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Re: terminology



On 21 January 2011 16:45, T. Michael Keesey <keesey@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:
>>
>> And let us remember: the Code serves Science, Science doesn't serve the Code.
>
> Tell that to Drosophila melanogaster! ;)
>
> (Drosophila hasn't been sunk, but D. melanogaster probably belongs to
> Sophophora instead. A petition to make D. melanogaster the type was
> denied.)

Sure.  But from what I hear, kinds of people who write papers about
fruit flies are going right on calling it D. melanogaster anyway.

Which just goes to prove that when the Code _doesn't_ serve science,
science just ignores it and gets on with its job.  Hence the title of
my (2009) paper in the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature,
"Electronic publication of nomenclatural acts is inevitable, and will
be accepted by the taxonomic community with or without the endorsement
of the Code".

-- Mike.