James Jobling
Well-known member
Alas, I no longer have any old issues of the Archives.
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Taxonomy in-flux updates (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Mysticete
- Start date
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
Who is its type species?
l_raty
laurent raty
Dysporus is usually regarded nowadays as a new name for Sula Brisson 1760, which Illiger rejected as one of the “N. g. quae ex graeca vel latina lingua radicem non habent”, on p. XVII of his work : Caroli Illigeri ... Prodromus systematis mammalium et avium - Biodiversity Heritage Library . Thus it takes the same type as Brisson's name.
(The usually accepted type fixations of Brisson's names are not Code compliant.)
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
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l_raty
laurent raty
If I apply the Code, I end up with this :
Sula Brisson 1760 : t.1 (1760) - Ornithologie, ou, Méthode contenant la division des oiseaux en ordres, sections, genres, especes & leurs variétés - Biodiversity Heritage Library
No originally included nominal species cited by an available name.
First inclusion of species, in volume VI : t.6;Suppl.:t.6 (1760) - Ornithologie, ou, Méthode contenant la division des oiseaux en ordres, sections, genres, especes & leurs variétés - Biodiversity Heritage Library
(NB -- The 6 volumes of the Ornithologie are often regarded as having been published simultaneously, but reviews in the contemporary literature contradict this. Brisson's own species names are not available, hence cannot act as generic types (and they are not cited from a pre-1758 source, hence they can play no role whatsoever in a type fixation by Linnaean tautonymy either). In the two last volumes of his work, Brisson cited available names from the 10th ed of Linnaeus' Systema naturae in his synonymies.
Nominal species eligible to become the type : Pelecanus piscator Linnaeus 1758 (in the synonymy of Brisson's "Le Fou", "Sula"), P. bassanus Linnaeus 1758 (in the synonymy of "Le Fou de Bassan", "Sula Bassana"), P. aquilus Linnaeus 1758 (in the synonymy of "La Frégate", "Fregata").
The type is Pelecanus bassanus Linnaeus 1758 by subsequent designation of Gray 1840.
Morus Vieillot 1816 : Analyse d'une nouvelle ornithologie élémentaire
No originally included nominal species cited by an available name ("Fou de Bassan" does not qualify).
First inclusion of nominal species in Vieillot 1817 : t.12 (1817) - Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle - Biodiversity Heritage Library
Nominal species eligible to become the type : Morus sula, M. bassanus, M. piscator, M. parvus.
The type is Pelecanus sula Linnaeus 1766 by subsequent designation of Ogilvie-Grant 1898.
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
But "Fou de Bassan" is an explicit name despite its French origin.
l_raty
laurent raty
"Fou de Bassan" is not a nominal species cited by an available name, it cannot be the type of anything.
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
That said, it's a matter of common sense, Bassan, bassanus, unless to be completely dumb. But the problem is that this would risk creating great instability since the current classification is well established.
l_raty
laurent raty
At least the type is still a sulid.
Applying the same logic to some other Brissonian names would be worse -- e.g., under Muscicapa, Brisson cited the following available names in his Supplément d'ornithologie Ornithologie ou Methode contenant la division des oiseaux en ordres, sections, genres, especes et leurs variétés ... (GoogleBooks link, because the BHL scan lacks pp 50-51):
Motacilla ruticilla Linnaeus 1758, Lanius tyrannus Linnaeus 1758, Turdus crinitus Linnaeus 1758, Corvus paradisi Linnaeus 1758, Fringilla rubra Linnaeus 1758.
These are, respectively, a Parulidae, two Tyrannidae, a Monarchidae and a Cardinalidae...
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
What should be done in these cases, what designation should be accepted?
l_raty
laurent raty
In this particular case, a designation under the Plenary Powers by the Commission is probably the only viable Code-compliant way to go.
Does this mean that it should (for example) be Sula bassana and Morus sula, not Morus bassanus and Sula sula, if the gannets and boobies are separated generically?
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
What surprises me is that Linnaeus himself did not think of creating the name Muscicapa even though it is the most basic Latin name. At first glance, he did not describe any "Muscicapa" species in his Systema Naturae.
Repeating the question in the hope Laurent may see it and respond:
Does this mean that it should (for example) be Sula bassana and Morus sula, not Morus bassanus and Sula sula, if the gannets and boobies are separated generically?
l_raty
laurent raty
Basically -- I'm afraid -- yes.
Overall, ornithologists have traditionally treated names introduced with included species that were not cited by an available name (i.e., species cited by a non-binominal name (as in the case of Brisson's generic names), species cited by a French vernacular (e.g., Vieillot's names, also quite a few Swainson's names), species illustrated but not named at all (e.g., many names by Reichenbach), etc.) in a way that differs from what the ICZN mandates.
(What has been done, typically, is: identify the originally included species taxonomically, find an available name that is believed to apply to it, and pretend that the nominal species denoted by that name was originally included. What the Code says, is: only nominal species cited by an available name in the OD of a genus-group taxon are eligible to be its type; if there is none, find the first subsequent publication where nominal species cited by an available name were included in the taxon, and treat these species as though they had been originally included.)
The problem is that, obviously, switching from one interpretation to the other for all these names at once would be hugely disruptive...
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
The first species cited by Brisson in the uninomial name Sula is "Le Fou" (proprement dit) based on the description of Catesby, which looks very similar to Sula dactylatra, described some pages below (si je ne me trompe pas) under the name "Le Fou brun" Sula fusca.
So I wondered if Brisson did not place the type species of the genus (or, at least, what he considered the type, without indicating that it is the type) first under each genus.
l_raty
laurent raty
The traditionally accepted mode of type fixation for many Brissonian names is "by tautonymy" (not one of the two 'flavours' of tautonymy that the Code recognizes, though) : if Brisson denoted one of the species included in a genus by a name identical to that of the genus (e.g., "Sula" in Sula), then (one of) the nominal species that is/are believed to be taxonomically equivalent to the species described by Brisson is deemed to be the type.
(In the Code, fixations "by tautonymy" can be either "by absolute tautonymy" -- if one of the included nominal species is denoted in the OD by an available name identical to that of the genus, that nominal species is the type -- or "by Linnaean tautonymy -- if one (and only one) of the included nominal species denoted in the OD by an available name has, placed in its synonymy, a pre-1758 uninominal name identical to that of the genus, the nominal species that has this name placed in its synonymy is the type. Brisson's species names are not available, thus cannot be involved in a fixation by absolute tautonymy, and they are not pre-1758, thus cannot be involved in a fixation by Linnaean tautonymy either.)
Of course, the concept of "type species" did not exist yet in Brisson's time.
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Mysticete
Well-known member
December 13
Lithornithiformes: Recent work (e.g., Worthy et al., 2017;Yonezawa et al., 2017). suggests that the Lithornithiformes are sister torest of the known Paleognaths, rather than being sister to theTinamiformes. Whether this is correct remains uncertain. A mesozoicLithornithidae fossil would resolve the question quickly, but there aren'tany. See also Nesbitt and Clarke (2016) and Widrig and Field (2022) formore on the Lithornithiformes.
[Palaeognathae: Ratites and Tinamous, 3.04]
Rheas: After the Ostriches, the Paleognaths split into three groups, the (1) rheas, (2) tinamous (and the recently extinct moas), and (3) cassowaries, emus, and kiwis. These groups all separated over a short time period near the beginning of the Paleogene. The next question is which of the three groups separated first? Previously, I went with a coalescent tree rather than a concatenated tree, on the grounds they they are coalescent tree more reliable. That showed the Rheas grouping with group (3), sister to group (2). Further analysis has shown that for once, the coalescent method got it wrong, with incomplete lineage sorting playing a role. The rheas separated first, with groups (2) and (3) sister to each other.
[Rheas?, Palaeognathae: Ratites and Tinamous, 3.04]
Kiwis: I've added a tree for the Kiwis.
[Apterygiformes, Palaeognathae: Ratites and Tinamous, 3.04]
Tinamous, type of Tinamus: The big change is that I now strictly follow the ICZN Code for Tinamus. This means the type is soui, not major. As a result, the new Tinamus contains most of the species previously included in Crypturellus, but none that previously in Tinamus. The old Tinamus is now Cryptura. For the present, this will unfortunately cause some confusion when comparing with other lists.
I've added a species level phylogenetic tree for the Tinamous. Among other changes, I have followed Figure S4 for the taxa that have available DNA, and have added the taxa without DNA based on the trees including morphological data — Figure 2 and Figures S6-S9. E.g., berlepschi is placed sister to cinereus as the genus Crypturus. These are the two former Crypturellus species that did not move to Tinamus. The only species that was not placed this way was the Gray-legged Tinamou, Tinamus duidae, where I had to make an educated guess to place it.
[Tinamiformes, Palaeognathae: Ratites and Tinamous, 3.04]
Maupiti Monarch: Historically, Pomarea pomarea has been used for both birds from Tahiti and Maupiti. Dickinson et al. (2019) argued that the Maupiti Monarch, Monarcha pomareus, Lesson and Garnot, 1828, should be restricted to the Tahitian birds, and that Monarcha maupitiensis, Garnot, 1829, should be used for the Maupiti birds. Finally, the Muscicapa nigra Sparrman, 1785 has priority over Muscicapa pomarea so the Tahitian birds are called Monarcha niger.
[Monarchidae, Corvida III (Corvoidea), 3.05a]
Jim LeNomenclatoriste
Je suis un mignon petit Traquet rubicole
Ah yes, I forgot that we had to put the updates in this thread
