Taxacom: expanding the concept of nomen dubium

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Hi Les,

You cited the current solution: If you cannot determine the identity of 
a species from the existing type, and if the original description is 
useless, you can ask the Commission to set aside the syntypes and 
designate a neotype (Art. 75.5). Such a request does not need to have 
the length of a Ph. D. thesis.

The term "nomen dubium" always refers to a certain rank, it is never a 
nomen dubium as such.
If you have an old name with a preseved type, and you cannot distinguish 
it from other species "in the genus", then this name is only a nomen 
dubium at the rank of species. If the old name of a species can be 
determined to genus level, such a name is not a nomen dubium at the 
genus level. We had a case where such a nominal species was the type 
species of a genus - this genus was taxonomically fixed quite well by 
this type species.

Adding a provision to Art. 12 would interfere in the availability. This 
would contradict the principle that any name once made available remains 
available (Art. 10.6). Your idea was probably to interfere in the usage 
options, something like declaring such a name as permanently invalid.

In some cases it may be easier just to find the easiest way to use the 
old name.
If you like to name a new species, and it occurs nearby from where the 
old name was described from, you can just take the old name and use it 
for your new species, asking the Commission to set aside the degraded 
type specimens and fix the neotype accordingly. If you have no idea what 
that species looked like you can use the name for many candidate 
species. A name with an old date that has not been used very often in 
the literature can sometimes even be better than a new name.

If all specimens of the type series are lost, you are free to designate 
a neotype (Art. 75.1) without a need to ask the Commission.

Best wishes
Francisco

Am 26.11.2024 um 23:26 schrieb Leslie Watling via Taxacom:
> I would like to have a discussion of the concept of nomen dubium, which is
> only mentioned inArticle 75.5 of the Zoological Code. I have no idea what
> the Botanical Code thinks on the subject.
> 
> So, here is the issue from my point of view. Much has been written lately
> about changing names based on new social criteria etc., and how much that
> would detract from the actual work that taxonomists need to do to just get
> species described.
> 
> Well, another issue that takes up a huge amount of time is figuring out the
> features of some old species whose descriptions were vague (by the
> standards of today) and whose type specimens are so degraded as to be
> nearly useless, for example, by not possessing the essential character(s)
> for discriminating the species from others in the genus. Or are lost
> altogether.
> 
> Article 75.5 states: "the author may request the Commission to set aside
> under its plenary power [Art. 81] the existing name-bearing type and
> designate a neotype."
> 
> What I would like to propose, instead, is that a section be added to
> "Article 12. Names Published Before 1931", allowing for an author to
> propose in a published paper that a species be declared a nomen dubium if
> the author can demonstrate that the original description of a species is
> too vague and that the type specimen is of no use in sorting out the
> important characters of the species because the type specimen is degraded
> or lost.
> 
> In my opinion we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out
> what some of these old species are, whether any modern specimen actually
> belongs to that species, when we could just move on by saying we have no
> idea what that species looked like and so the name should be taken out of
> circulation, as it were. I suppose in some ways we do this already by just
> ignoring some of those old names, but as responsible taxonomists we feel an
> obligation to try to deal with them.
> 
> I wrote a paper a few years ago (Watling & France 2021, Bull. Yale Peabody
> Mus. 62(2):97-110; freely available) sorting out the problem of what A.E.
> Verrill's species, Lepidisis caryophyllia, actually looked like. It turns
> out Verrill's description was partially wrong, and the type now consists of
> two little dried up polyps. I won't go through the whole story of what we
> did to try to sort it out, but it might have been better if we could have
> just decided that his species be abandoned along with the genus Lepidisis.
> In the time it took us to do all that sleuthing, etc., we could have
> described several new species.
> 
>   There are a few other octocoral genera and species from the 1800s that
> likewise are real problems and may take many more person-hours to get to
> some agreement on. In the meanwhile other new species languish in museum
> collections until these problems are solved. My view is we should just
> declare that we have no idea what those things are and there should be a
> formal part of the Code to allow us to do that.
> 
> Sorry this went on so long.....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Les Watling
> Professor Emeritus
> School of Life Sciences
> University of Hawaii
> 
> Professor Emeritus
> School of Marine Sciences
> University of Maine
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