Taxacom: Mandatory ending correction after 226 years of wrong usage - the Dasytes case

[Markus Döring]

Hi Doug,

I like the approach of maintaining 2 lists. It is efficient and can easily be incorporated into catalogues like COL and its sources. And be used to crosscheck the actual combinations in these catalogues to flag potential problems. Is your work public yet, even if incomplete? I would be interested to test it out with actual combinations in the Catalogue of Life.

Best,
Markus

> On 31. Jan 2025, at 00:42, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
> On 1/30/25 3:04 PM, Thomas Pape via Taxacom wrote:
>> Good points, Doug.
>> 
>>>>> With access to just two lists, anyone can answer the question
>> But why two lists, if one is enough?
>> Why not build Catalogue of Life into that single authoritative source of scientific names?
>> 
> *Efficiency*. In two very important respects:
> 
> (1) A single list would have to include every combination. Not just the ~2 million available species names, but all of the combinations they'd ever been published in. Otherwise, you would never be able to check whether a name you found in the older literature is correct.
> 
> Even if you did want to just list the *present* combination for every species name, that's still a list of around 2 million names, and a lot of names whose present genus is in dispute.
> 
> In your hypothetical example, moving a bunch of spiders from one genus into another, if you only had one list, *none of the new combinations would be in that list*. You would need to manually add new records to the list for each new combination. You'd have to do that every time *any* species in *any* zoological group was moved from one genus to another. That's a huge investment of human labor, involving *tens of thousands of new combinations every year, in addition to thousands of entirely new species*. That's a massive and costly undertaking, and unnecessary.
> 
> With *two* lists, you *never* need to add new combinations, or new species names. You only need to add *new genus-rank names* as they are described. Since Latin is not an active growing language, *no one is creating new declinable Latin adjectives any more* - at least, not in terms of new suffixes. If someone creates a new species name "losangelesensis" that has never been used before, so long as the list contains an algorithm that correctly recognizes "-ensis" as an adjectival suffix, the name "losangelesensis" never needs to be manually entered into the list. Any newly-coined species name that is a noun (like "myfavoritecelebrityi") doesn't need to be added to the list, because the list is ONLY intended for declinable adjectives.
> 
> By splitting it into two lists, you only need to link the 380,000 genus names with roughly 20,000 declinable adjectives on an /ad hoc/ basis. It's computationally much more efficient to do it this way, and VASTLY less labor-intensive.
> 
> (2) Most importantly, by using two lists, the adjectival list can include the spelling variants, allowing gender agreement AND spelling changes to be fully automated. If you have one list containing the name Palpimanus persicus, and you now want to move it into the genus Funny, then YOU will have to know how to determine that the spelling variant you want to use is "persicum". By using a list that contains only epithets, it can store *all three spelling variants* (persica, persicus, persicum), and display only the one that matches the gender of the genus that you wish to combine it with - it will *automatically* tell you that "Funny persicum" is the correct spelling. That process won't work if you only have one list.
> 
> No catalogue will *ever* be able to serve the function that we need - it's entirely the wrong tool for the job.
> 
> Peace,
> 
> -- 
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314  voicemail:951-827-8704
> FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>             https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc75f1e902d7d4f793ed708dd41d4d7d8%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638739105492178877%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ynKXNPvdPFMqvj%2FaDOFwj6J2TRVV5xwcnhZPG89csrk%3D&reserved=0
>  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> 
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for 38 years, 1987-2025.
> 
> Send Taxacom mailing list submissions to: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
> For list information; to subscribe or unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.ku.edu/listinfo/taxacom
> You can reach the person managing the list at: taxacom-owner at lists.ku.edu
> 
>