A while back on Taxacom someone stated that they considered the scientific name including author is the species concept.

I refer to this mind set as "Name is species concept thinking"

It was in reference to a discussion of whether species concepts were even needed.

It might be useful to step back a bit an consider all the data sets that touch on the idea of a species.

This includes: occurrence records, field notes, academic publications.

Many of these do not include the authority information they simply list the genus and species.

Few of these records are created by someone who has thought about the conscription of the specific species concept to which they are creating data.

Many use the name in the key or the name that those around them use, with little thought as to the original type specimens and original species description.

The original description for Ochlerotatus triseriatus is about a paragraph and could have actually been one of about 10 species.

As far as I can tell the original type specimen is missing.

Modeling the relationships between a large number of these data sets as if they are based on the idea that the data creator actually read the original species description and thought about the actual species conscription is inappropriate.

That said modeling relationships between taxonomic publications where the authors actually read the original species description, reviewed the type specimens, and thought about the actual species conscription is appropriate.

Also consider that a large proportion of specimens are misidentified, and it occurs to me that modeling things like species occurrences as if they are Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771) sensu stricto is probably not appropriate. At best they are something like (Felis concolor / Puma concolor) with some significant level of error.

- Pete

On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 3:49 PM, David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen@gbif.org> wrote:

Pete -

This statement has been sticking with me since I read it. It might be me but I don't see any relationship between that statement and how this relates to taxon concepts. In a concept-based system you could easily have two different maps for Puma concolor. Whether Felis concolor is included is not relevant because nomenclatural synonyms have no bearing on the circumscription. They are both names for the same type.

There may be two different concepts (circumscriptions) published for Aedes triseriatus. It could be quite legit for a different (objective synonym only) name like Oclerotatus triseriatus to refer to that same concept. So in that sense, there is a rationale for different scientific names to be able to reference the same concept to meet that requirement of the example you cite. But in zoology these examples aren't even considered different names and the rule of priority would prevent truly different (heterotypic names) from referring to the same type so the use cases for different scientific names being able to refer to a single concept ID are quite limited.

Mapping objective (homotypic) synonymy provides the basis for providing a single map for those examples you cite but it's not using true concept-based principles.

Best,
David

Frankly I think it would be an improvement if we could get maps etc that combine Aedes triseriatus / Ochlerotatus triseriatus into one map and Felis concolor and Puma concolor into a different single map. :-)

Respectfully,

- Pete

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Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
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