[Taxacom] Taxonomic carelessness - Rafinesque

[Dr. David Campbell]

> >I've been told, though, that for sheer 
> >incompetence and disruptiveness, no one comes 
> >close to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz. 
> >Someone more familiar with Rafinesquerie might 
> >like to comment.
> 
> Rafinesque certainly had his quirks (especially 
> describing Audubon's nonexistent "devil jack 
> diamond fish" Litholepis adamantinus)

After Rafinesque, visiting Audubon, woke his hosts up with his attempt 
to collect bats using Audubon's expensive violin, Audubon supplied a 
description not only of the fabulous fish but also of a remarkable 
trivalve mollusk, which Rafinesque named a few times.  The repeat 
naming (also the case for some legitimate species) was not a memory 
lapse but rather a deliberate attempt to replace a previous name with 
one perceived to be more appropriate; unfortunately, this can cause 
problems under modern rules, as do other peculiarities such as a genus 
without a nominal subgenus.  

Rafinesque actually was not that bad, considering that he was trying to 
do most of his work with minimal funding out in the wilds, and 
considering the typical amount of information in a species description 
of the day.  Nevertheless, several of his species and genera continue 
to cause confusion to this day as some people are sure they know what 
they are and others are sure that no one knows.  Some of his 
publications were also rather obscure (perhaps a reason why almost all 
subsequent 19th century workers misspelled the species name of Quadrula 
(Theliderma) metanevra).  His mollusk names have suffered a good deal 
under the shadow of Isaac Lea, who tried to make sure that every 
freshwater mussel and freshwater cerithioidean had a Lea name used for 
it.  Lea also had plenty of money and had his own publishing company, 
which published excellent plates.  Nevertheless, a lot of major 
molluscan clades have perfectly legitimate Rafinesque names (though 
almost invariably with corrected terminations).  
 
> ... but nothing beats the infamous feat of 
> Robineau-Desvoidy (1799-1857), who described 248 
> junior synonyms! for one single species, the 
> tachinid fly Phryxe vulgaris (Fallén), all from 
> the environs of Paris. Most he distinguished only 
> by small color differences.

The Nouvelle Ecole of Bouguignat and other mostly French workers in the 
last half of the 1800's to early 1900's founded genera on individual 
variations.  Anodonta cygnea has been reported to have well over 600 
synonyms, largely thanks to their efforts, but this may actually 
include a handful of legitimate species, depending on whether a 
selected type locality was fortuitously across a biogeographic 
boundary.  

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA