[Taxacom] Thesis and new species

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "Richard Pyle" <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 7:09 PM

> The ICodeZN errs on the side of inclusion of works as being "published" --
> in part to preserve stability of early names that were established through
> works that were published in a manner not too dissimilar from you
> hypothetical example.

***
Which is why the ICNafp has different requirements for
effective publication, depending on the time something
was / is published.
* * *

[...]
> What we REALLY need is to abandon this silly notion that animals, algae,
> fungi, and plants somehow require different rules of nomenclature based on
> some aspect of their biology, rather than as an artifact of a long legacy
> of  tradition (again, I can't speak for bacteria here, because a case can
> be made that their biology is significantly different).  A lot of effort
> was put into the notion of a unified "BioCode", but this seems to have
> been deemed politically unpalatable to too many individual end-users.

***
I don't see that much effort was put into the draft BioCode,
just enough to have a draft, but not enough to make it work.
But I agree it seems unlikely that there will be a switch to a
unified BioCode for the foreseeable future. On the other hand,
there is perhaps less difference now between the rules for
fungi names and for plant names than there had been for a
long time.
* * *

> The answer is obvious, and essentially inevitable: a unified online
> nomenclatural registry, that is structurally separated from (but tightly
> cross-linked to) the traditional publication process.  The new ICEN
> (International Code of Eukaryotic Nomenclature) need only have two
> Articles:
>
> Article 1: To be available, a new scientific name must be registered.
> Article 2: See Article 1.

***
That is an oversimplification. If there was such a registry lots of rules
would still be involved, which might have the form of a Code or of
a manual for registration.

It seems rather uncertain to me if we will really have registration
for everything. We seem to be somewhat moving in that direction,
but only somewhat. A few years ago the zoological Code was set
to introduce registration across the board soon, but nothing came
of it? Except for e-only publication, of course.

Paul