[Taxacom] hemihomonymy revisited

Kenneth Kinman kennethkinman at webtv.net
Mon Mar 1 22:04:39 CST 2010


Hi Stephen,
     Well, it depends on how one looks at it.  Generic homonyms are
certainly a problem at that level in the hierarchy,  However, there are
also examples between genus and higher categories.
     On that disturbs me most is genus Archaea (a spider gentus) which
clearly has chronological priority over Domain Archaea.  This doesn't
cause  ICZN problems, since ICZN doesn't apply to names above the
family-group level.  However, it is still a bit of a  potential problem
if you are searching for taxon Archaea by an internet search engine,
which would bring up both.
     Of course, my far more fundamental problem with Domain Archaea is
that it is not archaic at all, but derived with respect to the
Eubacteria (a view also advocated by Thomas Cavalier-Smith and others).
In any case, if one recognizes a separate Domain for that group, a more
appropriate name is either Archaebacteria (advocated by some) or
Metabacteria (advocated by others).  Either of these is preferable, in
my opinion, to Archaea.  Thus Archaea is best applied to the genus of
spider only, and the hemihomonymic  Domain name Archaea is not only a
distraction, but totally inappropriate if it is not really archaic
anyway.
             ---------Ken Kinman
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Stephen Thorpe wrote:
       following a discussion some while back on Taxacom, I have just
started to create a category on Wikispecies for hemihomonyms, as defined
by the previous Taxacom discussion (i.e., identical generic names
governed by different Codes, e.g. zoological/botanical, like I found a
Solenopsis (ant) crawling up the stem of a Solenopsis (plant)).
However, I find that most definitions of hemihomonymy seem to refer to a
different, within Code, phenomenon, whereby a genus name can be
identical to a family group or higher name. Are there distinct names for
these two distinct problems? Does hemihomonymy apply to both? 
Stephen 
      





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