Nishikawa's discovery (1998) that Echiuridae Blainville, 1828 is not available
and should correctly be cited as Echiuridae Quatrefages, 1847, is indeed
somewhat disturbing. Thalassematidae Forbes & Goodsir, 1841 is generally
considered a synonym (sometimes as subfamily Thalassematinae) and
consequently should have priority over Echiuridae. Nishikawa did not make
this conclusion and I think he is right. This is typically a case that should be
brought to the ICZN, which will certainly safe Echiuridae. "The Principle of
Priority is to be used to promote stability and is not intended to be used to
upset a long-accepted name in its accustomed meaning ..."
I do not agree with Geoff''s statement "Above the family level can be a
degree of anarchy and creativity, and nobody minds much". This is a great
nuissance to the user community. Taxonomists have a strong tendency to
change names and they are not that much interested in stability. They can
not be very creative at the species level but they are totally free at the family
and genus level (erecting new families and genera is about the easiest thing
to do because you need not look at specimens). However, above the family
level there is even more anarchy because everybody is allowed to change
names.
During my editorial work for the Unesco-IOC Register of Marine Organisms
I had to look at all groups and found changes of names to be very common
and almost always unneeded. The reasons given are often very odd. The
name Echiura is a good example. When Stephen died in 1966 he left an
unfinished manuscript of a monograph on the "Gephyrea". In this he had
changed the names Sipunculida, Echiurida and Priapulida into Sipuncula,
Echiura and Priapula. He gave as a reason that the english equivalents were
the same as for the families Sipunculidae, Echiuridae and Priapulidae,
although it is unlikely that vernacular names will ever be needed for these
families. I took over the Priapulida and retained that name but Edmonds
accepted the changes when finishing the bulk of the manuscript (1972).
A great disadvantage of changes of names is that many groups are being
mentioned in the litterature by two different names during a long period of
time. It cost Cnidaria over 40 years to take over from Coelenterata and
Scleractinia's victory over Madreporaria took a similar period. The user
community would be served best if taxonomists applied the rules of the ICZN
code for the higher groups as well, whenever possible.
Dr Jacob van der Land
National Museum of Natural History - Naturalis
Leiden - the Netherlands
e-mail: land at naturalis.nnm.nl
editor of Unesco-IOC Register of Marine Organisms (URMO):
http://www2.eti.uva.nl/database/urmo/default.html
-- ANNELIDA LIST
Discuss = <annelida at net.bio.net> = talk to all members
Server = <biosci-server at net.bio.net> = un/subscribes
Archives = http://www.bio.net:80/hypermail/ANNELIDA/
Resources = http://biodiversity.uno.edu/~worms/annelid.html
--
