[Taxacom] Unexpectedly wide discrepancies in cited taxon authorities - examples sought
Stephen Thorpe
stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Fri Mar 2 17:41:02 CST 2012
Spanish names are often confusing, because they often have two surnames, one of which (the second) is optional, and the first often gets cited as if it were a middle name
________________________________
From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Cc: dmozzherin at eol.org
Sent: Saturday, 3 March 2012 12:18 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Unexpectedly wide discrepancies in cited taxon authorities - examples sought
Dear Taxacomers,
In the process of comparing taxonomic names across multiple lists I frequently encounter minor discrepancies in cited authorities, as you would expect (over and above simple abbreviated names vs. names spelled out in full, presence/absence of initials and ancillary terms, etc.), which I attempt to reflect in an "authority similarity" portion of my cross mapping routines for taxonomic names. However there is the occasional spectacular mismatch for a good reason, which I would like to also account for if possible, so that taxa which are in fact the same do not get artificially separated by this process. I have two examples in mind, and am hoping persons on this list might be able to suggest others if they exist.
The first example is probably symptomatic of a class of authors with multi-part names, or alternative forms of representation: I am thinking here of the 19th century naturalist [Francis de] Laporte de Castelnau, whose taxa are variously ascribed to either Laporte or Castelnau, or sometime both (i.e. the full name). [Jean Baptiste] Bory de Saint-Vincent is probably another similar case, being represented either as Bory, Bory de Saint-Vincent (or St.-Vincent), or just Saint-Vincent.
The second class is exemplified by the taxa described in the 1798 work "Museum Boltenianum...", originally attributed to Bolten, 1798 but more recently to Röding, 1798 (or [Röding], 1798) following an ICZN ruling on the matter: thus for this purpose, the author attributions Bolten and Röding are effectively interchangeable for data cross-mapping purposes in these cases.
I would be interested in other examples of these classes of "authority synonyms" which, if sufficiently noteworthy, I could encode into rules/special cases to be followed before doing the remainder of my authority matching.
Regards,
Tony Rees
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