[Taxacom] Validity of species/subspecies

[David Campbell]

It may be worth adding that as "antiqua" has some popularity as an epithet
and as some workers historically were not careful about avoiding homonymy
for subspecific names, checking for homonyms is important.

The particular situation I'm looking at where a genus seems to have been
demoted into a species epithet comes from Forbes and Spratt (1846) and
Forbes (1847).  *Adelina elegans* Cantraine is apparently redesignated *Limneus
Adelina. *The text clearly asserts that this is the same as Cantraine's
species, but the name *Limneus Adelina* appears several times and is
accompanied by an illustration.  There is no formal description of the
species - having an illustration would suffice to validate a name from
1847, but a description might have clarified what Forbes was thinking in
using the name.  As an added complication, the type locality for
Cantraine's material was unknown but thought to be Italy; Forbes had
material from Turkey.  Mienis recently suggested that Cantraine's material
may have come from Rhodes.  This got some discussion on taxacom a little
while back.  Cantraine's genus is also a homonym, but there is a
replacement name and a possible subjective synonym.


Forbes, E. and T. A. B. Spratt. 1846. On the Geology of Lycia. Quarterly
Journal of the Geological Society 1846 volume 2: 8-11.

Forbes, E. 1847. On the geology of Lycia and its borders. Ch. XIV in
Spratt, T. A. B. and Forbes, E. Travels in Lycia, Milyas, and the
Cibyratis, vol. II. John Van Voorst, London. p. 164-209.



On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
>
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-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Assistant Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
Box 7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017