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

Tue Jun 19 02:46:31 CDT 2012

yes, Rich, I'm doing it right now! And that unregistered pub was already there ... Rod's name just wasn't *registered* ...

From: Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
To: 'Stephen Thorpe' <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; 'Roderic Page' <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>; 'TAXACOM' <TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU> 
Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 7:42 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Does the species name have to change when it moves genus?

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-A593-43B8-8DA0-2EF919917B52) !! :)

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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Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine College
of

Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences Graham Kerr Building University of
Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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Professor of Taxonomy
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College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
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University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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