[Taxacom] shortest description

[Dan Lahr]

An honest question:

Why exactly can L. bulla Benson 1836 be considered nomen nudum? Or any
name for that matter, I think Richard zander makes a good point about
where can you draw the line.

I agree with the intepretation of this particular name being
meaningless, but there must be a more objective parameter.

thanks,

dAn

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 1:18 PM, David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> In general, very minimal descriptions are recognized as qualifying
> under the letter of the zoological code, though not the spirit of it.
>
> I have a species of interest (Lymnaea bulla Benson, 1836) for which
> the original publication gave a detailed locality description and said
> there were two new species there.  He only described one of the two,
> however.  bulla is only mentioned in passing in the description of the
> other species, and the only description of it is the uninformative
> word "fine".  (The text has butta; corrigenda makes it bulla)
>
> Kobelt (1880) cited Benson's name but also gave a figure and a
> description, unfortunately with a much more vague locality.
>
> I have interpreted Benson's name as nude because there is no
> description of the species and thus regard the valid name as bulla
> Kobelt.  Other opinions?
>
> Kobelt based a new genus-level name on the taxon, hence the interest.
> Probable senior synonyms exist at the species level (with a caveat
> about possible cryptic species).
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> The Paleontological Research Institution
> 1259 Trumansburg Road
> Ithaca NY 14850
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:
>
> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> Or (2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>



-- 
Daniel Lahr
-------------------------------------------------
PhD candidate
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
U Massachusetts- Amherst
319 Morrill Science Center, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
413-585-3881