[Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it moves genus?

[Doug Yanega]

>It's more than changing endings, it's changing the genus in the 
>first place that I object to. It's all very well naming things, but 
>to change the names subsequently seems unjustified.

That depends on whether it's arbitrary or uninformative. I know cases 
of bees described in the genus Vespa, and wasps described in the 
genus Apis - surely, it's highly worthwhile to have the present-day 
name reflect more accurate placements! Conversely, we presently have 
occasional trash taxonomists who arbitrarily place every species into 
its own genus solely to boost their own egos - not merely 
unjustified, but egregiously unscientific. Change in the former case 
is good, while the latter is bad. You can't generalize. However, this 
much CAN be said: if your objection is to the latter scenario, where 
self-publishing hacks are flooding the literature with new generic 
names that are garbage, then there are countermeasures the taxonomic 
community can take BESIDES fixing names as invariant.

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82