[Taxacom] Read... and believe...

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Rich,
When I identify a specimen, I tend to use various sources and build 
up my mind myself, I don't "follow" one single other source. I 
also would expect other scientists to do the same. A scientist must 
be able to have an independent opinion, as the result of having 
studied various sources. I could not apply this "sec." concept 
(taxonomic concept proposed by N. Franz, Roger Hyam and others) for 
my field (malacology). If I identify specimens from museum 
collections, I add my name and a date.

> (or if it's a new circumscription, then they should at
> least make a note of "sensu me, not yet published").  
In European malacology we have the case of the genus Oxychilus 
(Gastropoda), which was very well defined by Riedel 1998, based on 
a lot of scientific work, and which was distorted (several 
arbitrarily selected subgenera were elevated to genera) in a simple 
uncommented Central European checklist by Falkner et al. 2001. I am 
asking myself if you would call this a published concept (that 
deserves a "sec." authorship). Maybe yes. But the other (not 
Central European) species were of course not listed. So a name of a S 
European species is "implicitely" sec. Falkner et al. 2001? In 
real life people take the current generic name of S European 
species from www.faunaeur.org, they don't ask where the data were 
based on.

Francisco


University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org