[Taxacom] Who should get the kudos?

[Doug Yanega]

On 1/3/19 9:40 AM, blaberus1 wrote:
> Perhaps I could ask: does anyone consider a collector to be the discoverer
> of a species if the collector did not realise it was new to science? The
> people I mentioned believe that it was Ali not Wallace who discovered
> Semioptera wallacii.

Some taxonomists are happy to name new species after the collector, even 
in cases where the collector has no idea that they've had a species 
named after them, let alone knowing anything about the species in question.

As a data point, I have had 11 species named after me, only 5 of which 
are things I knew (or suspected) were new taxa, and informed the 
describer of my conclusion. I was the collector of 5 of the remaining 6 
taxa. So, half of them were because I discovered that it was new, and 
half were simply because I discovered it (without realizing it was new).

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