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Posted by troy h on October 16, 2002 at 17:13:40:
In Reply to: Re: posted by pjay on October 15, 2002 at 14:31:35:
: changes that have recently occurred in the major and more importantly regional and obscure journals that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
in other words, these were published in out of the way journals with more lax editorial requirements . . . often is the case.
:not accepting a "hypothesis" that is accompanied by data in a valid publication is not a good enough reason not to use the new names.
it depends on the data, doesn't it? i've seen pubs in J. Herp. where i wondered how in the hell it slipped past the editors, because the data, results, and conclusions were internally inconsistent.
:ignoring valid taxonomic changes is only going to cause more problems. if you feel that the change is unwarranted, then you should write a paper that refutes the change and returns the name to the old taxonomy.
again, just because a hypothesis has been presented, doesn't make it valid. we don't force paleontologists to accept the hypothesis that all dinosaurs were warm-blooded, do we? no, we present more data!
: the use of multiple accepted names would not serve the purpose that taxonomists strive for: unambiguous identification of a unique taxon with a unique name.
in my years of training as a systematist (MS+) i was under the impression that the main thing to strive for was to uncover the real evolutionary history of an organism.
and anyway, you're missing my point, i think. i'm not arguing for multiple accepted names, i'm just saying that because a name has been changed recently (often in some obscure paper) doesn't mean that one has to accept that name change. in fact, i'm saying that each name change should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and that the data itself ought to be evaluated. of course, it goes without saying that a researcher ought to point out where he is being "conservative" and maintaining use of an older name, and state why.
troy
