[Taxacom] Some whimsical questions

[David Campbell]

One contender on number of synonyms is Anodonta cygnea:
http://mussel-project.uwsp.edu/fmuotwaolcb/validsp_105_syn.html
Eurasian freshwater mollusks (plus some from other regions) have
experienced two separate rounds of "name every difference" despite high
ecophenotypic variation, though the exact number of synonyms is uncertain
because there's also been excessive lumping and careful morphological and
molecular studies are needed to verify what's what.

The number of genus assignments may be strongly affected by whether
misspellings are counted separately.  I've located 27 different
misspellings of Lymnaea.

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 5:14 PM Robert Zuparko <rz at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Having experienced my share of problems with name changes, I was wondering
> what were the worse case scenarios (or if you're an optimist, what are the
> record-holders). Specifically,
>
> 1) Which species has undergone the most name changes?
>
> 2) Which species has the most junior synonyms?
>
> 3) Which species has been variously placed in the greatest number of
> different taxa (either family- or generic-level)?
>
> I assume the contenders are likely to have some of the following
> characteristics - described in the 1800's (when communication between
> researchers in different countries was problematic), widespread in the
> Holarctic (where the greatest variety of researchers are likely to have
> come across them), at least somewhat charismatic (increasing the amount of
> attention they might receive), and perhaps of economic importance (again
> increasing the chances of people running into them), which suggests to me
> that at least one of the species is likely to be among the Lepidoptera.
>
> Cheers,
> -Bob Zuparko
>
> Robert Zuparko
> Essig Museum of Entomology
> 1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, #4780
> University of California
> Berkeley, CA 94720-3112
> (510) 643-0804
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-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Associate Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
Box 7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017