[Taxacom] unrecognizable species, what to do...

[Robin Leech]

Gentlemen, 
I believe that the Commission has to designate a specialist in the field in
question.  The specialist, in turn, will then designate a neotype.  I have
it in the back of my head that there is someone else in attendance during
the selection of the neotype.  I seem to recall, in reading over a neotype
designation that if topotypic material should be selected from, if possible.
Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Francisco
Welter-Schultes
Sent: September-25-13 3:25 PM
To: Neal Evenhuis
Cc: ICZN-list; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu; Lawrence Kirkendall
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] unrecognizable species, what to do...

I agree with Doug and others: the appropriate form to solve this problem is
to ask the Commission to set aside the existing types and to fix a neotype.

The other option which was proposed, would not work.

Declaration of a name as a nomen dubium is not a nomenclatural act. "Nomen
dubium" is only an informal term. Its meaning is "a name of unknown or
doubtful application".
It describes circumstances concerning the taxonomic identity of a name. It
is not possible to "declare" something as doubtful. Either something is
doubtful or not, this is inherent and only needs to be discovered.

Francisco


> Doug and others have responded to this stating that an application can 
> be made to the ICZN to designate a neotype, with which I wholly agree, 
> and Doug has further recommended pinning the type locality as close as 
> possible to the original type (type series).
>
> I would further strongly "recommend" -- as it is not discussed in the 
> Code
> -- to place that neotype in the same museum as the original type series.
> This would be a good idea for most neotypes, but especially in the 
> case of older (i.e, 18th, 19th century) well-known zoologists. In the 
> case of Westwood types, Oxford is the most logical place one would 
> look for a Westwood type and future workers on this beetle may not 
> know to look in two places for the old and 'new' type material.
>
> I'm cross-posting this to the ICZN list for the following reason:
>
> In addition, the way Article 75.5 is written: without specification 
> that neotype be deposited in the same institution as the original type 
> series that is alleged to be poorly preserved, it opens up the 
> potential for abuse where a taxonomist could add more types to his or 
> her collection by declaring the need for neotypes because of poorly 
> preserved collections, while depleting types from other collections or 
> causing confusion when a neotype is located in another collection from 
> where all the other types of an author may reside (what is this was 
> done to, say, Linnaeus types?).
> Probably will never happen much but it has happened, but when you 
> write laws, you need to be as forward thinking as possible to all 
> possibilities and minimize the potential for abuse of that law. I 
> would thuds recommend that Article 75.5 be reworded or at least 
> (although unfortunately
> unenforceable) a Recommendation be added to it to state the best way 
> to preserve such neotypes would be to place them in the same 
> depository as the original "alleged poorly" preserved type seres.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> -Neal
>
> On Stardate 9/25/13 2:34 AM, "Lawrence Kirkendall"
> <lawrence.kirkendall at bio.uib.no> wrote:
>
>>I am a new member of Taxacom, so I don't know if this has been 
>>discussed recently.
>>
>>As I understand it, one cannot normally designate a neotype when types 
>>can be found. But what do you do when your species, described in the  
>>19th century, turns out to be a species complex, and because of the 
>>poor condition of the syntypes one cannot safely attribute any 
>>particular individual to any of the clades you can now recognize as 
>>separate species? The example my colleagues and I are struggling with 
>>is Hypothenemus eruditus Westwood (1836), a 1 mm - long species which 
>>may well be the most abundant and widespread bark beetle on the 
>>planet. We can separate a number of clades out, using a combination of 
>>molecular  and morphological characters. Especially for such old 
>>mounted specimens, important diagnostic morphological characters for 
>>species in this genus (such the frons, or elytral puntures & setae) 
>>are frequently either hidden, worn, or at least partially covered with 
>>glue; in addition, old specimens are usually card-mounted, making even 
>>a visible frons almost impossile to view sufficiently well. The 
>>problem is not just with the syntype series for eruditus Westwood; the 
>>current catalog lists 75 synonyms, and my suspicion is that it is 
>>going to be hopeless, trying to associate the clades we can (finally) 
>>now recognize with older, synonymized names--especially bearing in 
>>mind that the species is globally distributed!
>>
>>What do aphidologists or acarologists do, in a species complex, if 
>>slide mounts have darkened to the point where critical characters can 
>>no  longer be discerned, assuming that sufficiently detailed drawings 
>>do not exist?
>>
>>Thanks for any advice,
>>Lawrence Kirkendall
>>
>>
>>Prof. Lawrence Kirkendall
>>Department of Biology
>>Univ. Bergen
>>Thormøhlensgt 53a
>>N-5006 Bergen, Norway
>>
>>MAILING ADDRESS:
>>Department of Biology
>>Postboks 7803
>>5020  BERGEN
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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.
>
>
> This message is only intended for the addressee named above.  Its 
> contents may be privileged or otherwise protected.  Any unauthorized 
> use, disclosure or copying of this message or its contents is 
> prohibited.  If you have received this message by mistake, please 
> notify us immediately by reply mail or by collect telephone call.  Any 
> personal opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily 
> represent the views of the Bishop Museum.
> _______________________________________________
> 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.
>



_______________________________________________
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.