[SEEK-Taxon] RE: LC/TCS - How many schemas?

[Richard Pyle]

Paul wrote:

> Recalling the old addage that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', and
wearing
> my pedants hat let me repeat the following. The only fully justified use
of a
> scientific name (of a species) is in the context of reference to the name
bearing
> type.

I would qualify this by clarifying a very strict interpretation of the word
"fully", and by extending it to all names governed by Codes of nomenclature
(not just species).

I believe that *any* use of a scientific name carries with it that the
concept it is intended to represent encompasses the primary type specimen;
whether or not a specific reference to the name-bearing type is included
within the usage.  The exceptions to this are "misidentifications" (as
distinct from subjective taxonomic judgments).  In my mind, a
misidentification is an instance when the person who used the name, would
not have included the primary type specimen of that name within the
circumscription of the concept that the name was used to represent. (It's SO
difficult to make statements of this sort without them sounding hopelessly
convoluted!)

> Hence all homotypic names should, other things being equal, carry the same
concept.

I think this also needs qualification:  They should only carry the same
concept in a concurrent context.  If name "A" is a homotypic synonym of Name
"B", then any particular usage of name "A" should automatically be assumed
to have a precisely congruent concept with the name "B" *in the context of
the same usage*.  Exceptions, again, would be misidentifications (which
would be an "excludes" relationship between the two concepts).  There really
should never be a situation of a "contains/contained in" or "overlaps"
between two homotypic synonyms.

Having said that, we should also acknowledge that Author "X" might use name
"A" for one concept circumscription, and Author "Y" might use the same name
"A" to represent a *different* concept circumscription.  As long as both
concept circumscriptions overlap minimally at the primary type specimen,
then these are both Code-compliant, subjectively different concepts; neither
of which is a misidentification.  While "A SEC. X" should in all cases be a
congruent concept with "B SEC. X" (and similarly "A SEC. Y" should be
congruent with "B SEC. Y"), it is NOT the case that "A SEC. X" is
necessarily congruent with "B SEC. Y".

The point is:
IF
	A & B are homotypic names
  AND
	"A Sec. X" circumscribes a different scope of
	organisms (different taxonomic concept) than "B SEC. Y"
THEN
	"A Sec. X" is NOT congruent with "B SEC. Y", even though
	both names are homotypic.

Perhaps this is what you meant by "other things being equal"?  If so, then
as Walter also pointed out, I think that (in zoology, at least) there will
be many, MANY more than 0.0001% of cases where all things are *not* equal.

> This is one part of what LC is about because the concept doesn't have to
be defined.

-- or even implied.

> All other uses of that name (i.e. not with reference to the name bearing
type) are
> sensu that name by the user. For example, Jessie and Walter are Homo
sapiens sensu
> Kirk 2005 ;-) One of my 'fears' of TCS is that however elegantly we model
> 'Kirk 2005' it's about as useful as an underwater hair drier and my 'fear'
is that
> 99.9999% of the concepts we model are of equal use.

Not sure I follow.  I wouldn't say that 99.9999% of hominid taxonomists who
draw slightly different lines between, say, H. sapiens and H. erectus (or H.
floresensis, for that matter) are as useless as an underwater hair dryer (I
like that, by the way!!)

> Let me repeat again, taxonomy (concept articulation) comes before
nomenclature.

Agreed.

> With this in mind the question Jessie poses to Walter is a non question.
From
> the above a scientific name absolutely does have a concept - that
articulated
> by the author of the name in the protologue and based on the name bearing
type!

The only thing special about the "Original Concept" (the concept used by the
author who first established/proposed a code-compliant name) is that it
anchors the name to a type specimen (not even true in all cases -- but when
a type is fixed by a later author, great pains are taken to ensure that the
neotype would have been considered by the original author to have been
within the original concept).  But a type specimen does not define a
concept -- it only defines *one representative* of that concept.

I like to visualize specimens as dots, and concepts as circles that
circumscribe multiple dots.  An original concept is special in that it fixes
a name to a particular dot. But there is absolutely nothing special (from a
code perspective) about how the original author of the name draws the circle
around that dot (provided the dot is somewhere within the circle).  It might
have been a large circle, or a small circle. The type-specimen dot might be
at the center of the circle, or way off to one side or the other.  The Code
(and LC) doesn't care about the size or position of the original circle
(except in the particular case of neotype designation, where the Code
sort-of does care) -- it carries no special meaning that is any different
from other larger or smaller circles drawn by later workers, except in that
it defines the dot where all possible circles (concepts) using the same
"name" (or set of names based on the same basionym in the botany world)
should minimally overlap.

So, yes -- all authors of protologues had a concept (circle) in mind when
they established a new name (basionym) -- but how the borders of that circle
were defined by the basionym author have no bearing whatsoever on
Code-mandated rules of nomenclature (except that the primary type specimen
"dot" must be somewhere within the circle). Maybe I misunderstand
non-zoological Codes of nomenclature -- so my sweeping statements could be
wrong for other Codes (but I don't think so).

This is why I have continued to emphasize in various discussion groups that
"Aus bus Smith" is NOT the same as "Aus bus Smith SEC. Smith".  The former
is a name object, whose only connection with the biological world is via the
primary type specimen (i.e., its anchored to a dot).  The latter is a
concept object, which represents the "circle" that Smith drew around the
type-specimen dot (and many other dots that were not the type specimen) for
the name that he first established. The former is in the domain of LC, the
latter is in the domain of TCS outside of LC.

The LC name object "Aus bus Smith" is a re-usable object for many TCS
concept objects, of which "Aus bus Smith SEC. Smith" is but one.  The same
name object can be re-used for all of these concept objects:

- Aus bus Smith SEC. Smith
- Aus bus Smith SEC. Jones
- Aus bus Smith SEC. Brown

One of the fundamental issues that we need to formally resolve is how to
deal with new combinations, such as "Xus bus (Smith) Pyle".

In the botanical view, this would represent a distinct name object from "Aus
bus Smith".  So you would have the following (elaborated) Concept objects:

- Xus bus (Smith) Pyle SEC. Pyle
  (secondarily pointing to "Aus bus Smith" name object as basionym)

- Xus bus (Smith) Pyle SEC. Kirk
  (secondarily pointing to "Aus bus Smith" name object as basionym)

In my view (which I think is more reflective of zoological practice), it
makes for better information management logic to *not* treat "Xus bus
(Smith) Pyle" as a distinct name object from "Aus bus Smith", and
secondarily flag Pyle's usage of Smith's "bus" as the first one to combine
it with the genus "Xus".  Thus, we would have elaborated concepts that look
more like this:

- Aus bus Smith SEC. Pyle
  (secondarily pointing to "Xus SEC. Pyle" as the "parent",
  from which the combination name "Xus bus (Smith) Pyle" is
  calculated, and flagging as the "first use" of the combination)

- Aus bus Smith SEC. Kirk
  (secondarily pointing to "Xus SEC. Kirk"  as the "parent",
  from which the combination name "Xus bus (Smith) Pyle" is
  calculated)

I have to confess that writing out as I did above doesn't, at face value,
lend support to my contention that this represent "better information
management logic" -- but I think that's an artifact of how I chose to
elaborate it. Both approaches allow a simple piece of software to render the
full name text (with authorship) exactly as we want it to be rendered -- so
the differences between the two have very little to do with how a human will
interact with the data.  The differences are entirely about how computers
interact with the data (which, I think, should be the overriding
consideration when developing an XML schema).

The reasons why I favor the latter approach include:
- Fewer name objects overall (i.e., only the basionyms; not all the
subsequent combinations), and therefore name objects are more "reusable".

- More consistent logic of hierarchy (i.e., same rules can be applied all
the way from Kingdom to infrasubspecific taxa)

- More direct connection between "Aus bus Smith" and "Xus bus (Smith) Pyle"
as being homotypic.

That last point, I think, is the most important one -- because it seems to
me to be a MUCH more fundamental piece of nomenclatural information that
"'Aus bus Smith' and 'Xus bus (Smith) Pyle' are homotypic", than the fact
that "Pyle was the first author to place the species epithet established as
'Aus bus' by Smith into the genus 'Xus'".  Treating "Xus bus (Smith) Pyle"
as a name object distinct from "Aus bus Smith" places more emphasis on
acknowledging that Pyle was the first to use this combination, than it
places on acknowledging that the name "Xus bus" as used by Pyle is homotypic
with name "Aus bus" as used by Smith. I would rather make sure we
communicate the latter piece of information, than the former.

Aloha,
Rich

P.S. Just remember -- it took me much loner to write this, than it took you
to read it! :-)

Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Database Coordinator for Natural Sciences
Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/pylerichard.html