Taxacom: Collective groups and form(al) genera

[Ziv Lieberman]

(my apologies if this doesn't get linked to the right thread - I'm not sure
how to properly reply to threads from the digest. . .)

Thank you for the insights, Francisco! This clarifies the situation a lot.
I wonder if we could look at a real example and check understanding:

>From Dlussky & Rasnitsyn 2003 *Russian Entomological Journal *11:411436, we
have the passage below (p. 416). To my reading, *Proiridomyrmex* should be
a collective group, given that it intentionally includes species which
cannot be identified due to preservation. Would you agree, and if so, is
the consequence that *P. vetulus* does not have type status?

Thank you again!

Formal genus *Proiridomyrmex* Dlussky et Rasnitsyn, *gen. n*.
Type species*: Proiridomyrmex vetulus* sp. n.
DIAGNOSIS. Poorly preserved wingless female and worker fossils. Head
elliptical,
oval, heart-shaped, or subrectangular with rounded occipital corners, but
never rectangular and longer than wide as in *Protazteca* and *Miomyrmex*.
Eyes of moderate size. Mandibles triangular, dentate. Propodeum rounded in
side view. Petiole with scale inclined forward. Integument thin, with
shallow sculpture.
SPECIES INCLUDED. Recently Shatuck [1992] divided a very diverse former
genus Iridomyrmex Mayr, 1862 on 7 separated genera, and his division was
generally accepted [Bolton, 1995; Dlussky, 1997]. As a result, taxonomic
status of some species based on poorly preserved or incomplete fossils
became obscure. In addition to the type species, we propose *Proiridomyrmex
*to cover such species, in particular *Iridomyrmex florissantius *Carpenter,
1930; *I. obscurans* Carpenter, 1930, and *I. mapesi *Wilson, 1985. Besides
them, *Proiridomyrmex *should embrace other incompletely preserved
Tapinomini originally attributed to Liometopum Mayr, 1861, Forelius Emery,
1888, etc. However the formal rearrangement needs study of the type
material. . .there are genera. . .whose diagnostic traits. . .are rarely
seen in impression fossils. So the poorly preserved fossils of these genera
are to be described in the formal genus *Proiridomyrmex.*