Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

[David Campbell]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 4:49 AM Richard Pyle via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> I'm not going to dive into this thread too deeply, but I will say that
> using text-string scientific names as unique identifiers for computers is
> not a viable proposition.  Perhaps it made sense back in the previous
> century (pre-2000), but the idea of consistent scientific-name text strings
> for use as computer database identifiers is now long gone.
>
> The reality is that alternate spellings already exist in both paper and
> electronic form, so the job of the database is to track the variants and
> cross-link them. Think of scientific names more as "finding aids", rather
> than identifiers. It's not the case that we need to standardize on
> scientific name spellings in order to make our databases work; rather, our
> databases should be designed to obviate the need for consistent spelling.
> In other words, in the modern computer era, we should be aiming for a
> paradigm where gender agreement (or abandonment thereof) is irrelevant to
> accessing electronic information cross-linked to scientific names.  I think
> we're getting close to achieving that paradigm.
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
>
>
This is also critical to catching misspellings, which happen whether or not
gender agreement is used.  Of course, catching these properly will require
something more sophisticated than "these names are similar so they must be
the same"; databases are known to impose wrong corrections of this sort.

Given that gender agreement is in use, it is necessary to recognize names
that only differ by the gender ending as homonyms (in the non-technical
sense of treated as the same spelling; they could be variants of the same
name as well as homonyms in technical Code terms).  There are also examples
of incorrectly making things agree in gender, and cases that are not
clearly addressed by the current ICZN Code (don't know on botany).

A special case of non-code compliant changing a noun to agree in gender is
when the noun actually conveys Latin gender.  Unlike mistakenly assuming
that cylindrellus is an adjective, this happens in instances such as
species names ending in -tor and -trix, e.g. viator ("male traveller")
versus viatrix ("female traveller").  As nouns, they do not change to match
a change in genus.

A different sort of non-code compliant change is based on the argument that
the gender does not match biological reality, e.g., the historic argument
to change the snail genus Viviparus to Vivipara because females, not males,
give birth to live young.

A complication not yet addressed in the Code is how to handle mistakes in
gender form of honorifics, of the -i/-ae/-orum variety.  If an author
clearly identifies the honoree, but uses the incorrect ending, must the
ending be corrected?  If not, can one have palmeri and palmerae
nomenclaturally valid in the same genus, named for the same person?

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Associate Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
110 S Main St, #7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017