Re: Taxonomy & LyrebirdsDear Syd,
As none of the "experts" you addressed your questions to has responded, I will
have a go. So it's subject to the caveat that I may not know what I am talking
about!
Question 1 was "Was such a brief description then regarded as sufficient to
establish and name a new species?".
I believe the answer to this is yes. In fact if you go back through the
literature you will find the majority of the original descriptions of species
were that brief, if not even shorter. Last year I looked at an original
description of a Sri Lankan bird. Paraphrasing a little, what it said was
"there are not enough museum specimens available to determine if the Sri Lankan
bird is the same as the form in southern India, but if it is different I
suggest the following name should apply to it". That author is now credited
with having named that bird!
Things have changed since. Article 13.1 of the International Code of
Zoological Nomenclature (online at http://www.iczn.org/iczn/index.jsp ) now
provides that in order for a new description to be valid, it must "state in
words characters that are purported to differentiate the taxon". I would think
the Chisholm description probably satisfies that requirement anyway.
Question 2 related to the name of the Superb Lyrebird: "Does that translate as
some Australian authority (Schodde & Mason, perhaps) seeking to legitimise the
illegitimate novaehollandiae?"
This particular problem is mentioned on page 6 of the new Australian checklist.
It was also considered in two articles published last year in the Bulletin of
the British Ornithologists Club (I. McAllen, Existing usage and the names of
some Australian birds and R. Schodde et al, Stabilising the nomenclature of
Australasian birds by invalidation and suppression of disused and dubious
senior names). I will send you the relevant pages. Apparently it all turns on
uncertainty when Latham's publication was actually published; whether it was
1801 or 1802. So it's unclear which name was in fact published first. A
ruling has been sought to clarify things. The paper by Dick Schodde says it's
anticipated that superba will lose out.
Simple really ;-)
Murray Lord
Sydney
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