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

[Stephen Thorpe]

This is not how identifications work in practice! If you show me a specimen of, for example, Costelytra zealandica, I will immediately tell you at a glance that it is Costelytra zealandica, and I would expect anybody else to tell you the same thing, unless either they were mistaken about something, or they knew something that I didn't (like the real type has just been found, and isn't the species we all thought, or something like that). The only thing that I have which could possibly be called a "taxon concept" of Costelytra zealandica is a mental image of a species, which has been reinforced several times from various sources (but not directly from the type) as being rightly called by the name Costelytra zealandica. If someone else tells me that they found a Costelytra zealandica, then assuming they are correct, I assume that I would agree if I saw the specimen. I don't ask what taxon concept they are using, because that makes no sense!

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle [deepreef at bishopmuseum.org]
Sent: Saturday, 5 September 2009 8:26 p.m.
To: fwelter at gwdg.de; TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Read... and believe...

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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