Hi Peter
I think that some of the taxonomic experts are away so I'll have a stab at
this although I'm not sure exactly what you are asking.
You are correct in writing that the name, date, journal/book, vol and pages
after the species name refers to the description of the species, by Gould
in this case. It is similar to a normal reference but abbreviated so that
the title is omitted - but the paper that is being cited would have a title
in the journal. The length of the paper can vary from a single page, to
many pages long. In the early days when many species and subspecies were
being described, each description could be little more than a few lines
long, so several could be on the same page. Today it is more likely that a
number of pages would be devoted to a new name, species or subspecies. The
reason a single page number is given is probably due to "page
priority". Occasionally the same species may have been inadvertently been
described twice in the same book, then the first description, with the
lowest page number, would be used as the correct name (other things being
equal). It is not just the older refs that are treated this way, recent
ones would also be abbreviated (but for most species the descriptions are
many years old). The authors are not usually given with their initials
unless there is the possibility of confusion, eg with a number of "Smiths".
Generally these days, most ornithological journals do not require the
author, date and citation to follow species names, unless the paper is
about taxonomy and therefore this information is important and relevant (eg
most species lists of scientific names will not have this information, but
in other groups like invertebrates and plants it is more common to give
the citation following the species name). Even when the author and
citation are given, these are often not included in the reference list at
the end of
a paper, an exception to this is the Handbook of Birds of the World, where
the editors required a full list of these species citations, as well as the
general citations in the text. Some of the early ones can take a lot of
tracking down.
I hope this covers what you want, if not fire off a few more questions.
Peter
At 01:31 PM 3/04/2005 +1000, you wrote:
I am looking at some references and I am interested if anyone can explain
in more detail how some of the older references used in taxonomy are
cited. An example is the citation for the Southern Whiteface is:
Xerophila leucopsis Gould 1841 Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1840:175
Is this reference treated like a journal article (ie there will be a title
to the reference)? Is there a specific article describing this (and other
species) in the proccedings or is it just a series of descriptions of
individual species by different authors (hence the requirement for the page)?
Any information on how this and other similar references should be treated
would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Peter
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