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

Tue Jun 19 02:42:07 CDT 2012

Nice..

Now, let's get those alpha taxonomy pubs (and the names)  he mentioned in
there, to make it legit.  (The Trees within trees, within TREE article
doesn't cut it for ZooBank.)

Rich

From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 9:38 PM
To: Roderic Page; TAXACOM
Cc: Richard Pyle
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it moves
genus?

just to remove any doubt, Rod, about your biotic orientation, I have just
added your name to the zoological offenders register (a.k.a ZooBank:
http://zoobank.org/?id=urn:lsid:zoobank.org:author:6899544A-A593-43B8-8DA0-2
EF919917B52) !! :)

From: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
To: TAXACOM <TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU> 
Cc: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; Richard Pyle
<deepreef at bishopmuseum.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it moves
genus?

Me, a botanist!? I'm not sure who should be more insulted, me or botanists
(plants, they're those green things that don't do anything interesting,
right?) 

Rod

On 19 Jun 2012, at 08:18, Richard Pyle wrote:

The confusion here stems from the difference between how zoologists
(Stephen) typically understand a "name" to be, and how botanists (Rod)
understand a "name" to be.  Rod is talking about what botanists would refer
to as "homotypic synonyms" (=objective synonyms) -- which is a term (and
concept) we don't exercise much in zoology.  The point is neither Rod nor
Stephen is confused; rather, the differences between botanical and
zoological traditions of terminology have been (and continue to be)
confusing.

Aloha,
Rich

-----Original Message-----

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-

bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe

Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 1:08 PM

To: Roderic Page

Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it

moves genus?

Dearer Rod,

Your terminology is a little confusing, and perhaps a little confused?

Objective synonymy of species names occurs if two species names have the

same type, mostly if one is a new replacement name for the other. But you

are talking about different combinations of the same nominal species,

which

is an entirely different thing. Incidentally, D. melanogaster can still

"actually

be" a Drosophila if we draw a monophyletic line wide enough around the

type species of Drosophila, but it might have to include most

drosophilids,

but it is an option, as is simply allowing for non-monophyletic genera

(but still

changing combinations sometimes for reasons other than strict monophyly).

I have to say that "generating needless synonyms" really just formalises

different opinions, and we don't want to stop different opinions, do we?

In

fact, we pretty much have to keep track of all the different opinions on a

taxon, and the "needless synonyms" are one way of doing that ...

regards,

Stephen

________________________________

From: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>

To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>

Cc: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>;

"TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU"

<TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU>

Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 10:58 AM

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it

moves genus?

Dear Stephen,

The synonymy I'm most concerned about is objective synonymy of species

names (i.e., that which happens when we move a species from one genus to

another). Bionomials have implicit meaning built in, or more correctly, we

interpret the name as meaningful. If we relax that (e.g., are fine with

Drosophila melanogaster not actually being a Drosophila) then we'd stop

generating a lot of needless synonyms.

Presumably objective generic synonymy only occurs if two generic names

have the same type species, in which case this would seem rather rare?

Regards

Rod

On 18 Jun 2012, at 23:48, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

I guess I'm arguing that overloading the names with meaning (i.e.,

expecting them to tell us something about relationships) is the root

cause of much (most?) synonymy, which in turn makes taxonomy difficult

to use. Is it not time to rethink this practice?<

Hold on, synonymy at the *species level* is for entirely different

reasons!

Also, some generic synonymy is objective synonymy (i.e., purely

nomenclatural). These changes cannot be stopped ...

Stephen

________________________________

From: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>

To: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>

Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU

Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 10:34 AM

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it

moves genus?

Dear Doug,

On 18 Jun 2012, at 22:55, Doug Yanega wrote:

Rod wrote:

Hi Doug,

I'm puzzled as to why keeping the name unchanged is only possible

with a computerised system, while changing names willy-nilly is the

best method without computers?!

First, your proposal is - despite your rebuttal - the same thing as

having a uninomial. If "Drosophila melanogaster" is an invariant text

string used for a taxon in the actual genus Sophophora, then the only

difference between that and the original proposals for uninomials is

that there is no hyphen.

Sure, but just so we're clear that I'm not advocating changing the way a

binomial is written.

Second, my point is that if you disassociate the name that is used

for a taxon from the taxonomic hierarchy to which it belongs (which

is exactly what you are proposing, especially given that often the

original genus isn't even in the same family as the actual family -

e.g., many of Linnaeus' names), then you cannot possibly hope to

allow non-experts to know how any given taxon fits into the

classification without a functioning hyperlinked LSID system in place

- because otherwise EVERY non-expert will assume the "genus name"

they see in print is part of a classificatory hierarchy, since that's

how it has *always* worked. That's what I mean by "cultural inertia".

[Note also that this glosses over a major and horrific side-effect;

in order for your proposal to work, it would have to be retroactive

to all existing names, so the vast majority of species in existence

would suddenly find themselves with "resurrected" pseudo-genus names

- all the common butterflies would be Papilio again, the bees would

be Apis, the wasps would be Vespa, and so forth - it would be the

taxonomic equivalent of a zombie apocalypse! And, no, you couldn't

just pick an arbitrary cutoff date for when genus names would stop

being altered, because there is no consensus for the generic

placement of many existing taxa!]

If the genus part of a bionomial name is subject to change then how,

exactly, do I work out where it fits in the classification? If, for

example, I look

at frog names in the literature over the last few decades, they are being

bounced around all sorts of different genera. Anyone looking at this is

going

to struggle to figure out what names are the same, never mind where they

fit in any frog classification. There's a big literature on phylogeny,

development, ecology, disease, etc. that uses multiple names for the same

thing. Why is this a good thing?

Why does it have to be retroactive? Why not simply decide to change

existing practice and say from some date on lets leave names as they are?

If

there's no consensus, lets just make a decision (or leave it to the first

person

who cares enough to tackle the group). In any event, at no point did I say

let's roll everything back and start again.

You can't just issue a worldwide memo saying "Oh, FYI, the genus

names used in printed scientific names are no longer used in

classification, effective immediately. - The Management". If you want

to make that radical a change to how names work, then you'd be forced

to publish everything online, and give people hyperlinked LSIDs so

they can click on a name and see its classification. That, or you'd

have to use TWO genus names from now on (plus subgenus where

applicable), so part of the name would reflect the classification,

and the other would reflect the original published combination. So,

e.g., the European paper wasp would become "Polistes (Polistes)

[Vespa] dominula dominula (Christ, 1791)". All that does is add

another level of unwieldiness.

Publishing everything online wouldn't actually be a bad thing, and it's

pretty

clearly where we are heading.

At no point am I suggesting we have to burden names further with their

history. Just give me a name and stop mucking around with it.

Isn't the key separating names from relationships - relationships

being the task of phylogenetics.

Again, if names have always reflected relationships, suddenly

disassociating them will create chaos unless you have a convenient

workaround. If you can convince people that you have such a

workaround, maybe you can sell people on the idea - I just don't see

it happening any time soon. Besides which, bear in mind that a

non-trivial number of the world's taxonomists do not or did not

organize their classifications using phylogenetic principles, so the

*only* evidence we have of their hypotheses of relationships are

their names.

I guess I'm arguing that overloading the names with meaning (i.e.,

expecting them to tell us something about relationships) is the root cause

of

much (most?) synonymy, which in turn makes taxonomy difficult to use. Is

it

not time to rethink this practice?

Regards

Rod

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

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of

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