Re: Species [ was: Re: Hadrosaur nomenclature]

["Jonathan R. Wagner" <jonathan.r.wagner@mail.utexas.edu>]

Oh, ok, so HP Yates was suggesting that, due to issues such as those I
pointed out, among fossil taxa genera are EFFECTIVELY the units of
biodiversity. Sadly, I would have to agree with that, although I dislike it
immensely. I think my opinion on this practice in (vertebrate) paleontology
has been made abundantly clear.

It will cheer some of you up to know that Gauthier advocates that, should a
conventional approach to the uninomial (i.e., just based on the species
epithet) be adopted, monotypic genera would "convert" the genus name and not
the species name to be the new uninomial. The criterion, I have been told,
would be that the genus has always been monotypic, with no synonomies or
additional species ever proposed (otherwise, monotypy is taxonomic opinion,
not fact). Either way, this is problematic for several reasons:

a) most "monotypic" genera, certainly those with more than a few decades
under their belt, are actually not monotypic, they have a tremendous number
of synonymized species that are considered invalid by most (but not all)
workers;

b) even in the case of those that do not, synonymy with another genus has
generally been proposed at one time, and/or the species was singled out from
another genus to be the type of a new genus. Either way, such species have,
at one time, belonged to another genus (for what that matters to anyone);

c) I cannot think of a genus more than 20 years old that does not fall into
one of the above categories. Certainly Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops do, as
would most non-theropod dinosaurs, and numerous other pre-Cenozoic genera.

d) it would pretty much suck if somebody went through and converted the
genus name Khaan before I get to publish my new Paleocene species, Khaan
khaan. Then I have to go back, redo the manuscript, pick a new species name.
Then I have to come up with a *new* clade name to unite them (Genghis?). Ok,
it is a small point, but why would anyone want to court this kind of minor
disaster?;

e) it is potentially confusing to convert some genus-rank names to clades,
and others to species. And I doubt anyone but a paleontologist would suggest
not converting genus names to clade names. There are very good reasons why
this doesn't work for neontologists (think beetle genera with thousands of
species... not that you may not think Genus: Tyrannosaurus, species: rex, to
quote a diligent listmember, but some neontologists sure do!);

f) *whatever* your interpretation of the ICZN code (and there are several,
not *everyone* buys the conventional interpretation that, just because the
species name must be formed as a binomial means that the generic epithet is
a necessary part of the name), the specific epithet is just that, the part
of the name that makes a species a species. As such, regardless of whether
you believe it can exist alone or not, it *is* the species name. Changing
species names in conversion to phylogenetic nomenclature will not only
confuse excessively and interfere with some access to the literature
(although, admittedly, the dinosaur literature usually refer to genera and
*not* species), it will probably be resisted as simply improper by a large
number of people. I think it is counter the very core of all codes of
nomenclature: preserving priority. If it was named sapiens first, you can't
just go calling it Homo.

g) ontologically, although "genera" were never real, they have been, and
continue to be, treated as such. Changing a name from one category to
another (a clade is *very* different from a species) has to be the biggest
affront to a rational conversion of nomenclature I can conceive of. Yes, it
is worse than nesting family-rank groups;

h) if you "reduce" the name of a genus to species rank when the genus name
has a different authorship than the species, you remove the association of
the original author with his species, or, otherwise, the generic author with
*his* genus. You can't win on this, unless both authors (and years) are the
same. How rude!

    Naturally, one could just convert the generic type species name to the
genus, irrespective of number of named species. This does not, however,
evade problems d-h. In neontology, the author of type of a species is
sometimes (and this is not, apparently, a trivial number of cases) not the
author of the type species... this is becoming less common in the newer
literature.
    Another listmember suggested retaining the "genus name" as a
non-taxonomic appendage to the species name. This doesn't work well for
neontologists, as some of them work exclusively within and among a small
group of genera, and generic names represent important inclusive clades. I
have toyed with a similar proposal for retaining *monotypic* names, or names
that no one wants to try and define phylogenetically for fear of really
screwing things up, as a "pseudo-clade address" of no independent systematic
value. It has some merits, but the problem is that someone has to decide
what to do with species names first.

    To work!

    Wagner


Jonathan R. Wagner
9617 Great Hills Trail #1414
Austin, TX 78759