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

[Dan Lahr]

Dear Francisco,

I got curious about your question:

"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."

Is it the year or the author that is wrong? It must have been either
described by C. Pfeiffer earlier and got a new combination by maybe
another Pfeiffer in 1849, or it was described by one of the other two
Pfeiffers (L. or K.L.).

It is also interesting to find out that Tandonia manages to be an
animal, a plant and a fungus all at the same time:

http://us.mirror.gbif.org/search/tandonia


Kind regards,

Dan

-- 
Daniel Lahr
-------------------------------------------------
PhD candidate
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
U Massachusetts- Amherst
319 Morrill Science Center, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003