any official terminology? Nomenclature versus Taxonomy

[Richard Pyle]

> > I'm not sure I follow.  I don't believe that the ICZN Code deals with
> > "availability" of combinations.
> In focusing on the expression "combination is available" you may have
> missed the context, i.e. what the entire paragraph was aiming at. If a
> species was described as Aus aus, and later transferred to become Bus
> aus, then the scientific species name (=combination) Aus aus - or, if
> you must, both Aus and aus in this combination - is/are available, but
> - barring reasons to the contrary - Bus aus is valid, whereas Aus aus
> is not.
> Can we agree on this much?

I'm not sure.  Suppose four genera names: Aus, Bus, Xus, Yus.

Species "fus" originally described in genus Aus as "Aus fus".

All five names (four genus-group names and one species-group name) are
"available" sensu ICZN.

A later author places the "fus" in genus "Bus": "Bus fus".

But "Aus fus" and "Bus fus" are not the only "available" combinations --
"Xus fus" and "Yus fus" are also "available" combinations in the context of
ICZN, even though nobody has ever formed those combinations.  In fact, the
species epithet "aus" can be combined with *any* existing zoological
genus-group name (no matter the phylum), and the Code says nothing about the
availability of the combination (only the availability of the individual
names). So, my point was that I don't understand the notion of a "available
combination", unless you used it as shorthand to mean that both names in a
binomial are independently "available" sensu ICZN.

But I gther this was a side-track from the point of your original paragraph,
about the validity of "Bus aus" over "Aus bus", which I address below.

> > I will agree that any given taxonomist should have only one
> "valid" notion
> > of a species epithet and of the genus in which it should be
> placed, at any
> > one moment in time.
>
> Seems like that should have been self-understood throughout this
> discussion, but it's exactly what I said, so thank you for your agreement.

No -- it was not at all self-understood (to me, anyway) that your use of
"valid" was restricted to a single author at a single point in time.  I got
the distinct impression from your earlier note that if Smith says that
species "aus" belongs in genus "Aus"; and Jones says that species "aus"
belongs in genus "Bus", that only one of them can be "technically" correct.
I disagreed with this assertion, but now it seems this is not the assertion
you made.

I guess, then, we agree on all points.

Aloha,
Rich