[Taxacom] Some thoughts on the "independence" of nomenclature and taxonomy

[Stephen Thorpe]

An interesting case of "taxonomy vs. nomenclature" is heterotypic synonymy at the species level. To judge a case of such synonymy, one has to judge that one specimen (type specimen) is the same species as another specimen (the other type specimen). The two type specimens could be virtually identical (case A), or quite different (case B). If you think that taxonomy concerns only the circumscription of a species, then case A involves little or no taxonomic judgement, whereas case B requires a lot of such judgement. Case A is pretty objective (but still a case of subjective synonymy), whereas case B depends on "subjective" species circumscriptions. Taxonomy could be done without type based nomenclature, so synonymy would seem to have little to do with taxonomy, and yet it does! It seems impossible to disentangle type based nomenclature with taxonomy!

Stephen


--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 21/4/15, Nico Franz <nico.franz at asu.edu> wrote:

 Subject: [Taxacom] Some thoughts on the "independence" of nomenclature and	taxonomy
 To: "TAXACOM" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Tuesday, 21 April, 2015, 6:38 PM
 
 No more than a quickly assembled
 opinion post. Maybe worth reading to some.
 
 http://taxonbytes.org/thoughts-taxonomically-binding-biological-nomenclature/
 
 Cheers, Nico
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