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Taxacom: Renaming taxa on ethical grounds

Scott Thomson scott.thomson321 at gmail.com
Tue Jan 31 17:04:25 CST 2023 

I also am against the renaming of taxa for these types of reasons, largely
for the reasons stated and implied by the authors of the paper. We
nomenclatural taxonomists may like to get into the deeper meaning of names
and where they come from, most people actually do not care. All they want
is a name they can use for a taxon, which is stable and unchanging if
possible and this includes the combination. If our work on list governance
shows one thing is that stability of usage is the number one concern across
the spectrum of end users of taxonomy. I am in general no fan of patronyms
though I have done it twice, so obviously it's not something I have set in
stone, more something I avoid if I can, it is also just personal
preference. The vast majority of Patronyms the general user of the names do
not care or even likely know who the taxon was named after (will depend on
how famous the person was),it is not important to the day to day usage of
names for taxa. So my view is let them be for the sake of stability,
changing the names causes more harm than good,particularly for long
standing and well used names. There is no value or point to this argument
and it just wastes time and resources and creates confusion. That is not
stability.

Cheers Scott

Em sex., 27 de jan. de 2023 ?s 02:30, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> escreveu:

>  I am 100% against the renaming of taxa for "cancel culture" reasons.
> However, at the end of the day, anybody can use whatever name that they
> like for a taxon and it doesn't really matter, provided that we keep track
> of all the names that apply to that taxon. So, in a way, "cancel culture"
> in taxonomy is self-defeating: Sure, you can suppress the validity of a
> name that is deemed somehow "inappropriate", but you still have to keep the
> name going in the literature as a synonym, so as to keep track of previous
> published data about the taxon. At this point I laugh and ask, how does
> relegation to synonymy really "cancel" anything? If there was a trumpi, for
> example, it is here to stay. whether as valid or as a synonym. This also
> raises the point that inappropriateness is subjective. Republicans will
> continue to use trumpi as valid, while democrats will relegate it into
> synonymy! Herein lies the road to taxonomic instability, but, as I said, it
> doesn't really matter. The main thing is sim
>  ply to keep track of all names for a given taxon, regardless of which one
> is treated as valid or preferred. A whole lot of fuss about nothing!
> Stephen
>     On Friday, 27 January 2023 at 05:30:21 pm NZDT, John Grehan via
> Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>  The following article was just brought to my attention. Anyone interested
> can get a copy at
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F367305748_Renaming_taxa_on_ethical_grounds_threatens_nomenclatural_stability_and_scientific_communication&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cd2a8380f919843a5c0d308db03df8fdd%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638108030958338748%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Izcep7qO34cFgx51fmg%2BJQJcRtBoJS%2FHUgGhUBZ07i8%3D&reserved=0
>
> Renaming taxa on ethical grounds threatens nomenclatural stability and
> scientific communication
> January 2023Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
> DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac107
> --
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-- 
Scott Thomson

Centro de Estudos dos Quel?nios da Amaz?nia - CEQUA
Petr?polis, Manaus
State of Amazonas, 69055-010
Brasil

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