[Taxacom] [iczn-list] Sharkey et al., Costa Rica Braconidae

[Richard Pyle]

Hi John,

 

In the context of the ICZN Code; the Code’s Glossary already has definitions for “Description”, “Definition”, “Characters”, and “Differentiate”:

 

description, n.

A statement in words of taxonomic characters of a specimen or a taxon [Arts. 12, 13].

 

definition, n.

A statement in words that purports to give those characters which, in combination, uniquely distinguish a taxon [Arts. 12, 13].

 

character, n.

Any attribute of organisms used for recognizing, differentiating, or classifying taxa.

 

differentiate, v.

To distinguish something (e.g. a taxon) from others [Art. 13]. See also definition.

 

No definitions outside the Code have relevance in terms of interpreting the rules of the Code with respect to these four words.  Therefore, if your interest is in determining Code compliance, your Pass/Fail assessments for these four words would need to be applied in the context of the above definitions.

 

The word “word” in the context of Art. 13.1.1 is not defined in the Code – which is why that was the term that most people focused on during the recent discussion.

 

Aloha,

Rich

 

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Senior Curator of Ichthyology | Director of XCoRE

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, HI 96817-2704

Office: (808) 848-4115;  Fax: (808) 847-8252

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From: iczn-list <iczn-list-bounces at afriherp.org> On Behalf Of John Noyes
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 1:17 AM
To: iczn-list at afriherp.org; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [iczn-list] Sharkey et al., Costa Rica Braconidae

 

 

Hi All,





Sorry for the cross-posting.





I have been puzzling over the article describing over 400 new species of Costa Rica Braconidae from COI data by Sharkey et al. (2021. ZooKeys 1013:1-665) and how I would treat the new names had they been proposed within the Chalcidoidea. Until recently, I was the sole person responsible for maintaining the Universal Chalcidoidea Database, a taxonomic database of a group of insects related to the Braconidae and of similar size, but perhaps less well known. Thankfully, this is no longer the case and such decisions are now the responsibility of others. My initial reaction to the article was similar to that of the vast majority the contributors to the ICZN-list and Taxacom. However, I think it is important to be objective in the application of the ICZN and not be biased by personal preferences. So here is my considered opinion and some selected comments for what they are worth.  

 

Article 13.1.1 states that for a name to be available it must “be accompanied by a description or definition that states in words characters that are purported to differentiate the taxon”. There has been much discussion on Taxacom with regards to the meaning of this article mostly around the meaning of “word”.  I have gone a little further by checking the meaning of other important words using a consensus of several web-based dictionaries as well as some printed dictionaries that are available to me (Oxford, Chambers): 

Description – a  <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/statement> statement that  <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tell> tells what something  is like.  A list composed of only four different letters hardly tells us what something is like. It is a sequence of abbreviations for names of amino acids. In itself the sequence has no meaning because currently it cannot be translated directly into characters that are understandable to humans, especially morphology, biology or behaviour.   FAIL 

Definition – a statement that explains the meaning of a word or phrase/ a description of a thing according to its properties. The species treatments do not include an explanation of the meaning of the COI sequence in terms of characters that humans can understand. FAIL 

Words – a single unit of language [in print separated of by spaces] that has meaning and can be spoken or written. Strictly speaking this probably passes the test because each letter represents the name of an amino acid and thus a word. However splitting hairs, it could be argued that it is equivalent to listing the character states of animals using only letters (e.g. HYTBGBFSCTMTT ) which, without explanation, would be (and is) completely meaningless. Splitting hairs even more, if the base pair sequence is copied into WORD and a word count undertaken the result is given only as one word because there is no separation of each unit by spaces (see definition of a word). The code states that the description must be in “words” not a single word. PASS/FAIL. 

Characters – a characteristic, especially one that assists in the identification of a species. There is a fundamental difference in the definition of a “character” between morphological and molecular taxonomists. To a strict morphological taxonomists a character is a single morphological entity, whilst to a molecular taxonomist a character is a single base.  To most morphological taxonomists a single base simply cannot in itself represent a character because it cannot be translated into a morphological character (that would be true even to a molecular taxonomist). PASS/FAIL    

Differentiate - identify differences between two or more things. The genetic sequence in itself does not differentiate between two species because, in this instance, the differences are not identified. It is equivalent to providing a list of the coordinates of the exact positioning of hundreds of hairs on the leg of an insect without identifying the seven or eight coordinates that may be meaningful. FAIL 

Based on this rough analysis, it is my opinion that the 337 new names unaccompanied by a diagnosis in the article by Sharkey et al are unavailable because they fail to meet the requirements of availability as stated in the Fourth Edition of the Code on at least three counts. The 66 names accompanied by an acceptable diagnosis are available. 

I believe that the authors have missed an excellent chance to demonstrate the utility of morphological species diagnoses combined with COI BIN allocation or other molecular data. The authors say that, with so many species left to describe, it would be too slow to include morphological data. That is incorrect. Yes, it might take a little longer (much less than twice as long) to include morphological information but certainly not at least a degree of magnitude longer as they seem to imply. Given that there are 20 authors contributing to the article, if each species were accompanied by a good ten-line diagnosis, then between them they could provide a diagnosis of every species included in this article within five days. However, as only four of the authors are recognised experienced braconid taxonomists this would mean slightly longer, but this could be completed by them easily within 25 days.  

If we accept this type of taxonomy (and there are many more shortcomings than those described above) we might as well go the whole way and generate descriptions/validations of new taxa and names entirely by computer. This moment may come, but I do not think the world is not ready for this irreversible jump over the cliff just yet. 

John