[Zoobank-list] Who needs author names? (was Re: abbreviations for author names)

Thu Mar 9 19:30:51 GMT 2006

I agree with Douglas,

I may add:

First. species are hipotheses about nature discontinuity. Different tools may provide different aggregations of what species are and today we may be very happy with DNA barcoding but there are many good examples where species limits are quite a problem. The systematic world knows the nightmares of "problem species". These are present in almost any major taxon. 

During the first years of DNA for phylogenetics some people claimed that "our problems were solved"; however, today we can read paper after paper struggling on the definition of a stable phylogenetic hipotheses. Certaintly, we have better tools but these are just that. 

Second. For a great number of the named species we just know that, a name; generic revisions are badly needed for hundreds of groups and this means that these species names are spread through literature worldwide. Without author and year indication how are we going to know where the descriptions are? 

Efforts such as Zoobank are an imperative for all of us but time will take to get it completed and these databases do not solve the species problems.

Carlos E. Sarmiento M.
Profesor Asistente
Instituto de Ciencias Naturales
Universidad Nacional de Colombia

----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 9, 2006 1:55 pm
Subject: [Zoobank-list] Who needs author names? (was Re: abbreviations for author names)

> Chris Thompson wrote:
> 
> >Users, such as birdwatchers, ecologists, epidemiologists, 
> >agriculturists, etc., only use VALID names and each of these are 
> >unique without authors.
> >
> >So, once homonyms are identified and resolved, then the junior 
> ones 
> >are no longer of any interest to any one except nomenclaturists.
> 
> I'm rather surprsied, Chris, that you would say this, after all 
> those 
> annual ECN meetings (for those unfamiliar, that's the 
> Entomological 
> Collections Network). Homonyms are a constant concern for every 
> single person who works with museum specimens - there isn't a 
> museum 
> in the world that's 100% up-to-date on the nomenclature of all the 
> taxa it contains, and I'd estimate that the average insect 
> collection 
> - yours in DC, mine, or anyone else's - has at *least* 10-30% of 
> the 
> specimens labeled with names that are no longer in use (mostly due 
> to 
> synonymy, admittedly, but new homonyms appear every day, too, as 
> we 
> build bigger and better databases of names - I've discovered 
> several 
> myself in just the last few months). It can take decades for a 
> specimen on a shelf to be re-examined by an expert, and if they 
> didn't have the author names appended, some of those specimens 
> could 
> sit forever with the wrong taxon name. Curators need author names, 
> and always will.
> 
> As for the birdwatchers and ecologists and agriculturists, they 
> may 
> have an even *worse* time of it if the literature doesn't use 
> author 
> names, specifically because so much of the older literature 
> contains 
> invalid names (most were valid *at the time of publication*).
> 
> As Donat Agosti wrote:
> 
> >But there is a sliver of silver on the night sky of systematics 
> you draw
> >so nicely, that is initiatives such as UBio or hopefully Zoobank, 
> where>you essentially type in any name and get out what all is 
> known about it
> >among its many versions. Especially, if we do have all our literature
> >open access, machine readable and online.
> 
> That is why I and others are hoping to promote the development of 
> ZooBank into precisely this sort of resource - to at least 
> *eventually* go beyond pure nomenclature, and tell people who 
> enter a 
> name into a search whether it is a homonym, synonym, or presently 
> in 
> use, and even how it should be spelled. If folks like me have our 
> way, it'll even tell users whether a name has been historically 
> misapplied, which is a very common problem that isn't 
> nomenclatural, 
> but makes a huge difference - for example, many museums contain 
> orchid bees labeled "Eulaema tropica (L.)", and there are many 
> literature references to this taxon - but it turns out to be a 
> misapplication, so while the *name* Apis tropica Linnaeus is a 
> synonym of Eufriesea surinamensis, all the *specimens* labeled as 
> tropica are actually Eulaema polychroma. We can eventually put 
> nice 
> tools to resolve such issues at people's disposal (and UBio's 
> Nomenclator Zoologicus is one such tool), but the problems will 
> never 
> go away completely.
> 
> Martin Spies added:
> 
> >In an ideal future situation - when all homonyms, etc., have been
> >resolved - we might be able to get by without information in 
> addition to
> >the bare scientific names. Such nirvana could be reached, e.g., if
> >ZooBank were established and extended all the way back to the 
> beginning>of zoological nomenclature, or if for each and every 
> group of animals an
> >Official List in the sense of the ICZN Code were established. 
> However,as everybody knows, we are far away from such a dream world.
> 
> We are not as far away as you might think. There are small chunks 
> of 
> the taxasphere for which these objectives have already been 
> largely 
> (or completely) achieved. The problem is bringing *everything* up 
> to 
> the same standards - and I think where Chris and I share 
> frustration 
> is that the bulk of this effort will, by definition, have to be 
> done 
> by entomological taxonomists, and - in addition to there not being 
> enough of us - we simply aren't being offered anywhere near the 
> kind 
> of support we need to do it. We could probably have a complete 
> Registry and Official List for vertebrates (including fossils) 
> within 
> a year, without inordinate amounts of time or money, but to try to 
> do 
> the same for arthropods requires literally orders of magnitude 
> more 
> in the way of resources. One of the resources that would help *me* 
> is 
> an online glossary of author name abbreviations, and that's what 
> got 
> this thread started. But, ultimately, the "distance" from us 
> having 
> our "dream world" is (in a practical sense) little more than the 
> distance from having someone give us - *collectively* - the 
> support 
> we need. As long as we all have to *compete* for limited 
> resources, 
> only a few institutions and a few taxa will have a chance to make 
> significant advances. If we could completely iron out one 
> average-sized insect family (which is roughly 3000 published 
> names) 
> per 6-month funding cycle (so the rate would be about 20 names 
> Registered per day), it would still take around 1000 years. Of 
> course, if we could support 500 taxonomists working at that pace, 
> then we could do it in two years.
> 
> We need to think of ways to promote that latter scenario. If 
> taxonomists could spend their time doing taxonomy instead of 
> writing 
> grant proposals, we'd be done in no time.
> 
> Sincerely,
> -- 
> 
> Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research 
> MuseumUniv. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not 
> UCR's)              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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