[Taxacom] Validity of species/subspecies

[Doug Yanega]

On 4/10/14 6:59 AM, David Campbell wrote:
> Yes, for animals U. antiqua would be the nomenclaturally correct name,
> unless it happens to be a junior homonym or otherwise invalid.  Names that
> were proposed as subspecies (and older names that were not clearly proposed
> to be something lower than a subspecies) are regarded as species-level
> names and have priority over later-proposed names at the species or
> subspecies rank.  Similarly, a name originally proposed as a subgenus has
> priority over a later name proposed as a genus.
All correct.
> As a more complex situation,  I have what seems to be a case where an early
> author decided that a proposed new genus and species really belonged in an
> existing genus and so demoted the genus name to a species name, dropping
> the original species.  Does this constitute creating a new species name?
> Does anyone have examples of this to show that it was occasionally
> practiced?
>
It might have been done, but it isn't Code-compliant. I hope there are 
mercifully few examples, since it's terrible. It is, as you note, 
effectively proposing an entirely novel epithet, and it would therefore 
be an objective junior synonym of the original name, and invalid unless 
the original name is a junior secondary homonym.

Peace,

-- 
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)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82