Taxacom: species name vs specific epithet

[Evangelos Vlachos]

And which "rank-free" taxonomy is that? Because the one that officially
claims to be "rank-free" has more obligatory ranks than the ICZN. I would
love to see a real example of a rank-free taxonomy if there is one.

The problem with Lanham's proposal is that author and date do not form part
of the name, are just shortened bibliographic citations. They are there to
help you find the evidence to establish availability and then validity. We
should be able to read species names without having them accompanied by the
annoying information of author names and dates.

But it is now clear that "new" systems of "nomenclature" that are being
created pay more attention to author names than to the taxon names
themselves, while putting the starting date to the future. No wonder why
they are popular among the new generation of taxonomists...

The whole problem stems from the necessity to simplify things and
communicate taxonomy with a single word. But that was never the idea and it
does not work. To communicate taxonomy you do not need only a binomen, but
a classification as well. Otherwise you just communicate words, not
taxonomic concepts and ideas. Hence, ranks is what you need. Learn ranks
and apply them well, and you will never need another system. But this is
now getting off topic compared to the original thread.

To return to the original point of the email, the ICZN is clear: species
name is the binomen, whereas the specific name (i.e., name pertaining to a
species) is the second part of the binomen. Databases can simply change the
name of the field to "specific name" to be absolutely correct, but still
their intentions are not harmful.

Sincerely,
Evan Vlachos

On Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 07:59 Mario Sch?del via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Derek,
>
> while I most often comply with binomial nomenclature by providing the
> species name as /Homo sapiens/ or /H. sapiens/, I would like to offer a
> different perspective on the species nomenclature that helped me
> personally for dealing with species and genus level taxonomical
> situations. The term specific epithet stems from a time where a unique
> combination of genus name and specific epithet seemed necessary to
> communicate taxonomical issues. Since Lanham proposed their concept of
> uninomial nomenclature ? only a unique combination of species name (or
> specific epithet), author name and date is required (e.g. /sapiens/
> Linnaeus, 1758) ? it should be clear that the unique combination of
> genus name and specific epithet, despite being required by the ICZN,  is
> more a nice to have feature than a necessity for communication, even
> more so as we live in the age of the internet, centralized databases and
> powerful search engines. So, for me personally, as someone with a strong
> preference for rank-free taxonomy, the specific epithet /is/ the species
> name and I only add the genus name or its abbreviation in front of it
> for redundancy and to not cause trouble during the publication process.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mario
>
>
> Lanham, U. (1965). Uninominal nomenclature. /Systematic Zoology/,
> /14/(2), 144-144.
>
>
>
> On 12/30/22 00:22, Derek Sikes via Taxacom wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > Can we all stop using the term 'species' as a sometimes synonym for
> > 'specific epithet'?
> >
> > This is a super widespread problem, made all the more common by all the
> > database search interfaces that have a field called 'species'.
> >
> > A species name is composed of 2 words. Our species name is not 'sapiens',
> > it is Homo sapiens.
> >
> > And yet so often I see things like this -
> >
> >
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwsc.nmbe.ch%2Fsearch&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5a12acee467e4d50589308daea5d7471%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638079984366837379%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SQNi33mDwRsa50D9CfqJXmrdOXbVCFXAMMFmH%2FGCShE%3D&reserved=0
> >
> > which uses the term 'species' where it should say 'specific epithet'
> >
> > And also in introductory biology textbooks where they list something
> like:
> >
> > Genus - Homo
> > species - sapiens
> >
> > Happy New Year!
> > Derek
> >
> --
> he/him
> PhD Student
> Zoomorphology
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen
> Munich, Germany
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