Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829

Fri Sep 1 03:41:22 CDT 2023

Marco, I am sympathetic to your point of view, but we need to be pragmatic. I suspect that 99% of taxonomists will be of the opposite opinion. They will look at each individual new species and see nothing to indicate conditional proposal for any of them. To some extent, this may be due to the current practice of extracting "treatments" from publications, as if these were stand alone entities, which, of course, they are not, but busy taxonomists simply aren't going to want to spend that much time nitpicking large whole works (imagine a work of hundreds of pages in which one sentence anywhere in the work could potentially invalidate all of the proposed new species!). However, if the ICZN were of a mind to invalidate Sharkey et al.'s new taxa, they could do so using your suggested interpretation of the Code.Cheers, Stephen    On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 08:25:57 pm NZST, Marco Uliana <marco.uliana.1 at gmail.com> wrote:  

 Thanks Stephen. But, why should one argue that such a statement should be done for a "particular" name?
Were all names treated in the same way in that work, including predictive analysis of potential synonymy? I think so.
If we assume that there was a conditional proposal (i.e. according to the glossary, a reservation about the correctness of names), then it is for each of them.
To me, writing that there are potential synonyms that you did not care to check, equals to state that you are not sure whether the names you propose are correct or not.

You wrote: So, they might have said "Only one of the following new species is in fact already described". Did you want to imply "and each of our names can apply to it" ?
Sorry, I can't help but see it this way :-)

ᐧ
Il giorno ven 1 set 2023 alle ore 09:49 Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> ha scritto:

 Marco,Putting it another way, they can be interpreted as saying that each of their new names is *potentially* conditionally proposed, but they don't actually conditionally propose any particular name. If you were to be ultra-pedantic, you could I suppose argue that *potentially* conditionally proposed collapses to simply be equivalent to conditionally proposed, but then we are getting into a level of pedantry that 99.9% of taxonomists are vener going to approach when trying to apply the Code, so it is all just "dust in the wind"!Stephen
    On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 07:38:18 pm NZST, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

Marco,There is no objective right or wrong interpretation of the Code on this issue. One could argue that since no *particular* new name was conditionally proposed, they are all available. So, they might have said "Only one of the following new species is in fact already described", without specifying which one. This wouldn't, in my view, make them *all* conditional!Cheers, Stephen    On Friday, 1 September 2023 at 07:04:08 pm NZST, Marco Uliana via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

 Thanks Richard.

About the second point you raised ("code warriors"), I think ICZN should be
considered just as a working tool that taxonomists are required to apply.
Application of rules should not be dependent on how much addressees are
aware of, willing to cope with, or on what one assumes to be correct "by
default".

Getting back to the specific case, I find unquestionable that each name was
proposed conditionally, since doubt on potential synonymy was expressed
collectively.
See also 11.5, "*Names to be used as valid when proposed*"
*"valid"*, from the ICZN glossary: "*in the case of a name, which is the
correct name of a taxon in an author's taxonomic judgment*"
>From Sharkey: "*few synonyms will be generated in our current effort*", "*The
probability of any of these [already described] ten species being in the
current revision can be estimated [...]*".

In my view, these sentences are not consistent with "Sharkey judged that
each name he proposed was the correct name for the taxon", that is what the
code requires.
Rather, they fit much better with "Sharkey did not judge his names
correct (sensu ICZN), as this would have required coordinating them with
the pre-existing ones he choosed not to apply".

Marco

Il giorno gio 31 ago 2023 alle ore 19:14 Richard Pyle <
deepreef at bishopmuseum.org> ha scritto:

> Two things:
>
> 1) I didn't see Thomas Pape's reply along the lines of Art. 15.1 before
> sending my missive, but I'm happy to see we agree on how to interpret that
> Article (though I do acknowledge there is a potentially legitimate
> alternative interpretation)
>
> 2) My SINCERE apologies to those who read the Digest version of this
> list!  I will try to be better about trimming the superfluous "fat" of
> quoted and re-quoted prior messages when I respond to threads like this.
>
> 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
> eMail: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
> BishopMuseum.org
> Our Mission: Bishop Museum inspires our community and visitors through the
> exploration and celebration of the extraordinary history, culture, and
> environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
> > Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2023 7:09 AM
> > To: 'Stephen Thorpe' <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; 'Marco Uliana'
> > <marco.uliana.1 at gmail.com>
> > Cc: 'Taxa com' <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>; 'Carlos Alberto Martínez
> > Muñoz' <biotemail at gmail.com>
> > Subject: RE: Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829
> >
> > > My personal view on this situation is to simply chose a justifiable
> > > interpretation of the Code and run with it.
> >
> > I always advocate that, when there is obvious doubt or acknowledged
> > ambiguity in the Code, one should always err on the side of "assuming
> it's
> > available unless there is a clear and explicit reason why it fails to
> fulfill some
> > criterion of the Code".
>
>
> ᐧ
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