[Taxacom] Nomina nuda and genbank?

[Doug Yanega]

Michael Heads wrote:

>If there is a new name, a 'type' (a voucher specimen) and a 
>decription (a sequence) it is hardly a nomen nudum. The crucial 
>question, at least for plant names, would be whether 'CGATCGAT' can 
>be regarded as Latin or not...

It's interesting how fine a balancing act can be required to exclude 
certain things that we wish to exclude, while including everything we 
DO wish to include. This reminds me of an observation I made years 
ago regarding Warner Brothers cartoons depicting the coyote and 
roadrunner, and giving them "scientific names." The scripts upon 
which those cartoons were based were printed on paper, simultaneously 
produced - but the clause in the Code which invalidates them is "must 
be issued for the purpose of providing a public and permanent 
scientific record" (Art. 8.1.1) - and by judging the *purpose* 
(admittedly, not the most objective criterion one could propose), one 
can exclude a large number of things - cartoon names included - as 
NOT constituting a "published work". Are names listed in GenBank used 
with the purpose of providing a permanent scientific record? In one 
sense yes, but is that the *same* sense implied by the Code?

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82