[Taxacom] Correct authorship for the genus Aotus (Mammalia)?

[Tony Rees]

Dear all,

After some additional offline discussion with Rod, Neal and Francisco, I
have come to the following position (for now...) and added it as a
"taxonomic note" to the relevant records in my database - for the records
Aotus Illiger, Aotus Humboldt and Aotes Humboldt... hopefully this is the
best summary that we can do, unless of course there is anything else to
consider!

"The nomenclatural status of "Aotus" is confused in the original
publications and in subsequent literature. Humboldt, 1812 (dated 1811 on
the cover and frequently cited thus) used "Aotes", apparently a French
plural version of the name, on p. 306 of his "Recueil d'observations de
zoologie et d'anatomie comparée...", and "Aotus" on p. 358, crediting the
name to Illiger; Illiger in turn (1811) credits the name to Humboldt,
presumably in anticipation of the later work. An earlier edition of
Humboldt's account had appeared in 1809 (dated 1805 on the cover) but the
name does appear there. In subsequent literature, Nomenclator Zoologicus
treats Humboldt's "Aotes" (with year given as 1811) as the validly
published instance, with "Aotus" an orthographic variant; McKenna & Bell,
1997, give the correct name as Aotus Humboldt, 1811; and Wilson & Reeder,
2005 give the name as Aotus Illiger, 1811, which appears to be correct, in
which case Aotus Humboldt, 1812 ("1811") becomes a later usage, and Aotes
Humboldt, 1812 ("1811") a non-name (French plural vernacular name), both
the latter treated as unaccepted in IRMNG."

Regards - Tony


On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 at 06:31, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Tony,
>
> I too am confused, I suspect Neal might know more.
>
> Is it possible that these “editions” are conflating "Recueil
> d'observations de zoologie” with "Relation historique” (see Neal’s account
> http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/dating/Evenhuis1997p381.pdf ) and also
> Gallica https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k97281w ?
>
> Regards,
>
> Rod
>
>
> On 2 Jun 2021, at 20:54, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Neal and Rod for responding thus far.
>
> So, thanks to Rod's link on Wikidata, we can see the Humboldt record here
> (p. 358), cited as Aotus Illiger:
> https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/zoom/7538221 . His previous use of
> "Aotes", considered the correct version in Nomenclator Zoologicus, appears
> earlier, on p. 307 here: https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/zoom/7538179,
> however this looks to me like a plural (and also informal) treatment,
> although I could be wrong...
>
> This is in the edition with "1811" on the title page, actually 1812
> according to the work previously cited by Neal i.e. Macgillavry (1930),
> from which it appears to be Edition 2 of Humboldt's account (actually, by
> Humboldt & Bonpland). There seems to be an Edition 1 of the same work with
> the printed date 1805, actual dates 1805-1809, however I do not know if the
> name(s) appeared there as well. If they did, authorship for "Aotus" should
> presumably Humboldt, 1809, but ideally one should confirm this with a view
> of the original; otherwise, Humboldt's name (with date corrected to 1812)
> would be a later usage of Illiger's name from 1811, if that date is correct
> (perhaps confirmed by Humboldt's ascription of the name to Illiger).
>
> So thus far I am still a bit confused: so far we have seen Illiger's 1811
> work, with the name ascribed to Humboldt, and Humbold's 1812 ("1811") work,
> in the second edition, with the name ascribed to Illiger; and both Wilson &
> Reeder (MSW3, 2005) and McKenna & Bell (1997) favour different authorities
> for this genus - see my initial message for details.
>
> Rod or other, if you can locate Edition 1 of Humboldt & Bonpland's work,
> we can see if the name "Aotus" appears there, maybe? If it does not, that
> might explain why Humboldt later ascribed the name to Illiger, which would
> otherwise make little sense...
>
> Onwards and upwards - Tony
>
>
> On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 at 17:16, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Neal & Tony,
>>
>> Interesting. I’ve added that article ("Bibliographische bijdrage II”) to
>> BioStor and Wikidata, and added a few more links to the Wikidata item for
>> "Recueil d'observations de zoologie”
>> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q56916628 including links to a couple of
>> scanned versions in libraries other than BHL (which lacks volume 1). It
>> would be nice to figure out a clean way to add all the publication date
>> info to this item (and indeed to taxonomic works more generally). The
>> Wikidata model allows for detailed referencing, so we could capture the
>> dates and give credit to those who did the work in establishing them.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rod
>>
>>
>> On 2 Jun 2021, at 06:50, Neal Evenhuis <neale at bishopmuseum.org> wrote:
>>
>> Actually, Sherborn did not have the last word on those dates. Macgillavry
>> (1930) corrected many of Sherborn's dates and clarified the two editions,
>> which overlapped dates of publication. His article on the dating of this
>> work is here;
>> https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/264426#page/247/mode/1up
>>
>> It looks like from this that the date is 1809 and not 1811 or 1812 for
>> livraison 5/6 that contained p. 306, which is what I followed (along with
>> ms notes by Sherborn I used) in my dating of the work in my LTD (1997, p.
>> 381):
>> https://tinyurl.com/3s6tu293
>>
>> Authorship should be Humboldt for new taxa in Vol. I of the "Recueil
>> d'observations".
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Neal L. Evenhuis
>> Senior Curator of Entomology
>> Bishop Museum
>> Honolulu, Hawaii  96817-2704, USA
>>
>> On 6/1/21, 6:45 PM, "Taxacom on behalf of Roderic Page via Taxacom" <
>> taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of
>> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:
>>
>>    There is information on publications dates here:
>> https://doi.org/10.1080/00222939908678146 (better quality scan in BHL
>> https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16026148 ).
>>
>>    If I read Sherborn’s article correctly, Humbolt’s use of the name
>> (credited by him to Illiger) is dated 1812.
>>
>>    Regards,
>>
>>    Rod
>>
>>
>>
>