Changes in Taxonomy, etc.

[christian thompson]

Richard:

As to your question:

I'm not sure what, exactly, you are flagging in your index in such
cases
(except where a new combination is used for the first time). Would you
flag
the reversion of a secondarily applied combination back to the original
(or
any other earlier invoked) combination as a "change in taxonomy"?  If
so,
then would you do so in all cases (based purely on chronology of
publication
with no effect of prevailing usage)?  Or, is there some "prevailing
usage
stability" threshold that must have existed before a usage of an
earlier
combination is deemed to represent a "change in taxonomy"?

That depends on what the objectives of your database are.

First, as an editor of a database I want to see a FLAG that tells me
immediately that something has been changed at least  in respects to the
"current" taxonomy in the opinion of the author(s).

Now most databases, especially nomenclators, will always need to
incorporate a new species / new names, but whether they track various
classifications or not and therefore want to track new combinations or
revised status, etc., is something else.

The BioSystematic Database of World Diptera is currently only a
nomenclator and based on only a single classification. Hence, we have
not tracked nor indexed all combination nor are we interested in
tracking changes in classification unless they are ones that our experts
accept.

So, for example, if some one today wrote a paper on the species (taxon)
that some have called Sophophora melanogaster (Meigen) and suggested it
should be as Meigen original described it, Drosophila melanogaster, then
 I would do nothing.

Cheers


F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
www.diptera.org  web site