... Lesser Crested Tern should be Sterna [Thalasseus] media Horsfield, 1821, not bengalensis Lesson, 1831. ...
H&M4 has a footnote reading:
Mlíkovský (2011) [1673] argued that the older name media Horsfield, 1821, was not truly preoccupied by media Vieillot, 1820, and should be restored.
Unfortunately, Mlíkovský tends to have 'divergent' views on many aspects of nomenclature, which may explain in part that his findings are not always adopted immediately by mainstream checklists.
Obviously, Hartert 1916 interpreted Vieillot 1820 as having introduced a new name "
Sterna media", to denote "la Gui
ffette, de la pl. enlum. de Buffon, n. 924" -- making the bird shown on this plate the holotype of a new nominal taxon, and making
S. media Horsfield 1821 preoccupied. If you take the whole picture into account, it seems quite clear that, as argued by Mlíkovský,
media was but an incorrect subsequent spelling of
naevia. It may be a bit less clear if you have to demonstrate it from Vieillot 1820 taken in isolation, however... (Thus, without recourse to the comparison to Vieillot 1819.)
One potential problem here may also be that it's typically difficult to obtain that two names be treated as variant spellings of one another, when they at first appear to have completely different meanings and derivations. ("Having the same meaning and derivation" is a working criterion than many workers apply or have applied, to differentiate between emendations [new names proposed to replace an existing one, formed by modifying the latter] and replacement names ["wholly" new names proposed to replace an existing one], which some parts of the Code pretend to treat differently without saying how to recognize the two cases. In practice the boundary is completely fuzzy.)
Naevia = spotted;
media = intermediate. If, upon seeing Vieillot 1820, you turn back to Latham looking for '
media', without being ready to accept '
naevia' as a potential variant spelling of it, you simply won't find it.
Ergo:
media must have been added by Vieillot himself, and is not part of what he cited from Latham; hence, the fact that Latham used
naevia becomes irrelevant...
Some links to relevant references, if you want to explore them :
- Brisson 1760(6):217 [here] - Sterna naevia ("l'Hirondelle-de-mer tachetée"). Illustration [here]. (Brisson's species names are unavailable.)
- Linnaeus 1766 [here] - Sterna naevia. Name borrowed from Brisson (= first reference cited), available from here.
- Buffon 1781:339 [here] - "La Guifette". (This is the edition cited by Latham.) Cites Sterna naevia from Brisson. Martinet, planche enluminée n° 924 [here] - "La Guifette".
- Latham 1785:358 [here] - Sterna naevia Linn. and "La Guifette, Buf. Ois. viii. p. 339. - Pl. Enl. 924." cited under "Var. A" of Latham's Sandwich Tern, and said to be "no doubt a young merely of" this species.
- Bonnaterre 1791('1823'):98 [here] - "LA GUIFETTE. 23. S. Naevia." Treated here as a valid species. Illustration [here].
- Bossi 1808 [here] - About a bird improperly called aigrette in Ain: "Nous sommes portés à croire que c'est la guifette. (Sterna media.)" No description or indication, no available name here. (Misprint for naevia, perhaps taken from Bonnaterre?)
- Vieillot 1816:238 [here] - "AIGRETTE. On appelle ainsi dans le département de l'Ain, une hirondelle de mer qui se trouve souvent sur les nombreux étangs de la Bresse, et qui paroît se rapprocher beaucoup de la GNIFFETTE (sterna media)." Quite likely an unattributed citation of the content of Bossi 1808; "media" presumably inherited from there. No name can be available from here either.
- Vieillot 1819:167 [here] - "Latham rapporte à cette espèce, comme un jeune oiseau, la guiffette de la planche enluminée de Buffon , n.° 624, sterna naevia; mais je crois qu'il se méprend."
- Vieillot 1819:171 [here] - "sterna naevia [...] de Gm." and "la Guiffette de Buff., pl. enl. n.° 924." said to be the same thing and treated as the young of Sterna nigra Linn.
- Vieillot 1820('1823'):347 [here] - "Latham rapporte à cette espèce, comme un jeune oiseau, la Guiffette, de la pl. enlum. de Buffon, n. 924 (Sterna media); mais nous croyons qu’il se méprend. Lath. general Synopsis, tom. 3. p. 356. n. 9."
- Vieillot 1829:400 [here] - "Guiffette, Buff., p. 359" and "Sterna naevia, Linn., Gm., n° 5" again as the young of Sterna nigra Linn. (Clearly, Vieillot did not change his mind on this.)
- Horsfield 1821:199 [here] - OD of Sterna media.
- Hartert 1916:1697 [here] - "Sterna media Horsfield (nec Vieillot 1820!)": this is where Sterna media Horsf. was called preoccupied for the first time.
**********
PS - As an aside: "Gui
fette" is fully correct French -- and still nowadays the accepted name of
Chlidonias marsh terns. This word appears related to Provençal "gafeto", and Spanish "gaviota" (seagull) -- deriving from Latin "
gavia" (also seagull), with a diminutive suffix. "Gui
ssette" (Mlíkovský p.58, quoting Vieillot incorrectly; see also his "[sic]" on the same page after "guifette" as used by Bossi, suggesting that it is misspelled) and "Gui
sette" (e.g., Richmond Index card [
here], presumably quoting Buffon, also incorrectly) are corrupt forms, which are used in none of the above references.
