Taxacom: Clarification RE e-publication (zoology) - new name has ZooBank LSID (or doesn't), publication does

Tue Mar 28 01:49:26 CDT 2023

 I do use taxon authority the first time that I mention a name, though it isn't strictly necessary (the Code itself even states that it is optional), but my point is that there is a trend to blow the importance of this out of proportion. What we should be doing when using a name is simply citing relevant literature in the usual way in general science. We should only cite the original description if it contains some useful information about the taxon. Often, it does, but often, it does not. There is probably no useful information in Linnaeus (1758) about horses, or indeed much else, for example. When citing useful literature, one should cite it in the usual way, with the publication year being publication date in the general sense, not the date of publication according to the ICZN Code, if that is different. There is rarely any point at all in citing the taxon with both authority and date according the Code. That is just adding another level of complexity, for no gain.
Stephen
    On Tuesday, 28 March 2023 at 07:18:29 pm NZDT, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:  

 At the risk of a small amount of self-advertising...
>From "Harmonizing taxon names in biodiversity data: A review of tools, databases and best practices" by M. Grenié et al., 2022 in Methods in Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.13802) :
"We recommend keeping authorship, whenever possible, along [with] the taxon names because it decreases errors. Using taxa authorship information also disambiguates between accepted and synonyms names (e.g. the IRMNG referencing binomial homonyms, Rees, 2021)."
Actually I am not sure what the authors mean by the first statement! Maybe they mean that if the name is misspelled, having the associated authority is a useful pointer to what might be the intended correct spelling.
At any rate, Global Names Index, Catalogue of Life and its contributing partner databases, WoRMS, Zoological Record and much more all recognise that it is valuable to keep cited authorities together with their taxon names, as do ICZN Opinions, World Flora Online, and so on and so on (even though they are not mandatory). I believe taxonomic journals also typically mandate that the authority is given with any taxonomic name when first mentioned, even though subsequent usages may omit it.
Another way to look upon it (from a data management perspective) is that if the authority is stored along with the name itself, it is then trivial to crop off an authority from a taxon name (e.g. for presentation purposes) if one desires to do so for any reason, but much harder to add it if such has never been entered...
I think that I have said enough regarding this matter for now!
Regards - Tony

On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 at 14:17, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stephen,
I cannot disagree with your last point - just something that we have to live with at this time. Meanwhile regarding the value of authorities cited as portions of names ("namestrings") when used as identifiers for taxa, maybe we will just have to agree to disagree. I think my view is adequately represented by the examples given above, but you are of course entitled to your opinion.
Regards - Tony
On Tue, 28 Mar 2023, 1:58 pm Stephen Thorpe, <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:

 Hi Tony,
I am, of course, very much aware of homonymy and hemihomonymy, I just think that there are easier ways to deal with it. For one thing, context would make it clear if Agathis montana (plant) was being talked about, or Agathis montana (insect), or an author can make it clear which they mean to refer to, as I just did. What I disagree with is obsessing too much over the "correct" year of publication, for example, which can be far from straightforward to determine, when author alone is sufficient to disambiguate 99.9% of homonyms. In the few cases where author isn't sufficient, one could simply use a dummy disambiguation term, or a year which is not necessarily the "correct" year according to a strict interpretation of the Code.
There is also a complicating factor when publication dates according to the Code differ from actual publication dates in general publishing terms. Suppose Smith (2020) was published in the general publishing sense, online first, in 2020. Suppose firstly that it is all about ecology or physiology or something, not taxonomy. Then, if you want to cite some (nontaxonomic) info from it, you would cite it as Smith (2020). But now suppose that it is taxonomic and describes a new species Aus bus, online first, but forgot ZooBank preregistration, but a hard copy followed in 2021. How many taxonomists do you think are going to distinguish between the *two* publications, Smith (2020, online) and Smith (2021, print)? Very few, if any! There is no reason why you can't cite stuff about Aus bus Smith, 2021, by citing the information in Smith (2020). It all gets very messy, very quickly!
Cheers, Stephen
    On Tuesday, 28 March 2023 at 11:01:49 am NZDT, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:  

 Hi Stephen,
I agree that for binomial names the problem is not immediately obvious - although there are some well known cross-Code examples such as Agathis montana Shestakov, 1932 (a wasp) versus Agathis montana de Laub. (the Mount Panié kauri, a conifer). In fact the problem is more likely to be encountered in large genera such as Rosa (>5,000 species names); a search of resources such as The Plant List, or Plants of the World Online (POWO) soon picks up duplicated binomials such as (quick look) Rosa affinis Sternb., Rosa affinis A. Rau, Rosa affinis Gand. and Rosa affinis Godet - which name is what taxon today?
The problem really becomes most serious at the genus level and above (uninomials); last time I did a count in my own compilation, IRMNG, there were about 70,000 of these at genus level (i.e., names that were not unique) of approaching 500,000 names held (data available via "All Genera of the World" by myself and co-workers in Megataxa, 2020), or approximately 1 in 7, not even counting cross rank homonyms e.g. Anura (5 instances at genus level) vs. Anura Duméril, 1805, an amphibian order. You can generate lists of these (excepting the cross rank homonyms, and species-leve homonyms within the same genus instance) via the IRMNG "homonyms" page(s) accessed via https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2Fhomonyms.php&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C85f71d1c287a4b55dc0408db2f589635%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638155829750178181%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=DsKH5yDKxJ90tXtur12S%2FpN0qdlwanEHbnQiXRCjHtU%3D&reserved=0, or download the data and look around for yourself...
So from the above one can infer that for these 70,000+ duplicated instances of generic names, the associated authority (preferably plus year) is indeed important. In fact for the other 430,000 or so, it is also potentially still important since any of them may become a senior homonym of another newly published name with no notice, and thereafter require to be distinguishable as the senior homonym in each case.
Best - Tonyhttps://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C85f71d1c287a4b55dc0408db2f589635%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638155829750178181%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=k%2FcPKwuH44%2FxfBkJqb%2BQ5g8Dxrv%2BKQKc3yLN1D4Tz8w%3D&reserved=0

On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 at 06:45, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:

Tony, I’m not sure we live in the same “real world”, but, for me, what is important is to have a unique binomial for a given species (unique in the sense Th it only applies to one species, while that species may have several alternative binomials). Authorship and date are minor details, not to be bothered about most of the time. As an example, the binomial Homo sapiens is rarely fully cited with author or date, because there would be no point!
Stephen