Re: Misspellings
Sean Barry (sjbarry@ucdavis.edu)
Wed, 1 May 1996 12:30:23 -0700 (PDT)
It seems to me that even to acknowledge mispellings, let alone to attempt
to list them, opens a Pandora's Box. I'm not certain how things are done
in botanical nomenclature as far as nomen nuda are concerned, but in
zoological nomenclature a true nomen nudum is the first publication of a
new name clearly meant to apply to a new or revised taxon but that is
unaccompanied by an adequate description/diagnosis. (e.g "We name the new
garter snake that we found in southern Montana on April 15, 1885 Eutaenia
imperialis." (now on to the next subject)) If we considered every
mispelling after proper description as a nomen nudum, and published such
mispellings routinely in synonymies, we would be implying that there is a
historical list of authorities on a particular group when in fact there is
not--just sloppy writers and proofreaders. To peruse all of the possible
locations for potential mispellings (newspapers, brochures, magazines,
internet discussion archives, as well as technical literature) is simply
impractical, yet such sources are just as "valid" as the technical
literature and if we were to consider all such mispellings as nomen nuda it
would behoove us (who compile the synonymies) to root them out as much as
possible. Finally, the nature of many mispellings is that there is no way
to know what species the writer meant, so it isn't even valid to include
such mispellings in synonymies. I suggest that plain mispellings be
ignored unless they clearly qualify as nomen nuda, and as far as I can
tell the instances cited so far in this thread do not.
Sean Barry