[Taxacom] formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, etc.

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Dick,
> If your program can handle "Adams" but cannot distinguish between 
> "A. Adams" and C.B. Adams" you might need to work on changing your 
> program or add a small field for initials.  

Why should I invest costs for something I do not need?

As I said, there is not need for initials in taxon name author 
strings, in the contrary, it provides obstacles for electronic data 
connection. If I would have them in my file, I would remove them. 
We link to the original description anyway, and there you can see 
which one of the Sowerbys or Pfeiffers established the name. No need 
to have this in the name.

This is not my personal problem or a problem of my program, it is 
just that zoological names are generally requested to adapt better 
to modern requirements for their use as identifiers in electronic 
biodiversity information environments. Botanists have solved that, 
zoologists not. 

> The
> prize for this goes to G. B. Sowerby I who in 1833, through
> carelessness, introduced Conus bicolor for three different species.
Again one more example that initials in a taxon name author string 
would not contribute to disambiguate.

I have another funny example on the use of initials. www.faunaeur.org 
currently records a species as Tandonia nigra (C. Pfeiffer 1849). 
There is an error in this string. The species was spelled correctly, 
but it was not described by C. Pfeiffer in 1849. Now try to find out 
the error. 
Carl Pfeiffer was an important malacologist and published in the 
1820s. L. Pfeiffer was even more important and published in the 
mid-1800s, including several papers in 1849. K. L. Pfeiffer 
published in the 1950s, also in malacology. 

Tony,
standard/preferred spellings against original spellings for authors 
is still amatter of debate, certainly, and this will remain so for at 
least the next 10-20 years. What I see is that the promoters 
of original spellings provide a way to solve the problem, and the 
others not. 
We are currently digitizing the original works and place them at 
free online disposal for all, so that anyone can consult the original 
description. This should provide a solution, everyone would be able 
to find the correct spelling independently.

> As I see it, the botanists
> have a head start on the zoologists in this respect 
It seems that botanists have solved this, nobody complains about 
botany in this respect. Only about zoology.

> so why not look 
> at their experiences before deciding that the "original spelling 
> always rules"...
This has been done, and the result was that their solution is not 
repeatable in zoology for various reasons.

Except in some disciplines (for example in fishes, comprising 2 % 
of the animals), zoologists have not worked out lists of standard 
author spellings, as in botany, or approved abbreviations. And also 
the fish list is extremely questionable, they used a standard 
deviating from the ICZN Code (Art. 50.1), which will unlikely get 
approved by most non-fish zoologists. So since we have no approved 
list, and nobody likes to invest time and money to create such a 
multidisciplinary zoological list, the only solution is a best 
practice guide on the base of what we have. And what we have, is the 
original description. If you don't have an approved standard, you 
must downgrade one step and solve the problem by a best practice 
guide.

> That may be true, but there are many systems that need to store
> non-current as well as current names.
Yes of course. Taxon name author strings alone will not provide 
unique identifiers for these purposes. 

It is also possible that the problems produced by the non-unique 
nature of the identifier are inferior to those provoked by 
misidentifications and incorrectly cited names.
If a species was misidentified in a study and information attached to 
the wrong name, there is no way to solve the problem. In botany this 
is the same problem. Also taxon concept models (as proposed by 
Nico Franz, Roger Hyam and others) will not help here.

> You also need to consider the case for genus names where the
> identifier is of the form genus-author-year. There are a small 
> number of these that are not unique.
Same genus, author and year, referring to different animals, and both 
names available? I would be interested in such an example, I don't 
know one. 

Francisco

University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org