[tcs-lc] Misspelled Names and Orthographic Variants (Issue 005)

Richard Pyle deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
Thu Apr 28 15:49:39 PDT 2005


Roger,

A few notes on your comments embedded within the istance document:

> I am assuming we are talking botany because the way you
> cite the combination authors but the first two look zoological
> which confuses me.

I intentionally mixed & matched styles to ambiguate the Code.  Other than
the attribute "nomenclaturalCode", it shouldn't matter -- right?

> I have left out 15 as I don't know quite what you are on about here.

Suppose Smith describes two species: Aus bus and Aus fus.  Then Jones comes
along and decides that these should be treated as conspecifics, but are
worthy of recognition as distinct subspecies; so we have:

Aus bus subsp. bus Smith
Aus bus subsp fus Smith

[As I said, not sure whether Jones factors into the authorship in this case
for botanical purposes.]

Now suppose Brown comes along and mistakenly assigns nomenclatural priority
to Aus fus, and thus represents the same two subspecies as:

Aus fus subsp. fus Smith
Aus fus subsp. bus Smith

These are incorrect orhtographic variants (misassigned priorities).  In
ICZN, there are rules for establishing the priority (i.e., which one remains
as the valid species name, and which exists only as a subordinate
subspecies) -- I'm not sure how it works in botany (when both epithets are
created in the same publication).

It's not a common problem -- but one that I thought might help illuminate
the fundamental question of, "what is a NameObject?"

Rich




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