[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

Fri Aug 26 07:40:11 CDT 2016

Thanks for noting the error Paul. You are correct that it is indeed easy to find these errors but the challenge is to find that illusive eighth day in the week which will provide the time to carry out the corrections. I am aware of similar errors but ... w.r.t. Species Fungorum, one error out of 130,000+ currently recognized species is quite a good accuracy rate and certainly not in the category of 'disseminates a lot of nonsense'.

Regards,

Paul

________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Paul van Rijckevorsel <dipteryx at freeler.nl>
Sent: 26 August 2016 13:17
To: taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

No doubt there are many such cases. This makes me very
uneasy whenever somebody tries to pass off the Catalogue
of Life as a source of "vetted names". This "vetting" does
not extend even to eliminating obvious homonyms (and the
combinations with these), which should be easy enough.

For example, the Catalogue of Life has two Romanoa's,
one plant and one fungus, each with one species.
In this case it is very easy to look in the Index Fungorum,
where the fungal Romanoa is marked as being a later
homonym and illegitimate (for some reason, IF has not
marked the combination Romanoa terricola as
"unavailable for use" and copied it into Species fungorum).
It cannot be all that hard to make a list of such cases
(names that cannot be used for a taxon) and eliminate
them from each upload to the Catalogue of Life. This would
still leave the cases that are more difficult to detect, but it
would show that the Catalogue of Life is at least trying.
The way it is now, it just disseminates a lot of nonsense,
apparently completely uncaring.

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Rees" <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>
To: "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com>
Cc: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

> Update RE John's request...
>
> On 22 August 2016 John Grehan wrote:
>
> ----------------
> one particularly
> problematic example was a genus name Achladaeus that was inserted for a
> series of species under another well established name (Aenetus), but
> Achladaeus was already known to be a nomen nudum and it was recorded as
> such on the original files of the NHM. When I contacted NHM I was told
> that
> there were no resources for making the correction at the time (a few years
> back), but they have now made that correction but the genus is still
> presented as valid in IRMNG. However, that could be something for me to
> rectify.
> -----------------
>
> Well, John sent me a list of the affected taxa and I have made the
> relevant
> changes in IRMNG on his behalf (not something I plan to do all the time,
> but worth doing as an exercise). There were quite a few species affected,
> new names to enter, etc. etc.
>
> If interested, you can see the revised entry for Achladaeus here:
>  http://www.irmng.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1018983
>
> The revised one for Aenetus here:
>  http://www.irmng.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1280671
>
> And the auto-generated list of changes arising from his supplied list
> here:
>  http://www.irmng.org/aphia.php?p=sourcedetails&id=193998
>
> OK, quite a bit of work to affect the requested changes, but useful (in my
> mind at least) to demonstrate:
>
> (a) the benefit of entering them in this manner into an internally-self
> organising system i.e. database-driven site (each data item entered only
> once, used many times elsewhere in the system as required) as opposed to
> just a manually maintained text file or web page,
>
> (b) the potential for data re-use (either manual or automated), since
> IRMNG
> data is periodically exported to other systems as well as being visible to
> human readers via the web, and
>
> (c) hopefully some longevity for the data (since it lives on a system
> which
> hopefully will be maintained into the future, and not by me). In addition,
> new data or corrections can potentially be maintained in the future by
> others with associated "custodian" privileges (i.e. all the load need not
> fall on just one person).
>
> Interesting exercise (although it makes me glad I stick to editing genera
> in the main - around 10 times fewer!!)
>
> Regards - Tony
>
> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
> https://about.me/TonyRees
>
> On 22 August 2016 at 04:50, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks to everyone for all the kind and thoughtful feedback. And also for
>> the E. fahringeri entry to ZooBank. Looks like there is no obvious answer
>> for me at this time as to the best choice - at least for my purposes.
>> uBio
>> had a good format with respect to seeing what was listed already (but I
>> was
>> unable to contact the administrator). ZooBank does not show the full
>> content for what is listed already so its a bit tricky in that respect
>> (or
>> I missed a step) - and it appears to be lacking a huge amount of names
>> for
>> my group - I tried a well established genus Endoclita first designated in
>> 1874 and got nothing.
>>
>> And of course there are other layers of complexity such as generic
>> designations which, in my group, underwent a  reversal with a checklist
>> in
>> 2000 downgrading a bunch of genera under one name (and as a checklist
>> there
>> was no justification) and then reinstatement (with justification) of
>> those
>> names in 2012. IRMNG has a promising layout as I can see full species
>> lists
>> and looks attractive from that aspect, although very much out of date due
>> to its reliance on the out of date NHM database - one particularly
>> problematic example was a genus name Achladaeus that was inserted for a
>> series of species under another well established name (Aenetus), but
>> Achladaeus was already known to be a nomen nudum and it was recorded as
>> such on the original files of the NHM. When I contacted NHM I was told
>> that
>> there were no resources for making the correction at the time (a few
>> years
>> back), but they have now made that correction but the genus is still
>> presented as valid in IRMNG. However, that could be something for me to
>> rectify. At the time of the original entry of Achladaeus it was
>> interesting
>> to see how the name spread like wildfire through all sorts of web sites.
>> Made for real confusion.
>>
>> I will think on this further, but at this time IRMNG seems to have a
>> layout
>> or structure that is most easily accessible for me (so emphasis on this
>> as
>> a personal perspective with respect to my strengths and weakness)  to
>> understand what is present or not. Again, no criticism implied above for
>> any databases as its a truly massive challenge and I am just a taxonomic
>> hobbyist for a small, obscure group, and without intensive taxonomic
>> database skills.
>>
>> John Grehan
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