Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))

Thu Jul 6 07:04:44 CDT 2023

I guess you didn't understand my argument. The spellings should become
fixed - no matter how horrifyingly wrong they may appear to be to
'traditionalists' (with perhaps one or two exceptions).

George
****************************************************************************
*Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
*Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*

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****************************************************************************

On Thu, 6 Jul 2023 at 12:54, alberto ballerio via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

>  I think that David Redei (with the additional remarks by Robert Luecking)
> has provided one of the strongest points in favour of gender agreement,
> i.e. with the gender agreement rule, the correct spelling of a species name
> is checked by looking at the current genus only, while with the abolition
> of gender agreement, for checking the correctness of a species spelling one
> has to go back in literature till to the original combination. I think that
> this point makes Chesterton's fence almost unbreakable.Best regards,Alberto
>
>     Il giovedì 6 luglio 2023 alle ore 13:38:24 CEST, Lücking, Robert via
> Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> ha scritto:
>
>  GBIF (and other large and capable databases or portals or tools) already
> to exactly that. In GBIF, type in the variants of Bombus ruderatus or a
> synonym and it always leads you to Bombus ruderatus. There still is a
> single, correct name, and yet, orthographic variants and synonyms are
> properly taken care of. No contradiction. No problem.
>
> Robert
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> Im Auftrag von Stephen Thorpe
> via Taxacom
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 6. Juli 2023 12:45
> An: taxacom at lists.ku.edu; David Redei <david.redei at gmail.com>
> Betreff: Re: Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists
> of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))
>
>  I will again suggest that what is needed is a move away from the idea of
> a single correct name for a taxon. Bombus ruderatus is the same name (from
> the point of view of homonymy) but just a different spelling from B.
> ruderatum and B. ruderata. If we are to track information on the species,
> we need to search for all three spelling variants, in case someone has used
> them. In the same way, we need to search for all synonyms and alternative
> combinations for the same species. You can call one of the gender variants
> the "correct" one, but what does that actually achieve? People will still
> use the other variants, as lepidopterists have been doing all along,
> without problems. The easiest solution is just to consider all gender
> variants to be synonyms and you track a taxon by the set of all its
> synonyms.
> Stephen
>     On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 10:13:02 pm NZST, David Redei via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>  No, sorry, I absolutely do not like Adam's suggestion. Then genera will
> contain some names with masculine, some with feminine, and some with neuter
> ending, and sorry, I do not want to remember that "OK, Bombus lapidarius,
> Bombus ruderatus, Bombus alpinus, Bombus confusus, Bombus auricomus and
> Bombus balteatus are all masculine, but Bombus germanica and Bombus pulchra
> are feminine and Bombus nigrum is neuter, because they were recently
> transferred from other genera and they kept their former ending. (Imaginary
> names.) Throwing away rules and making people remember each and every name
> one by one is considerably more difficult than following rules. People can
> cite examples of problematic adjectives, but the fact is that the
> overwhelming majority of the adjectives are easy to handle.
>
> In my opinion, "prevailing usage" is the most swampy and controversial
> term in the current Code. Glossary defines it as "*that usage of the name
> which is adopted by at least a substantial majority of the most recent
> authors concerned with the relevant taxon, irrespective of how long ago
> their work was published.*" What is "substantial majority"? If there are
> 100 authors,
> 51 of them uses one usage, 49 the other, it is definitely not a
> "substantial majority". How about 55 : 45? 60 : 40? 70 : 30? Where is the
> limit? What if there are only 10 people using the name, and the ratio is 9
> : 1, is it a substantial majority? Can we call 9 people a "majority"? How
> about a scenario when only 6 people used the name in the past 100 years and
> their ratio is 4 : 2, is it substantial majority?  What if the ratio is
> 30:70, but most of the 70 authors publish in exotic journals in exotic
> languages therefore most of the scientific committee do not read them,
> while the 30 authors publish in easily available periodicals in universally
> understood languages therefore all members of the scientific community read
> them, would we call the 70 as "prevailing usage" in this case?
>
> This term is a nightmare, lacking any clear definition, you need to rely
> on your subjective feelings. Moreover, using the "prevailing usage" is
> highly difficult in practice, since you need to make a major literature
> search to establish the prevailing usage.
>
> In my opinion, gender agreement might be surely a trouble for some people
> who do not want to waste time for learning something supposedly "useless"
> (?), but abandoning it would be a very significant step backwards, highly
> destabilizing nomenclature. Please note that *the "prevailing usage" is
> precisely the gender agreement itself: changing the ending of the specific
> epithets is a practice that has been in prevailing usage in the past 250
> years*.* Our currently existing "prevailing usage" of names is based on
> gender agreement*, which was overwhelmingly correctly (and yes, sometimes
> incorrectly) applied in all names (minus Lepidoptera).  If you really seek
> stability, you cannot abandon it.
>
> David Redei
>
>
>
> On Thu, 6 Jul 2023 at 13:36, George Beccaloni via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
> > Hi Adam,
> >
> > I think your compromise solution is a really excellent suggestion -
> > one which should satisfy users of scientific names, promote stability
> > and make names 'true' unique identifiers - so important in this IT
> > age. One suggestion though: rather than relying on 'prevailing usage'
> > to 'fix' the name, the new Code could set a date, and state that the
> > name to be used after that date is the one used in the last valid
> > nomenclatural act published before that date. That would be unambiguous.
> >
> > I think much of the discussion on the issue of gender agreement misses
> > what I regard to be the main point: that in the modern age it is
> > highly desirable to have unique identifiers for species. Allowing the
> > names to change spelling because of gender agreement may have been
> > fine in the pre-computer era, but is of detriment now. How can anyone
> > say a species name is a unique identifier when the spelling of the
> > species-group name can change if it moves to another genus? This is
> > madness, but is perhaps an issue more keenly felt by those of us who
> > deal with huge catalogues of names, rather than those who do not.
> >
> > George
> >
> > **********************************************************************
> > ******
> > *Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
> > *Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*
> >
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> >
> > **********************************************************************
> > ******
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 6 Jul 2023 at 02:41, Adam Cotton via Taxacom
> > <taxacom at lists.ku.edu
> > >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > There is a relatively simple solution to the gender agreement issue
> > > that I would like to propose.
> > >
> > > I do not think that lepidopterists really want to impose original
> > > spellings for all zoological names in other taxa. We have already
> > > been using original spellings for most species names for a long time
> > > with exceptions for incorrect subsequent spellings that are in
> > > prevailing usage (e.g. Papilio pitmanii -the original spelling - was
> > > changed to pitmani over 100 years ago, and that spelling is in
> > > prevailing usage so is regarded as the 'correct' spelling under
> article 33.3.1).
> > >
> > > I propose that when a species is transferred to another genus gender
> > > agreement should no longer be applied, and instead use the current
> > > spelling of the species name regardless of the gender of the new genus.
> > > That way species names would be fixed permanently, so that e.g. the
> > > species known as Bombus lapidarius, Camponotus herculeanus, and
> > > Polistes gallicus would continue to be called lapidarius,
> > > herculeanus, and gallicus even if they were moved to different genera.
> > >
> > > This suggested 'compromise' could easily be incorporated in the 5th
> > > edition of the Code by applying the prevailing usage concept, which
> > > is already widely used in the current Code, with relevant new
> > > articles to govern these changes. This would actually simplify the
> > > Code a lot, as many more articles pertaining to gender agreement
> > > would be removed than the new ones added to implement the system.
> > >
> > > Previously described species names would continue to use the
> > > spelling in current prevailing use, even if it is not the spelling
> > > in the original description, and newly described species group names
> > > would never subsequently change their spellings.
> > >
> > > There will be some cases where more than one spelling is currently
> > > used in the literature, in which case priority could be given to the
> > > original spelling if prevailing usage is unclear.
> > >
> > > Some taxonomists will not like my suggested solution, but it would
> > > solve the whole problem without names having to change from their
> > > current spellings. I vote for the principle of nomenclatural
> > > stability which the current Code aspires to. There is nothing more
> > > stable than species names which never change when they are moved to
> > > a different genus. I suspect that implementing this suggestion would
> > > also make life a lot easier for the database people too.
> > >
> > > Adam.
> > >
> > >
> > > On 06/07/2023 05:17, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom wrote:
> > > > On 7/5/23 1:54 PM, John Noyes wrote:
> > > >> Hi Doug,
> > > >>
> > > >> Fair enough, but you cannot get away from the argument that
> > > >> gender agreement is just simply 100% unnecessary. Forget about it
> > > >> being a waste of time. If we all worked on the premise that all
> > > >> genera have no gender then it would make life a whole lot easier.
> > > >> Like many people I definitely prefer the original spelling.
> > > >
> > > > And you work, by and large, with species names that rarely enter
> > > > the non-taxonomic literature. In contrast, using a few other
> > > > hymenopteran genera as examples, consider that many of the most
> > > > common bumblebee species in the world, and many of the most common
> > > > ants, and many of the most common paper wasps, would all suddenly
> > > > have to change spellings because they have been in masculine
> > > > genera for over 100 years, but their original Linnaean or
> > > > Fabrician genera were feminine (e.g., Apis, Formica, and Vespa).
> > > > The many people - including laypeople - who are familiar with
> > > > common European species like Bombus lapidarius, Camponotus
> > > > herculeanus, and Polistes gallicus wouldn't be happy *at all*.
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>