[CPN] Some thoughts on how to address the Cellinese et al. species proposal

[Mike Keesey]

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Kevin Padian <kpadian at berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> There has been no discussion of the Cellinese et al. proposal on the CPN
> listserv for some time.  Perhaps everyone has said his or her piece?

I've been meaning to draft up a longer response, but haven't had time.
So I'll just raise a few points.

The idea that rank should not be a barrier to conversion, is a
sensible one. One might argue that species and clades are different
types of taxa, but genera and clades are also different types, and
conversion is allowed.

To my mind, the real problem here is orthographic, not taxonomic.
Clade names are uninomials, species names are binomials. The proposal
opts to get around this by changing the nature of clade names, so that
the nominal citation is an essential part of them.

I think there are serious problems with this idea. A citation can take
many forms (surnames, surnames + initials, full names, first author +
"& al.", etc.), meaning that a name would not have a single
orthography. It ruins the elegance of a system where one name, with
one spelling, has exactly one meaning.

Besides, the PhyloCode already has a system for handling binomials!
Names of division of genera can be converted using hyphenation:
http://www.ohio.edu/phylocode/art10.html#rec10f

If species names are to be open for conversion, it seems to me it
ought to be consistent with how other binomials are converted (using
hyphenation). And names should have single, consistent spellings.

Another question I'd like to raise: what are the consequences for the
Companion Volume if this proposal is adopted? Would it require another
round of edits to remove the dependency on species?

-- 
T. Michael Keesey
http://tmkeesey.net/