[Taxacom] Generic type of large genus belongs in different genus

Tue Apr 9 09:05:36 CDT 2013

Actually, computers ought to be able to spot the mention of Drosophila
melanogaster as an original combination in the text and tag the article as
containing the taxon of interest.  Name recognition by Google and BHL is
far from perfect, so you need to read through any tagged publication
yourself to actually catch all the uses of a name.  (For example, BHL is
rather better at spotting names in the index than in text with random old
fonts.)  A large proportion of the references will be to "D. melanogaster",
so there has to be search flexibility in any case.

Many taxa hava a much more complex nomenclatural history than the two
genera in the case of S. melanogaster.  Higher categories (family, etc.)
tend to be more stable, so a link to higher-level classification would
provide a useful way to check.  A search for any reference to melanogaster
in references dealing with vinegar flies would do better than a search
specifically for Drosophila melanogaster, while turning up fewer unrelated
black-tummied species.  Of course, that requires actual accurate
recognition of information about higher taxa in a paper, not a blind
assignment of name hits to the supposed higher category.  Homonyms and
erroneous hits are too common for that to be helpful; indeed, the whole
point of adding a search for indications of higher taxa would be to have it
independent of the genus and species recognition, so that they serve as
checks on each other.

More generally, I favor of making the computers do more work and people do
less work in figuring out what names mean.

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

> My perspective is motivated mainly by simply trying to find information.
> If I search an archive like BHL, which spans centuries of literature up to
> the present day, finding information about a taxon is greatly complicated
> if the name keeps changing. This is a well known problem. The effects would
> be lessened if we either:
>
> (a) Stopped creating new combinations to reflect a favoured classification
>
> (b) Had a complete database of synonyms that we could use to expand our
> queries
>
> Either solution would work, but we've done neither, hence we have a mess.
>
> I'm not trying to "ban" Sophophora melanogaster, I'm just questioning why
> we want to change the name. OK, I understand why (we want names to reflect
> relationships) I just question the cost of this (it complicates finding
> information) versus the perceived benefits. A phylogeny is a much more
> informative summary of the relationships of this fly than its binomial
> name, and changing the name severs the connection with the bulk of the data
> we've accumulated about this insect. Sure, some people may know that
> Sophophora melanogaster and Drosophila melanogaster, but for the vast
> majority of species most people (or, more importantly, computers) won't
> know that two names refer to the same thing.
>
> > So, ideally, any publication which uses the combination Sophophora
> melanogaster just needs to state once at the beginning that it is the same
> species as was originally described as Drosophila melanogaster by Meigen in
> 1830
>
> Seriously? This is how you want to tackle the problem? How do you envisage
> something like Google or BHL making use of this?
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
>
> On 8 Apr 2013, at 23:13, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
> > Actually, all this is confusing several distinct issues. We have a
> half-baked notion that a species has a "current name", possibly different
> from its original combination, and that this "current name" should act as a
> unique identifier for the species! Rubbish! And all this has nothing to do
> with "instability", which is more about synonymy, i.e. a change in the
> specific epithet, not about changes in combination. Original combinations
> are objective unique identifiers for species, with the caveat that in cases
> of homonymy, the original combination is objectively replaced by that of
> the first valid replacement name. "Current names" are subjective hypotheses
> of relationships ... like it or not! There simply is no problem in the
> case, for example, of Drosophila melanogaster, as long as the specific
> epithet stays as 'melanogaster', and as long as it is clear that we are
> talking about the same species as was originally described as Drosophila
> melanogaster by Meigen in 1830. So, ideally, any publication which uses the
> combination Sophophora melanogaster just needs to state once at the
> beginning that it is the same species as was originally described as
> Drosophila melanogaster by Meigen in 1830. But for some reason, Rod wants
> to ban the use of Sophophora melanogaster, and stick forever with JUST
> Drosophila melanogaster! But why? I can see no reason for such a position.
> Similarly, Kim seems to see a problem here, and seems to think that if
> people start using Sophophora melanogaster, then the link will be lost to
> the huge pile of past literature dealing nominally with Drosophila
> melanogaster, as if we won't know that they are the same species! This also
> seems very strange to me!
> >
> > Stephen
> >
> > From: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
> > To: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> > Sent: Monday, 8 April 2013 7:39 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Generic type of large genus belongs in different
> genus
> >
> > It seems to me that this discussion makes a mockery of notion that
> nomenclature is separate from taxonomy. Once you have bionomial names, and
> insist on those names being "meaningful" (i.e., the genus name tells you
> something about relationships) then you have a recipe for instability.
> >
> > The ICZN decision regarding Drosophila melanogaster was the right one in
> my opinion, but for the wrong reasons. Why does it matter if Drosophila
> melanogaster sits in a phylogeny next to some Sophophora species? What
> matters is its relationships, not what we call it.
> >
> > Names are a poor way to convey relationships, why burden them with this
> role? If you have no other way of conveying relationships then perhaps the
> trade off between stability and meaning seems worthwhile. But we do have
> powerful ways of visualising relationships, so it seems perverse to
> continue to change names (thus annoying people who use them) in the hope
> that names remain "meaningful". We don't expect the name of an organism to
> be meaningful ("maximus" might not be the biggest species, "africanus"
> might come from Australia), can we not let this last scrap of meaning go
> and save us (and the wider community) some grief?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Rod
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------
> > Roderic Page
> > 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
> > Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> > Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> > Skype: rdmpage
> > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
> > Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> > Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com/
> > Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
> > Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderic_D._M._Page
> > Citations: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
> > ORCID id: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
> > Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
> >
> >
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> 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
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> Skype: rdmpage
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderic_D._M._Page
> Citations: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
> ORCID id: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
>
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
>

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Assistant Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017