Key to 10 species requirement

[Gregor Hagedorn]

> A few other points to consider on this matter-
>
> What if a recent monograph has been done on the group to which the "new"
> species belongs? Wouldn't a key to nine of those already covered plus one
> new one be redundant?

I would have thought just to include an appropriate branch of the key
from the monograph and insert the new species into it.

I may have overlooked the problem of copyright in this cases. Would
it be fair use to explicitly cite the original key, and insert the
new species appropriately? I think keys are often very similar, large
parts of a key are almost identical in different monographs.

Perhaps a provision could be added to explicitly refer to a published
key, and simple enforce the republication of the changed part, which
could be just the last question.

> In an isolated description wouldn't it be better to have a key or
> explicit diagnoses that separate the "new" creature from those most
> likely to be confused with it (simple similarity) or those that occur in
> the same or adjacent regions?  This would leave figuring out the
> relatedness of species to those who want to consider all the taxa and
> evidence for a clade.

Yes, if a monograph exists. No, if the situation is confusion. Also,
note that a cladistic concepts is not a requirement. Similarity can
be simple similarity measured by the characters used for
identification.

> I think that forcing the so called "amateurs" to select the ten most
> closely related species and treat them as a group is just asking for an
> increase in sub-genera, many that will have no sound basis. I for one,
> have way too many of these bogus species groups in the taxa I work on
> already.

I do not really think this would happen so often. Anybody publishing
a new taxon must first investigate all similar taxa that are
potentially in competition anyways. The requirement would not call
for groups of 10 species, but for a large enough investigation. 10 is
entirely arbitrary of course. Maybe it is even a bad choice?

Gregor

Gregor Hagedorn
Inst. f. Mikrobiologie, BBA     Net: G.Hagedorn at bba.de
Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19          Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 or -2221
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203

Often wrong but never in doubt!