by Linked Data applications.
RESULTS: We introduce two models for expressing taxonomic information in the form of species checklists. First, we show how species checklists are presented in a relational database system using LSIDs. Then, in order to gain a more detailed representation of taxonomic information, we introduce meta-ontology TaxMeOn to model the same content as Semantic Web ontologies where taxa are identified using HTTP URIs. We also explore how changes in scientific names can be managed over time.
CONCLUSIONS: The use of HTTP URIs is preferable for presenting the taxonomic information of species checklists. An HTTP URI identifies a taxon and operates as a web address from which additional information about the taxon can be located, unlike LSID. This enables the integration of biological data from different sources on the web using Linked Data principles and prevents the formation of information silos. The Linked Data approach allows a user to assemble information and evaluate the complexity of taxonomical data based on conflicting views of taxonomic classifications. Using HTTP URIs and Semantic Web technologies also facilitate the representation of the semantics of biological data, and in this way, the creation of more \"intelligent\" biological applications and services.

Australian stiletto flies of the sister-genera Acupalpa Kröber, 1912 and Pipinnipons Winterton, 2001 (Diptera: Therevidae: Agapophytinae) are revised. Twelve new species of Acupalpa are described, while Acupalpa imitans (White, 1915), comb. n. is transferred from Pipinnipons and Acupalpa albimanis (Kröber, 1914), comb. n. is transferred from Ectinorhynchus Macquart as a senior synonym of Acupalpa pollinosa Mann. The total number of species of Acupalpa is therefore increased to 19: Acupalpa albimanis (Kröber), comb. n., Acupalpa albitarsa Mann, Acupalpa bohartisp. n., Acupalpa divisa (Walker), Acupalpa dolichorhynchasp. n., Acupalpa glossasp. n., Acupalpa imitans (White), comb. n., Acupalpa irwini Winterton, Acupalpa melanophaeossp. n.,Acupalpa miaboolyasp. n., Acupalpa minutasp. n., Acupalpa minutoidessp. n., Acupalpa notomelassp. n., Acupalpa novayamarnasp. n., Acupalpa rostrata Kröber, Acupalpa semirufa Mann, Acupalpa westralicasp. n., Acupalpa yalgoosp. n. and Acupalpa yanchepsp. n. Three new species of Pipinnipons are described, increasing the total number of species to five: Pipinnipons chauncyvallissp. n., Pipinnipons fascipennis (Kröber), Pipinnipons kampmeieraesp. n., Pipinnipons kroeberi Winterton, and P. sphecodasp. n.Pipinnipons and Acupalpa are rediagnosed in light of the new species presented herein and revised keys to species are included. A dichotomous key to genera of Australasian Therevidae is included. As an empirical example of cybertaxonomy, taxonomic descriptions were composed using a character matrix developed in Lucid Builder (in Structured Descriptive Data (SDD) format) to generate natural language descriptions supplemented by online specimen and image databases. Web resources are provided throughout the document including: a) links to high resolution colour images of all species on Morphbank, b) registration of authors, publications, taxon names and other nomenclatural acts in Zoobank, with assignment of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) for each, c) links to Genbank accession records for DNA sequences, and d) assignment of LSIDs to specimen records with links to respective records in an online Therevidae specimen database.