Taxacom: Superfluous replacement names (Zoo Code)

[Douglas Yanega]

The distinction between an unjustified emendation and a replacement name 
is perhaps nowhere so blurry as with the works by Gistl (or Gistel), who 
routinely published "emendations" that bore no resemblance at all to the 
names that they were "emending".

In just one work alone, in 1848, he published around 500 new genus names 
for existing genera, some of which were slight variant spellings, but 
many of which were utterly disconnected from the existing names.

Cleopteryx for Drepana, Lacaena for Trachyderes, Epacmene for 
Catoxantha, Anthomanes for Pyrochroa, Megotaria for Mydas, Megemys for 
Chelonia, and on and on.

As far as I am aware, not one of these names is presently treated as 
valid. In fact, I can only find 4 valid names sourced to that 
publication, and those were entirely new names. Evidently, every other 
name was rubbish. It's a shame this work was never suppressed.

Despite being called emendations, these appear to be what people in this 
thread are referring to as superfluous replacement names. Gistl was by 
far the worst offender in this regard, though Rafinesque often did much 
the same thing. Authors like Agassiz and Gemminger & Harold were 
different in that their names typically *were* emendations, mostly just 
minor grammatical tweaks (like Dorcadium for Dorcadion, Georyssus for 
Georissus, "-myia" for "-mya", "-chirus" for "-cheirus", "Rhaphido-" for 
"Raphi-", etc.).

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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