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

Thu Jul 6 09:04:44 CDT 2023

Robert Lücking asked this:

"*Tricholoma album (a mushroom) -- Correct spelling or not?*
* Who will be faster to answer this question: *
* A. Those who have a basic knowledge of Latin and Greek and follow the
rule of gender agreement, or B. Those who advocate that one should apply
the orthography of the first publication of the name?*"

I agree with the assessment of Robert, but I want to stress that the
question is inaccurate, because Robert omitted option C: "Those who need to
look back either the prevailing usage or the last valid taxonomic act
published on 1 Jan 202X [the date when the new Code, fixing usage at a
given date and renders epithets unchangeable after that date, will take
into effect].

Now, I believe that Robert makes a valid point when he claims that A is
better than B, but I want to add that either A or B are much better than C.
For me, fixing epithets at a given time is by far the worst idea. Get a
name, try to establish its current prevailing usage (now, in 2023). It
might be easy or not. Then get a name and try to establish its prevailing
usage in 1923, or the last valid taxonomic act about this name preceding
1923. That is a bit more tricky. Imagine that researchers in 2123 will have
the task of establishing the prevailing usage in 2023, or or the "last
valid taxonomic act" (whatever it is supposed to mean, not entirely clear)
in 2023, for names.

George Beccaloni wrote: "*Well, what about the suggestion I made to Adam's
idea "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.*"

George, what do you mean that "the name to be used after that date is the
one used in the last valid nomenclatural act published before that date"?
Not entirely clear to me. Let's say the date that will be fixed is 1 Jan
2024. A paper will be published in 1 Dec 2023, proposing Neobombella gen.
nov., and Bombus lapidarius will be transferred into it as Neobombella
lapidaria comb. nov. This will be a valid nomenclatural act at that date.
Then on 1 Jan 2024 the new Code will take into effect, and on 5 Jan 2024
someone will synonymize Neobombella with Bombus and reinstate the previous
combination -- but because of your new rule, the valid combination now will
be *Bombus lapidaria* (because that was the last valid nomenclatural act
published before 1 Jan 2024, it was a valid act that time!), with no
respect of the literally thousands of publications that used Bombus
lapidarius before 1 Dec 2023? Why is it good? What improvement will it
represent? Or imagine a species which are used in different combinations by
different authors: e.g. some place it in genus X-us and subgenus Y-a,
therefore its name is X-us (Y-a) z-us, but others treat subgenus Y-a as a
valid genus, therefore they use the combination Y-a z-a. Who will be the
winner, the one who will manage to publish his paper closest to 1 Jan 2024?
Why do you think this is good? Or when you write "last valid nomenclatural
act published before that date", you mean, the last act which was published
before that date *and still regarded as valid at the present*? And if later
it will be regarded invalid, then what will one need to do? If the species
will be validly transferred to another genus in the future, and it will be
accepted by the community (so the new combination will be viewed as valid),
it will render all previous combinations invalid, and there will be no
valid combination before 1 Jan 2024. It is not very clear to me how you
imagine the usage of this rule in practice, the proposal sounds a bit fuzzy
to me, and so far I do not really see what improvement it would represent
to the current situation.

David Redei

On Thu, 6 Jul 2023 at 19:29, Lücking, Robert via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> Tricholoma album (a mushroom)
>
> Correct spelling or not?
>
> Who will be faster to answer this question:
>
> A. Those who have a basic knowledge of Latin and Greek and follow the rule
> of gender agreement, or
>
> B. Those who advocate that one should apply the orthography of the first
> publication of the name?
>
> My prediction is that (A) should take at best a few seconds, whereas (B)
> could take anywhere from one to many minutes, depending whether you know
> how and where to search.
>
> Don't forget that both (A) and (B) constitute rules that have to be
> followed. And when it comes to rules, if nothing else matters, the one
> which is more practical should be followed. And what is more practical than
> saving time by being predictive and resolvable without having to consult
> the (not always readily available) literature? (And by the way, that
> literature is often in Latin... or in a typeset many of us will have
> difficulties to read)
>
> Abandoning (A) in favor of (B) would be getting rid of one rule but
> adopting another one that is for sure more confusing and more time
> consuming, because everytime you have the feeling a termination is wrong,
> you would have to go back to the protologue to check. And we all know that
> misspellings occur in almost every resource and publication.
>
> By the way, it is not necessary to actually know or learn the basics of
> Latin and Greek to understand rules of nomenclature. Just download the PDF
> of Stearn's Botanical Latin here:
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FBOTANICALLATINWILLIAMSTEARN&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cdf0996a43dc94df98eb608db7e29fc45%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638242491021884354%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7rMx5IoeJeHlg1vzASadx%2F0f8Ht%2BtXzBfCa%2FdZOrJrU%3D&reserved=0
> The rules apply equally to zoological nomenclature and practically all
> cases are explained, in a way easy to understand. Checking something in
> here is still faster than going back to the protologue for each name, and
> it is predictive, while protologue checking is not.
>
> Robert
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> Im Auftrag von Daniel
> Gustafsson via Taxacom
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 6. Juli 2023 12:57
> An: Adam Cotton <thaibaggie at gmail.com>
> Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
> Betreff: Re: Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists
> of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))
>
> This also seems to miss the point.
>
> The point, as I understand it, is that instead of having A-us b-us (for
> instance) as a universal pattern within a genus, you would have to
> remember (or look up) whether it is A-us b-us, A-us b-um, A-us b-e, A-us
> b-a, etc., individually for each species. There would be no way to ever
> predict what the name ends in for anyone, regardless of whether you had a
> classical education, speak a Romance language, or just like Latin. It would
> all be based on whatever someone thought was the prevailing usage within
> the group at an arbitrarily chosen point in time.
>
> I don't care much either way when it comes to gender agreement but this
> seems to be unnecessarily complicated for no clear reason. It reminds me of
> nothing so much as when some phylocoders got the great idea to freeze
> genus+species for each taxon so that the genus name was preserved even
> if the species changed clades, and there would be no predictability of
> relationship based on the name that is used.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel
>
> >
> > You seem to have missed the whole point, you would no longer need to
> > worry whether a genus and a species name is masculine, feminine or
> > neuter EVER again, they would become names that never change.
> >
> > Adam.
>
> >> 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.
>
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> >
> > Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration
> > for about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>
> --
> Dr. Daniel R. Gustafsson, Research Assistant Professor Institute of
> Zoology Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
>
> Ask me about chewing lice!
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>
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
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> For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit:
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> The Taxacom email archive back to 1992 can be searched at:
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>
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>