Here is Sergio's early message to me from the weekend. He wishes it to
be circulated.
Geoff
>>> On 18/04/2010 at 7:27 p.m., Sergio Salazar <savs551216 from hotmail.com>
wrote:
Dear Mary, Geoff and Joao,
Forgive me. I must disagree about using 1906 for the Arwidsson
monograph. My point is that the year for the publication must be agreed
upon as 1907.
1) Is the dissertation a valid publication (for nomenclatural
purposes)? No. Or at least it was not the same by then. Think about the
interaction with referees and editor, think about the number of copies
made simultaneously. This difference was made clear even then, since the
dissertations had to be submitted for publication. If you have a good
library, please notice that this apparent duplication was made during
about the same period by. i.a. Fauvel, and by Pruvot & Racovitza. In
both cases, the publication retains the same typography and format, but
since they were concentrated in morphology and anatomy, we have not
dealt too much with any problem about priority.
2) Have we been wrong? Not likely. We may have made mistakes or confuse
ourselves; changing numbers in publication years or pages is a frequent
problem in listing references. What about the author himself? As Geoff
has correctly indicated, he used 1907 as the publication date for his
monograph. Did he forget his own dissertation? Certainly not. He just
understood that a dissertation was (is) not a publication. I bet most
papers dealing with maldanids would have included 1907 as the
publication year. If most people have employed 1907, including the
Zoological Record, Nomenclator Zoologicus and our much respected Olga
Hartman’s catalogue, and Kristian Fauchald’s PinkBook, then this
would be the equivalent for widespread usage. Sorry, I have not had the
time to check and list the corresponding publications for each usage.
3) The issue deal with the change of the tetranomen of Arwidsson
species, or the trinomen of his genera and subfamilies. I insist that
the taxa established by Arwidsson must be accompanied by 1907, not by
1906. If one of the now (too) many websites including list of species
names have a different year, then it’s their problem (but not the only
one, indeed), and someone must notify them about it. This change,
however, would not be enough argument as to revert the publication year
by using the dissertation instead of the publication.
4) How could we know about the correct corresponding dates? One means
is to ask in the editorial office for the journal. They might have a
record about the date when the volumes were issued. If the records are
lost or the serial has disappeared, then another option is to ask a
large library about the accession date. The latter would shed some
additional light as well, especially if the dissertation had the same
dissemination than the publication, which I can guarantee did not,
despite the fact I haven’t seen the records of any library. However,
as Geoff said before, do we need to pursue this search? I guess not, or
at least not unless we have some evidence of a similar usage for dates
1906 vs 1907 in the publications dealing with maldanids. I would
anticipate that this will not be the case, but will wait for the
evidence.
5) Is this an issue of priority? If so, then, please remember that our
code indicates that priority might be set aside, especially if a
widespread usage is shown. First, please take into consideration that
the ICZN has among its principles, one which is relevant to this point
(http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/):
(4) Nomenclatural rules are tools that are designed to provide the
maximum stability compatible with taxonomic freedom. Accordingly, the
Code recognises that the rigid application of the Principle of Priority
may, in certain cases, upset a long-accepted name in its accustomed
meaning through the validation of a little-known, or even
long-forgotten, name. Therefore the rules must enable the Principle of
Priority to be set aside on occasions when its application would be
destructive of stability or universality, or would cause confusion. For
use in such cases the Code contains provisions that modify the automatic
application of the Principle of Priority, whether it concerns the
establishment or precedence of names, the fixation of name-bearing
types, the spelling of a name, or any other matter.
You might think that this refers only to species, but please read
Article 7 of the code, and you will notice that it refers to
publications and nomenclatural acts as well.
Then, forgive me for insisting that we must agree on using 1907 instead
of 1906 for Arwidsson's monograph.
Un abrazo,
Sergio
NIWA is the trading name of the National Institute of Water &
Atmospheric Research Ltd.
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