[Taxacom] highest number of new species described in one paper

[Margaret Thayer]

In catching up on listmail after being away for a while, I came across this
thread and suspected that staphylinid beetle workers might have a good entry
in the "competition".  Using Al Newton's database of staphyliniform beetle
species (a portion of which is available through
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/peet_staph/db.html - the rest to be added this
year), I found that indeed, Malcolm Cameron hit *566 *new species of
staphylinid beetles in the work below, of which 542 still stand as valid.

Cameron, M. 1939. Coleoptera, Staphylinidae. Vol. IV. Parts I & II. In:
Sewell, R. B. S. (ed.), Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma.
Taylor & Francis, London. xviii + 691 pp., pls. 1-3 [in 2 vols.].
(This total was also higher than any pre-1900 work, as far as
Staphyliniformia names are concerned.)

Three other authors described over 300 new species per work in five
post-1900 works:
Casey   1911     356   (185 still valid)
Casey   1906     328   (178 still valid)
Casey   1910     328   (136 still valid)
Franz   1986     309   (294 still valid)
Bordoni 2002     304   (302 still valid)

References, in the same order:
*Casey, T. L. 1911.* New American species of Aleocharinae and Myllaeninae,
pp. 1-245. In: Memoirs on the Coleoptera, Vol. 2. New Era Printing Co.,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
*Casey, T. L. 1906. *Observations on the staphylinid groups Aleocharinae and
Xantholinini, chiefly of America. Transactions of the Academy of Science of
St. Louis 16: 125-434.
*Casey, T. L. 1910.* New species of the staphylinid tribe Myrmedoniini, pp.
1-183. In: Memoirs on the Coleoptera, Vol. 1. New Era Printing Co.,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
*Franz, H. 1986.* Monographie der Scydmaeniden (Coleoptera) von Madagaskar
(mit Ausschluss der Cephenniini). Denkschriften der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse 125:
1-393.
*Bordoni, A. 2002.* Xantholinini della Regione Orientale (Coleoptera:
Staphylinidae). Classificazione, filogenesi e revisione tassonomica.
Monografie 33, Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Torino. 998 pp.

Ten other post-1900 papers (including two by Franz and one by Casey)
included over 200 new species each, as did another nine pre-1900 works. All
but one (Stephens  1832) of these 25 were taxonomically restricted works, so
*all *new species included in them would have been captured in the database.

I'm not sure that Anders Silfvergrip's second message is counting species *by
paper/work* in line with the original question, because even the combination
of author and year can include multiple papers (up to 30 among staphylinid
workers - not me!)

Margaret

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Vazrick Nazari <nvazrick at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am trying to find out the largest number of species (or taxa for that
> matter) new to science, described in a single taxonomic paper published post
> 1900.
> Anyone has a favorite example?
> Vazrick
>
> Vazrick Nazari, PhD Candidate
> Department of Integrative Biology
> University of Guelph
> SCIE 2488, 488 Gordon Street
> Guelph, ON N1G 2W1
> Phone: (519) 824-4120 ext. 53943
> http://www.uoguelph.ca/~vnazari <http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Evnazari>
>
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>

-- 
Margaret K. Thayer, Ph.D. mthayer at fieldmuseum.org (using @fmnh.org no longer
works)
Associate Curator, Zoology and Head, Division of Insects
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 South Lake Shore Drive
Chicago IL 60605-2496, USA
PHONE: +1-312-665-7741 (direct) FAX: +1-312-665-7754
FMNH personal web page: http://tinyurl.com/4g4zz
Austral Staphylinidae with Staphyliniformia databases:
http://tinyurl.com/3a39n7
Beetle Tree of Life project: http://tinyurl.com/38yryf
Division of Insects collection database: http://tinyurl.com/2mnc9j