[Taxacom] Fwd: New species of the future

Wed Oct 30 02:27:19 CDT 2013

Flogging this to death, I know, but please note that I am not saying that it needs to be corrected because it is incorrectly transliterated Latin. I am saying that it needs to be corrected because of Art. 31.2 (gender agreement). In the special case of incorrectly transliterated species epithets, they may, as in this case, not have any defined gender, so fail gender agreement (31.2). An -us suffix in itself means nothing. The epithet headsus has no defined gender.

At any rate, in practical terms we can just stick with the original spelling until such time, if ever, as someone publishes an emendation. If they don't do so, then no real harm. Only for very precise work, we cannot claim that the name is well-formed, nor ascribe to it a gender.

Stephen

From: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 8:06 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: New species of the future

Stephen,

No, I think Gary is correct. The -us ending here is a 'latinised'
(neolatin) adjective, not classical Latin. There are plenty of precedents,
e.g. Caprimulgus monticolus Franklin 1831, Parus monticolus Vigors 1831,
Sorex monticolus Merriam 1890, Neusticomys monticolus Anthony 1921, Ellipes
monticolus Günther 1977, Bicyclus sylvicolus Condamine 1961, Molophilus
sylvicolus Alexander 1924 (New Zealand tipulid), Leptotyphlops sylvicolus
Broadley & Wallach 1997. It's a modern error in terms of classical Latin,
as Robert Mill pointed out, but in zoology it's not to be corrected.

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>wrote:

> Not so fast! If your neo-Latin digression is, as you say "not relevant",
> then your argument is this:
>
>  In ancient Latin, -cola was a noun suffix; the adjectival form was
> -colaris (e.g., agricolaris)...Article 31.2 applies to adjectives, not
> suffixes and "-colus" is not a Latin adjective under the Code. Article 31.2
> is still relevant however-- "Cavernicolus" is a latinized adjective, since
> the authors gave it an adjectival definition, and used the ending "-us". If
> it is later combined with a feminine genus, it should become "cavernicola".
> The authors could also have named the species "Eupolybothrus cavernicola",
> which would have made the name invariant, but the Code does not require
> this.
>
> This suggests that the spelling should be corrected to cavernicolaris,
> this being the correct adjectival form of the species epithet for the
> masculine gender. I dispute that just sticking an -us on the end makes it
> masculine, any more than rosenbergus would be a "latinized adjective".
> Unless it is emended to cavernicolaris, it cannot be said that there is
> gender agreement with the original genus, as required by Art. 31.2
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stephen
>
> From: "Rosenberg,Gary" <rosenberg.ansp at drexel.edu>
> To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 4:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] New species of the future
>
>
> Eupolybothrus cavernicolus is correctly formed under the zoological Code.
> In ancient Latin, -cola was a noun suffix; the adjectival form was -colaris
> (e.g., agricolaris). In neo-Latin (e.g., Brown, Composition of Scientific
> Words) -cola can be an adjectival suffix, with standard endings (-us, -a,
> -um). The Code (glossary) defines Latin as ancient and mediaeval Latin, so
> the neo-Latin usage is not relevant. Article 31.2 applies to adjectives,
> not suffixes and "-colus" is not a Latin adjective under the Code. Article
> 31.2 is still relevant however-- "Cavernicolus" is a latinized adjective,
> since the authors gave it an adjectival definition, and used the ending
> "-us". If it is later combined with a feminine genus, it should become
> "cavernicola". The authors could also have named the species "Eupolybothrus
> cavernicola", which would have made the name invariant, but the Code does
> not require this.
>
> By the way, Jeff Nekola and I described the snail Vertigo marciae earlier
> this year, reporting Recent and fossil specimens, with a phylogenetic
> placement based on DNA sequences.
> http://sev.lternet.edu/~jnekola/nekola%20pdf/naut-127-107-114.pdf.Whatotherinstances are there like this?
>
> Gary Rosenberg
> Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
> Drexel University
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:
> taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
> Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:46 PM
> To: Doug Yanega
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] New species of the future
>
> Just to be absolutely clear:
>  31.2. Agreement in gender. A species-group name, if it is or ends in a
> Latin or latinized adjective or participle in the nominative singular, must
> agree in gender with the generic name with which it is at any time combined.
>
> My understanding (which may be wrong) is that if, as Doug seems to, you
> think cavernicolus was intended to be adjectival in this case, then the
> correct adjectival forms relative to gender are cavernicola (masculine),
> cavernicola (neuter) and cavernicola (feminine). Art 31.2 would therefore
> appear to require correction of cavernicolus, in this case, to cavernicola,
> even in the original combination ('at any time combined').
>
> The alternative interpretation would be to claim that although cavernicola
> is almost always used as a noun in apposition (why??), it can also be used
> as an adjective with "standard" -us, -um, or -a suffixes. But I see no
> evidence for this!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stephen
>
> From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
> To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 1:01 PM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] New species of the future
>
>
>
> On 10/29/13 4:14 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
> On the other hand, although incorrect latinization is not a problem per
> se, gender disagreement might be, even for an original combination? Since
> cavernicola is gender invariant, it should be spelled cavernicola in
> combination with any generic name, including Eupolybothrus.
> Nope. Original spelling can't be overruled for this, because
> "cavernicolus" cannot be assumed to be a noun; the authors' comments
> apparently indicate it is an adjectivized form. If the original combination
> had used "cavernicola" instead, in the absence of any statements from the
> author(s), THEN it would be invariant.
>
> 32.3. Preservation of correct original spelling. The correct original
> spelling of a name is to be preserved unaltered, except where it is
> mandatory to change the suffix or the gender ending under Article 34 (for
> treatment of emendations and incorrect subsequent spellings see Articles
> 32.5, 33.2, 33.3, 33.4)
> >What 32.3 refers to here (explicitly) is Article 34, which defines what
> happens when a species is moved into a different genus (or rank). This does
> not refer to changing the spelling while it is still in its original genus,
> though that is (very occasionally) necessary, when authors don't do their
> homework and are mistaken about the gender of the genus in which they are
> naming taxa.
>
> This is why we need an exhaustive registry of names; it should not be
> required for every taxonomist to be a Latin scholar. You should be able to
> simply look up any given genus in a list, and see what gender it is, who
> the author was, what its type species is, what the originally included taxa
> were, etc., and likewise look up any given species in a list, and see
> whether it is a noun or an adjective, what its type depository is, what the
> type locality is, who the author was, etc. Once ONE person has recorded
> these parameters, there needs to be a mechanism by which the record is
> SHARED (at which point it would be reviewed for accuracy), and once
> reviewed, it would be archived publicly into perpetuity, instead of forcing
> each taxonomist from now until the end of time to do the same detective
> work over and over again. To some extent, this function is part of the
> Lists of Accepted Names (LANs) presently built into the Code (Article 79),
> but the mechanism is
>  FAR too cumbersome to be practical given the scope of what is needed.
> What we want, ideally, is for the LANs to contain every name ever
> published, but the way Article 79 is now written, that is not possible. A
> resource like ZooBank might serve this purpose, but (as noted in the other
> unwieldy thread) having redundant lists is wasteful, and ZooBank does not
> represent a definitive Commission-sanctioned list, as the LANs do.
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology      Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314    skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (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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-- 
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My recent books:

*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics.* 2012.* *University of
California Press, Berkeley.

*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Available January
2014. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

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