Taxacom: a class of errors in Worms (and similar databases)

[Tony Rees]

Thanks Doug, also to Elisa Rost, who alerted me to a similar possibility in
botany:
-----------------
Please notice ICN Art. 55.3 and Art. 55 Ex. 4:
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So the initially advised situation can occur legitimately it seems, but
perhaps not that frequently.

I guess I had more in mind the situation that I have encountered more
commonly, where in the earliest publication neither the genus nor its
included species were made available (=validly published in botany) but
subsequently made available by another taxonomic act (in a later year for
convenience of disambiguation by year, but not always), but as per these
examples, sometimes it is just the genus that is not properly published,
but the species is OK and can be available from that date even though the
genus is not.

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
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On Tue, 25 Feb 2025 at 03:39, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> On 2/23/25 9:54 AM, Tony Rees via Taxacom wrote:
> > Dear Erikjan,
> >
> > I believe you are right. I cannot think of a circumstance where a species
> > name without parentheses in the authorship should have an earlier year
> than
> > its containing genus, so that should be a sign that something is
> incorrect.
> > My database (https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C72b0c4e171684b0f61e608dd54f6db1b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638760141417241131%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EWA9zFV2fNPZMp45l9ICRglgsrsSS1lDDl1qRCcQgpw%3D&reserved=0) has inherited a large number of
> species
> > binomials from other systems, but they have not undergone rigorous
> checking
> > in this respect and possibly never will, until we have resources to
> devote
> > to that task. But for other systems with more available editor effort,
> this
> > could certainly be a consideration for auto-checking, I would say.
> >
> > Regards - Tony
>
> There is at least one situation where this is possible: Article 11.9.3.1
> allows a species name to be made available even when the genus name it
> is combined with is not. So, if the first publication of a name (in
> toto) did not make the *genus* name available, but the *species* name
> was made available, then if someone later validated the exact same genus
> name, you CAN have a species name that is older than the genus, and yet
> not in parentheses.
>
> The comment later in the thread about there being a "blind spot" in BHL
> such that it will report occurrences of genus names prior to
> their recognized publication also runs into this same issue: genus names
> sometimes appear in print *before* they are made available. So, using
> the recognized date of a genus name as a cutoff would make it impossible
> to locate records of nomina nuda that preceded the availability of that
> same name.
>
> In entomology, these sorts of scenarios play out with some frequency,
> especially regarding works by certain authors (e.g., Dejean and Chevrolat).
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314  voicemail:951-827-8704
> FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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