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

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Tony,
This is interesting. I never knew that there were cases like these 
you were citing from Walker's publications. It seems that this author 
established quite a number of homonymous genus names, also in mixed 
constellations Lepidoptera/Hemiptera.

> I did not say they were both available (clearly at least one in each
> case is a junior homonym)
Your cited examples seem to refer to available names. A junior 
homonym is an available name too, just it usually cannot be used as a 
name. But it is an availabl name. It can be substituted by a new 
replacement name, which then takes the same type species as the 
junior homonym. It is important for taxonomists to record junior 
homonyms.

It seems that taxon name author strings provide unique identifiers 
only for currently used genera, but not for original names. In the 
species we have the same situation. 
So if taxonomists would like/need an electronic data resource and 
not other identifier is used, there must be an additional field to 
provide uniqueness for the identifier. 
ZooBank sems to prefer LSIDs as unique identifiers, but even if so, 
they would need to explain how to use the correct LSID for the 
correct name. A central and reliable data resource would be needed to 
provide information to know which one of Walker's Amydona would have 
which LSID. This central data source would need to provide more 
information than only genus-author-year, they would need a 4th field 
and then they could use the genus-author-year-4thfield string 
equally as a unique identifier and no LSID would be needed.

Francisco



University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org