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

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Dear Taxacomers,
Uniform spelling of an author in a zoological taxon name author 
string for species and genera is indeed one of the major problems of 
current taxonomy, particularly in electronic environments. The 
problem is that in contrast to humans, computers cannot know the 
conditions under which two different spellings of an author 
correspond to the same taxon name author string.

Current best practice guide promoted by ZooBank and other 
"multidispciplinal" databases (extending over more than one 
animal group) seems to go in the direction to recommend to spell the 
author strictly and consistently as in the original publication, 
eventually converted to nominative case and Latin script, and to use 
a "preferred spelling" of an author only if the spelling was 
ambiguous or abbreviated in the original source.
There is a strong recommendation not to use initials of first 
names in a taxon name author string, never and nowhere. 

This implies that an author can be spelled in one mode in one 
taxon name author string, and in another mode in another taxon name 
author string published elsewhere. This may look weird, but many 
accept it. An example is Linnaeus himself, for which the original 
spelling is Linnæus 1758 for the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, and 
Linné for all works published after 1761, including the important 
12th edition (Linné 1766 for vertebrates and Linné 1767 for 
invetebrates). But it also implies that no long discussions are 
needed any more on which should be the correct "preferred" name of an 
author. This saves time for all of us.

Those who run databases which use "preferred" spellings for authors, 
are recommended to provide two fields, one field for the original 
spelling (and a function to add a flag if the original spelling was 
confirmed by consulting the original source), and one field for the 
"preferred" spelling of the author.

In AnimalBase, BHL and BHL-Europe we are trying to provide free 
access to the original publications, with strong focus on those works 
where original descriptions were published, to facilitate verifying 
the original spelling of the author.

Francisco


University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org