renaming genera (rankless)

[Barry Roth]

I hope that committee decisions under the PhyloCode
will be, as Phil says, infrequent.  Whatever else one
feels about it, one of the strengths of the present
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is that
almost all of its provisions are algorithmic:  if you
follow the rule, you learn which name to use.  It may
not be the name you prefer for personal reasons.  But
anyone, regardless of his or her circumstances, who
applies the provisions of the Code will reach the same
result.  That this works, in a kind of grand
democracy, is shown by the relatively small number of
cases in which the Commission has to exercise its
Plenary Powers.  In my opinion, a system that involves
a governing committee in more decisions, especially
ones involving nebulous criteria such as "cultural
importance," should be viewed guardedly.

Barry Roth

--- Philip Cantino <cantino at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:

> [...]
> The rules of precedence will determine which name
> gets replaced.  The
> first published definition for a name is the
> accepted one unless a
> later definition is conserved over an earlier one.
> Such conservation
> decisions will probably be infrequent, but if a
> widely known name
> that currently applies to a large and/or culturally
> important group
> of (for example) plants were first established under
> the PhyloCode as
> the name of a small and culturally unimportant clade
> of (for example)
> animals, it is likely that the governing committee
> would conserve its
> later application to the plant clade.
>
> In the interesting example you cite, if the first
> published
> definition of Archaea under the PhyloCode
> established it as the name
> of a clade of spiders, it is quite possible that the
> committee would
> decide to conserve a later application of the name
> to the domain of
> archaebacteria.  If this were done, the decision
> would not be based
> simply on the higher rank of the latter but on the
> fact that the name
> Archaea sensu Woese is far more widely known than
> the spider genus
> name.
>
> Phil
>
>
>
>
>
> Philip D. Cantino
> Professor and Chair
> Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
> Ohio University
> Athens, OH 45701-2979
> U.S.A.
>
> Phone: (740) 593-1128; 593-1126
> Fax: (740) 593-1130
> e-mail: cantino at ohio.edu



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