Taxacom: Questions of homonymy of three genus names

[David Campbell]

Drawing attention to such cases of homonyms is also of particular value
because many major databases handle them quite badly, confusing them and
not having staffing and/or mechanisms to fix them.  One would hope that a
human can figure out that *Graphis* the lichen and *Graphis* the snail are
different, but a major database "corrected" showing a photo of the snail as
the lichen with showing a photo of the lichen as the snail.  Another, when
contacted about a homonym error, replied that it's the fault of one of the
sources, contact them.  Putting in the work to trace the sources verified
that it was the aggregator that had wrongly combined the two.  I am aware
of a few publications that "calibrated" molecular clocks based on rather
obvious homonym errors.

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