Dear Annelid Workers,
I thought the Newsgroup was too quiet, so I decided to raise an issue for
discussion and debate.
Last evening I noticed that Tom Parker had posted a contribution on the
Annelid WWW site entitled "Misdiagnosis of Parandalia ocularis
(Polychaeta: Pilargidae)." In this article which prints out as two pages
with two figures, Tom provides evidence that characters used to separate
the eastern Pacific Parandalia ocularis and P. fauveli are incorrect and
proposes that the former be synonymised with the latter.
Although I applaud Tom's detective work which includes prostomial
dissections demonstrating that so-called eyes are actually nerve ganglia,
I question the placement of such a contribution in an electronic medium.
Are we supposed to now embrace this newly proposed synonymy and
incorporate the name changes into our own faunal keys, species lists,
and benthic databases?
According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN),
electronic media are not listed as valid means of publication for
taxonomic revisions. I do not believe that such a format is proposed
for the new Code due for publication in 1997, although there has been
considerable discussion about rapid electronic publication on other
lists such as Taxacom. Electronic taxonomic journals do not presently
exist although I think the botanists are working on such. In any case,
the Annelid WWW Site most certainly does not consititute a journal and
any citation of this work must be something like Parker (unpublished).
I suggest that the only way that Tom's newly proposed synonymy can be
suitable for citation, is for him to publish his paper in the open
literature. I recommend that he submit this contribution as a research
note to a local journal such as the Bulletin of the Southern California
Academy of Sciences. This will also provide reviewers with a venue in
which to offer suggestions and perhaps improve the presentation. To do
nothing more than post a non-reviewed article on the WWW is akin to
providing anecdotal comments as are in this NewsGroup and in
newsletters.
This posting raises the larger question as to whether the Annelid WWW
Site should post such items in the first place when such a posting
obviously infringes on the Rules established for what constitutes a
publication by the ICZN. The very professional, PostScript appearance of
documents printed from the WWW can be misleading because such documents
have the printed appearance found in journals and in of themselves appear
to be publications especially when the illustrations are imbedded within
the text.
Bye,
Jim Blake
ENSR, 89 Water Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543
(jablake at ix.netcom.com)
