Laurent wrote:
Would that be into Icteriidae?
Or what is the point I am not getting ...
No, I really meant into Icteridae. After all, what the recent data suggest is that the traditional Icteridae are embedded in the traditional Parulidae (which, in the vast majority of recent classifications,
do include
Zeledonia,
Teretistris and
Icteria). Why would it be so absurd to merge these two families, rather than creating three new ones (including Icteriidae), each for a single genus? (Besides the fact that, as noted by Jan-Hein above, "the pendulum is swinging towards ever increasing numbers of everything at the moment"--but this obviously is not an argument.)
Icteridae would have priority for such a group.
(
Icterina Vigors, 1825b (
not "
Vigors, 1825a" as per Bock 1994: "the
Icteri, that belong to the
Sturnidae" is a generic plural) is one of the very early family-group names.
Parulidae Wetmore et al., 1947 was introduced to replace
Compsothlypidae Oberholser, 1919, which itself had replaced
Sylvicolinae Bonaparte, 1838 (?--as per Brodkorb 1978;
not "
Swainson & Richardson, 1831" as per Bock 1994: this group is there in family Sylviadae [based on
Sylvia and dating from Leach, 1820 [
1821 ed.]], subfamily Parianae; "
Sylvicolae"
Vieillot, 1816 as cited [
here] by Swainson & Richardson explicitly applies to an order, and is not adopted as valid by the authors, hence cannot be the source of any available name), in both cases as a result of the type genus of the earlier name having fallen into the synonymy of the type genus of the name that replaced it, before 1961. In such cases, according to Art. 40.2 of the ICZN, the substitute family-group name takes its priority from the date of publication of the name it replaced. Thus Parulidae is to be treated as dating from 1838 for the purposes of priority.)
Forgive an ignorant question by an outsider but is there nothing in the rules allowing priority to be dispensed with in extraordinary situations such as this? (It's not as if the double "i's" aren't enough of a nuisance on their own; they're even hard to see sometimes, "i" being such a small letter.).
Even if it was the case (but I don't think it is allowed by the Code itself--you'd have to go before the Commission to obtain a ruling), priority is not acting at all here. Priority determines which name,
if two or more are available, must be used.
Icteria being the only genus in Icteriidae, the family name
must be based on this name: there is nothing to select from. At best, one might imagine promoting the use of a variant spelling, such as "Icteriaidae", to lower down the risk of confusion.
