Taxacom: species name vs specific epithet

[kotatsu at fripost.org]

Dear Mario,

Nice to work with a group which has such simple taxonomy!
How does this system handle cases like Brueelia guldum Ansari, 1955 and 
Sturnidoecus guldum Ansari, 1955, which are published five pages apart 
in the same paper? Add page number? "Ansari, 1955: 52" is actually 
longer than the genus name, so you don't save much space. This is by no 
means the only example I can think of from papers where numerous 
parasites from the same host are described in the same paper, using the 
exact same spelling of a derivation of the host name as the species 
epithet. How would you solve this in a way that is more practical than 
just using the genus name?

Cheers,
Daniel

> 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=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cdf275a004da54ab6d85d08daea711698%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638080068698867028%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=O61UX17rE38qB1Lq%2B9hd1jAI92ggitTr0%2FyVOBwEZwI%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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> 
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration
> for about 35 years, 1987-2022.

-- 
Dr. Daniel R. Gustafsson, Research Assistant Professor
Institute of Zoology Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.

Ask me about chewing lice!