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Re: GALTONIA THE FLOWER



Mickey and Mike,
Viruses have their own code and very distinctive names---no problem there. Eubacteria and "Archaea" (Metabacteria) are covered by the Bacteriological Code----rarely any problems, although interestingly Archaea is a genus of spider (but I obviously object to Domain Archaea for reasons more important than homonymy).
The real problems with homomyns are between botanical and zoological codes. Botany covers fungi, higher plants, and any protists with chloroplasts. Zoology claims animals and most protists without chloroplasts. But botany and zoology have both claimed some groups that are both motile and have chloroplasts, such as the euglenoids and some dinoflagellates, so zoological Peranematida equals botanical Heteronematales, Duboscquodinida equals Coccidiniales, and so on.
I'm not sure what they are going to do with Microsporidians, long considered zoological protozoa, but recently found to be eumycotans (true fungi, which utilize botanical names). Microsporidian genera will not be much of a problem, but I wonder if they will now give botanical names to the families and orders.
But most of the homonyms are Metaphyta and Metazoa, so there is little chance of confusion there. The botanical Galtonia (a genus of monocot hyacinths) is clearly not going to be confused with the zoological Galtonia. The BioCode is supposed to take care of some of the problems where zoological and botanical codes might clash, but not sure how well that is going. And I don't know how PhyloCode is going to handle zoological and botanical homonyms, but I suspect it will have some clashes with zoological, botanical and the new BioCode, on these and other matters.
-------Ken
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From: "Mickey_Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer11@email.msn.com>
Reply-To: Mickey_Mortimer11@email.msn.com
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: Re: GALTONIA THE FLOWER
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 19:22:48 -0800

Darren Naish wrote-

> I cannot find any plant name database on the www (my usual port of
> call is http://www.biosis.org.uk/triton/indexfm.htm) but assume that
> this was named before _Galtonia_ Hunt and Lucas 1994. I think I
> remember hearing that it's Ok for plant and animal taxa to bear the
> same names but, even so, I thought this was interesting.

This is a bit off-topic, but if a plant and animal can have the same name,
what about other organisms? Where does the definition of "animal" and
"plant" stop when it comes to nomenclature? Could you hypothetically name a
chondrocyte the same thing as a demosponge? And what about fungi,
eubacteria, archaea and viruses, not to mention the many unicellular
eukaryotes?

Mickey Mortimer

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