[Taxacom] Unnecessary new replacement name

[Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz]

Dear (Zoo) Taxacomers,

I came across a case which could be summarized as:
"Genera *Aus* and *Bus* have the same type species *Aus aus* and are
objective synonyms. However, species *Bus cus* is not congeneric with *Aus
aus*. There is no available junior synonym of *Bus* to accommodate *Bus cus*.
Therefore, we rename *Bus* with the new replacement name *Cus*, with type
species *Bus cus*."
The situation above is clearly a misuse of new replacement names, as no
homonymy was implied and what should have been proposed and diagnosed is a
completely new generic name. The attempt of fixing *Bus cus* as type
species of *Cus* would also be incorrect, as generic replacement names
inherit the type species of the generic names which they replace. In this
case, *Cus* will have also *Aus aus* as type species and be an objective
synonym of both *Bus* and *Aus*.
The term "unnecessary substitute name" is mentioned in the ZooCode 4. The
related term "unnecessary replacement name" was used several times by
Bousquet (2012) (https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.245.3416). You could check
more genus rank examples in that work.
My question is: Would you agree with calling *Cus* "unnecessary new
replacement name" for precision?

Kind regards,

Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
FI-20014 University of Turku
Finland
Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
ResearchGate profile
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
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