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

[Richard Pyle]

OK, then you would go with the "sensu me, not yet published" option.
Otherwise, how will the next person know in what sense of the name you
identified the specimen?  Sensu lato? Sensu stricto?  Are you a lumper? A
splitter?  Without pointing to some sort of concept circumscription for a
given name, the next person is left guessing how you perceived that taxon to
be.  If it's a taxon that has been consistently defined in the era in which
you identified it, then no problem.  But many species could be interpreted
as one of several very different concept circumscriptions, depending on who
you are following.

I just read Jim's response, and it captures the problem superbly (I expect
nothing less from Jim -- especially on this particular topic); so I'll defer
to his post.

Incidently, the word "deserves" has nothing to do with "sec" authorships.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Francisco Welter-Schultes
> Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 7:59 PM
> To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Read... and believe...
> 
> 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
> 
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