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FYI – November lichen task force newsletter

<--- Previous issue | Next issue ---> | Tip Line SYMBIOSIS: The lichen task force newsletter — November 2023 A look at what we've accomplished, working together
Our tiny task force is working to improve coverage of the world's lichens – unique symbiotic organisms composed of one or more fungal partners with one or more photosynthetic partners. They're found around the world, covering more than 7% of the earth's surface – from frigid polar areas to the steamy equator, from the edges of lapping seas to the highest mountains, and from city walls to the most pristine wilderness areas. They provide food and nesting material for myriad animal species, may be major players in the creation of soil from rock, and produce substances which may prove beneficial in our fight against pathogenic organisms. Want to learn more? Join us!	Articles of note New featured list: Outline of lichens (October 29) New good articles: Teloschistaceae (9 September) – a large family of mostly lichen-forming fungi Elke Mackenzie (18 October) – a noted British lichenologist who was also part of a secret WWII mission to Antarctica Teloschistes flavicans – the type species of the type genus of the family Teloschistaceae
Project news Esculenta has been on a tear recently and now has six articles under consideration for good article status: Anaptychia ciliaris, Buellia frigida, Chrysothrix chlorina, Placidium arboreum, Pulchrocladia retipora, and Punctelia. Esculenta has also submitted Teloschistaceae (which received its GA star in September) for consideration as a featured article. We now have articles about two additional noted lichenologists: Vitus Grummann and Oscar Klement. "Year of description" categories have been added to all genus and species articles. The number of genus and species articles continues to grow. We now have 935 articles about lichen genera and more than 2100 (including redirects) about lichen species. It's not all good news: The number of articles on our cleanup listing has also grown, with 5% of the task force's articles showing some sort of potential issue. These range from missing or unreliable sources to dead external links and orphaned articles. Some of these could probably be sorted relatively quickly, if you're looking for a fast way to help the project improve the quality of its coverage.
Newsletter challenge The "Phytochemistry" section in our Stereocaulon ramulosum is convoluted and virtually unreadable – and has had a "clarification needed" tag since July of 2022. The editor who whips this short section into shape (and the one who cleans up the associated references) will get public kudos in the next newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

FieldianaZool, etc. comments

For example, at Peregrine falcon:
<!-- FieldianaZool114:1. FieldMusNatHistZoolSer18:343. Forktail16:147. Micronesica37:69. RevBrasOrnitol14:101. -->

A search for comments starting with each of those 5 returns 761 results.

Is this information useful enough to keep? If so, can/shouldn't it be incorporated more formally into the article, either as a citation, a reference template, as a property at Wikidata to be used in {{Taxonbar}}, or some other way?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:13, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe all of these short journal citations as hidden comments were added by User:Dysmorodrepanis~enwiki. I've been removing them as I come across them. I haven't bothered to look up most these publications, but the ones I have looked at don't have anything useful to add to Wikipedia articles. Forktail16:147 can be seen here (the article is "The ornithological importance of Thrumshingla National Park, Bhutan"). It's mostly a checklist of birds found in the park, with detailed accounts about the presence in the park of some threatened species, and just a line in the checklist for non-threatened species. Go ahead and get ridden of these hidden citations. Plantdrew (talk) 20:41, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

 Working - will point edit summaries back to here.

I think I've found at least the vast majority of, if not all, variants with this search that returns 1236 results, a small # of which contain extra text like URLs and prose that I'll save for others to manually review.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I've found ~200 comments that are at the end of specific entries in species lists, like on Eulamprus:

*''[[Concinnia tenuis]]'' <small>([[John Edward Gray|Gray]], 1831)</small> bar-sided forest-skink, barred-sided skink<!-- ZoolMedLeiden82:737. -->

or kind of everywhere like on Aceria, which are both unlike the bulk of the comments, which are vaguely tacked on to the references section. Should these line-specific comments be removed semi-automatically as well, or be kept for manual review?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:59, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Those are probably safe to remove. I expect that these citation will probably not be very relevant to the genus as a whole (but may be relevant to individual species in the list). The one in Eulamprus says "Hinulia elegans...may be a synonym of Eulamprus tenuis". That's specifically relevant to the species Concinnia/Eulamprus tenuis, not to either genus (that source is cited conventionally at Concinnia, although I don't think it really belongs there either).

I haven't found a non-paywalled version of the source in Aceria. It does describe 5 new species, so would be very relevant in articles about those species, and it may have some relevant information about some previously described species (e.g. new records of host plants).Plantdrew (talk) 20:05, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done-ish ~1150 trivial comments removed.

I kept running into more and more journals until I didn't (i.e. there might be more out there), and ended up with a grand total of 26 unique search-prefixes (≲ 10 false positives creep in due to trying to keep the beginning of the search as cheap as possible):

AmMusN|AnnalenDes|CanJEarth|Condor|Cytogenet|Fieldiana|FieldMus|FolHist|Forktail|Geobios|JOrnith|JSyst|JTrop|JVert|Micronesica|Notornis|OrgDivers|Palaeontology|ProcCali|RafflesBull|RevBras|Revista|Waterbirds|WilsonBull|Zool|Zootaxa

The insource search with all 26 times out of course, so split into chunks that don't tend to throw a timeout warning: 28 + 48 + 19 + 38 + 17 + 13 + 44 + 35 + 163 = 405, which boil down to 362 unique pages.

I decided to err on the side of caution for now, and not remove the line-specific comments, and not remove those on pages at least somewhat outside WP:TREE, which are ~24% of the original total pre-run. Can revisit later when more of them have been checked.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: I just noticed Western Balkan barbel from 2017. What's your opinion re keeping/removing these comments?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Journal citation comment addendums

• ActaZool|Adans.|AnimBehav|AnimalBiology|AnnalsOf|Auk
• BahamasJSci|Biodivers|BiolConserv|Cybium|BiolJLinnSoc|Boll. Soc. Hist. Nat.|BulletinOfThe
• Caldasia|Cotinga|Evolution|FieldColumbMusGeolSer|Journal of Tropical Ecology|Molecular Phylogenetics|Nat. Hist. PI.
• OrnitholSci|PacificScience|ProcOklaAcadSci|SmithsonianContrib|ZOOLOGICAL SCIENCE|Zoomorphology

Anyone please feel free to add on to this list and I'll rerun everything after a good while.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:31, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Authority of Megalonyx

@Al2oh3: has changed the authority of Megalonyx to Jefferson, 1799, over Harlan, 1825 The vast majority of the literature I have seen uses the Harlan authority (e.g.) [1] [2] [3], though I have managed to find one use of the Jefferson authority in the literature ([4]) Al2oh3's justification for doing this in the edit summary is The authorship of the genus Megalonyx was corrected to Jefferson, 1799 (rather than Harlan, 1825). The description in Jefferson's 1799 paper fully meets the standards for availability of a genus-group name according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (2000). Harlan (1825) respelled the genus as "Megalonix," but also clearly attributed the genus-group name to Jefferson. Harlan's name, "Megalonix" is an "incorrect subsequent spelling" (ICZN, Article 33.3), and therefore invalid. To be honest, I am not a massive fan of this. This seems like WP:OR to me without an ICZN petition on the matter, and we should actually prefer what the majority of actual researchers are using over our own interpretations of the code. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:49, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Corrected by whom? YorkshireExpat (talk) 09:18, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

We need a secondary source saying it has been corrected. The argument may well be correct, but Wikipedia guidlines don't allow us to make that determination. A primary source saying it is wrong is not sufficient, when the majority of sources use that authority. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:14, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

If it helps at all, I've found more instances of "Megalonyx Jefferson, 1799" in the literature: [5] (from 1904), [6] (from 2007, page 609), [7] (2010 thesis, page 37), [8] (from 1995). The last one in particular in passing claims that "Megalonyx Jefferson, 1799" was non-binomial though, which may have some relevance to why Harlan, 1825 is used instead by some authors? "Jefferson, 1799" is also the authority used in Nomenclature Zoologicus (see page 71). Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:05, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Its a strange one in a way. Both are listed in ZooBank, however, Megalonyx Jefferson 1799 has no type species listed whereas Megalonyx Harlan 1822 does, that being jeffersoni. If no type has ever been added to the Megalonyx Jefferson 1799 then the name is unavailable and hence the correct name would be that authored by Harlan in 1822. After such a considerable amount of time I would say the ICZN would have to wiegh in on that and its likely that the older name would be deemed nomen oblitum in the absence of any other ruling. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:12, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Actually... the obligatory validation of a genus with a type species only applies to genera described after 1930. This case would not need a type species to be considered valid. —Snoteleks (Talk) 23:50, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes that is true, but to use the genus now requires a type species to be subsequently applied which does not seem to have ever been done. As such, and considering the the significant amount of subsequent usage of the Harlan name would require the type species to be applied. It would no doubt be challenged with the ICZN at this point as the Harlan name clearly has stability which is a major consideration in the code. Without the subsequent designation of a type and the consideration of stability I would consider the Jefferson name nomen oblitum. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:58, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia another point here is that at least the Amson et al. 2014 paper you link that uses Jefferson does so without comment or justification, to be fair the paper is largely about another genus Thalassocnus hence they did not need to spend much time on that, but the point is this is not a primary revision of the issue at hand here and hence should not be used as an authority on the issue of authorship of Megalonyx. To make this change we need an accepted by revision publication that explains why they are resurrecting the Jefferson name. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 08:22, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it is best to indicate the authorship of Megalonyx as disputed. That approach does reflect the recent literature. Al2oh3 (talk) 20:19, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Al2oh3 What recent literature has made a nomenclatural assessment that resurrects the name under the authorship of Jefferson? If there is no analysis then they could just be wrong for all we know. In general all recent lit has had the name under Harlan, those acceptions I have seen make no justification of this. You cannot just use an alternative nomenclature without justification, doing so is usually ignored, not deemed disputed. Please cite the paper that has the justification for using Jefferson. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 03:59, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

There are certain things like gender agreement which - being automatic and mandatory under the ICZN - do not constitute "original research" and do not require a citation to be included in Wikipedia. The issue of Megalonyx is a little bit more iffy. I can say, however, that the point above about Jefferson's work being non-binominal is false. Having read the work in question (linked twice, as references 4 and 6 in the WP article) it is a Code-compliant pre-1930 description. Note in particular the following Code Article: "11.4.1. A published work containing family-group names or genus-group names without associated nominal species is accepted as consistent with the Principle of Binominal Nomenclature in the absence of evidence to the contrary." There is no evidence that Megalonyx was not proposed as a Linnaean-concept genus name. As such, I personally do not see anything that would refute using Jefferson 1799 as the author of the name. Yes, the name was treated only once as a capitalized name, and subsequent uses in the paper used "megalonyx" or "magalonyx", but that is not evidence for non-binominality. More to the point, perhaps, is that it seems that historically Jefferson was accepted as the author (e.g., in Neave), and then at some later point someone argued to change the authorship, and this act was apparently done in contravention to the Code. If it's a matter of Code-compliance, which is objectively determined, then I don't think we're dealing with an OR issue at that point. One can always cite the Code, and then state which of the two alternatives in in compliance, much as one would cite the dictionary for the definition, pronunciation, or etymology of a word. Dyanega (talk) 19:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

One final point: Article 12 states that a description, definition, or an indication are required to make a name available prior to 1930. The inclusion of a known species is one of the methods of indication, and is not a general requirement for pre-1930 genus-rank names. Many genus-rank names prior to 1930 had no originally included species, but they are still available names. Further, the type species of Megalonyx is M. jeffersoni, as it was the first included species; this is made explicit in Article 69.3: "69.3. Type species by subsequent monotypy. If only one nominal species was first subsequently included in a nominal genus or subgenus established without included species, that nominal species is automatically fixed as the type species, by subsequent monotypy." Please also note that this Article explicitly states that a genus can be established without included species. Again, I see no reason not to accept Jefferson as the author of the genus. Dyanega (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you Dyanega and it would seem that the Jefferson description is valid, my issue is one of stability and that it should not be for us to change the status quo, I asked for a primary pub that has recognised this then I am fine to follow it. I agree the Jefferson description meets the code from what I can gather and monotypy is a valid species designation, the second species was added 1832 I believe. I have been seeing it as oblitum ie forgotten due to the subsequent overwhelming usage of the Harlan name. I would rather that was corrected in valid literature so we do not end up with a dual nomenclature and the vast majority of publications and checklists use Harlan and have done so for a long time. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 01:36, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Having read the account, it was light on descriptive details relative to modern scientific papers, though given that the three word phrase "Cornibus deciduis palmatis" (literally "palmate deciduous antlers") in an auction listing was enough to validate Megaloceros [9], I can certainly see why Dyanega thinks its enough to validate Megalonyx. My concern, like Faendalimas, is that this feels like something that should be resolved by ICZN petition, and that's not Wikipedia's purpose to correct authorites that are widely used the scientific literature. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:04, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Wether or not it went to a petition would be up to the workers on that group, I work with reptiles so its not one I would likely weigh into at that level if it came up. However, my gut feeling is that push comes to shove someone working on mammals would probably put in a case requesting authorship be stabilised under prevailing usage. If that happened under Art 82.1 it is probable that the Harlan name would stand until the ICZN made their decision which can take some time. This is why I would prefer to see this reviewed and accepted in the Primary Lit before we make the change. Which will affect us at Wikispecies too as we are using the Harlan name there too. GBiF has both names as valid which is doubly unhelpful. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 04:59, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have stated this more clearly: Jefferson's authorship is cut-and-dry. The ICZN generally does not accept a case unless there is some question about the correct application of the Code. That is, formal applications to the Commission generally involve setting aside the rules of the Code in order to achieve a desired outcome that is otherwise contravened. In this specific case, only if everyone wanted Harlan to be the author would there need to be a formal application and vote and ruling, because Harlan is not the author under the Code. An application sent to the Commission to "fix" Jefferson as the author would be rejected without review, because the Commission would not need to intervene at all. However, if what you want is simply a published statement that Jefferson is the author, then anyone can publish a very short opinion piece (one page, maybe two) in the BZN that says "The correct authorship and date of Megalonyx is Jefferson, 1799". Dyanega (talk) 19:11, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree, it is, as I was getting at we are an encyclopedia, not a journal article. But my worry is someone may try to conserve the Harlan usage. Not the other way around. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 02:40, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I got here late but perhaps have a little to add. I believe acceptance of Harlan (1825) as the authority stems from George Gaylord Simpson's 1945 classification of mammals (Simpson, George Gaylord (1945). "The principles of classification and a classification of mammals". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 85: 1–350. hdl:2246/1104.) which states (p. 70, footnote 4): "The supposed genus "Megalonyx Jefferson, 1799," long sentimentally cherished by American palaeontologists, is non-existent. Jefferson definitely did not establish such a genus in zoological nomenclature, but it can be ascribed to Harlan."

When I reviewed this problem some time ago for my nomenclatural database, I came to the same conclusion: there is no indication in Jefferson's paper that he is creating a scientific name. He uses the word "Megalonyx" together with "Lion", and never mentions any formal scientific name. I see that Dyanega came to the opposite conclusion though, and he surely knows more about the Code than I do.

In any case, I don't think it should be Wikipedia's business to decide which interpretation of the Code is correct. The article Megalonyx now says that authorship is disputed, and I think that's the right call until someone publishes a paper explicitly arguing for one author or another. Ucucha (talk) 06:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Also getting here a bit late, but no matter. I checked for "Megalonyx" in my own holdings and it is under authorship of Jefferson, 1799, per Neave (Nomenclator Zoologicus); also per Harlan's 1825 work, visible at https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=coo-AAAAcAAJ. I also noted Simpson's remark "The supposed genus "Megalonyx Jefferson, 1799," long sentimentally cherished by American palaeontologists, is non-existent. Jefferson definitely did not establish such a genus in zoological nomenclature" as stated above, and then reproduced verbatim in McKenna & Bell, 1997, who accordingly ascribe the genus to Harlan. However checking the original work by Jefferson, like Doug Yanega I see no reason why the name should not be available ("established" in the statement by Simpson): the article is accessible at https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12181210, wherein Jefferson names the animal "the Great-Claw or Megalonyx" on p. 248, which certainly looks like a genus-level nomenclatural act to me, in direct contrast to Simpson's assertion (which is not accompanied by any further evidence); the lack of an included species being no barrier to effective publication at that time. So in contrast to Hesperomys project / user Ucucha, I think I will add in a record for "Megalonyx Harlan", attribute it to McKenna & Bell ("basis of record" in my database terminology), but make it a later usage of Megalonyx Jefferson, noting also that Harlan (mis-)spells this name Megalonix when first encountered (p. 201), but does spell it correctly in the index (pp. 316, 317) and also on pp. 202 and 203 of the main text.

What this means is that (in the absence of further arguments to the contrary) IRMNG will continue to presume that Jefferson's paper is the available source for this name, and that Simpson/McKenna & Bell, and others who have followed them, are following a fallacious statement backed by no stated reasoning. Maybe I am wrong on this, but it seems logical to me at the present time - although any more recent published clarification from someone "in the know" would certainly be helpful. Regards Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 02:22, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, I have cited this discussion on the Wikispecies talk page for Megalonyx, see https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Megalonyx , with a recommendation that authorship for the genus is changed there from Harlan to Jefferson, as per Doug Yanega's statement above "Jefferson's authorship is cut-and-dry...". In case anyone wishes to comment further in that location... for consistency, I would also propose that authorship for this taxon be changed here as well (there could still be a statement regarding the variation found in the literature, and its probable source). Regards - Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 02:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi, PrimalMustelid joining here. I'm not completely sure of who has taxonomic authority by definition, but we're leaving out one particular source by George Gaylord Simpson. In 1942, he argued that referral to Thomas Jefferson as holding taxonomic authority is erroneous, pointing out that apparently, "Harlan may have been the first to use the name in a valid Linnaean form and hence may be its technical author." Another author of "Prehistoric Monsters: The Real and Imagined Creatures of the Past That We Love to Fear" in 2009 argued, "Until 1820, Jefferson's name Megalonyx was used in the vernacular, rather than as a scientific name selected in a valid Linnaean fashion. Then, French zoologist Anselm Desmarest (1784-1838) honored our third president by assigning remains of a species to Megalonyx jeffersoni. Thereafter, American paleontologist Richard Harlan (1796-1843) formally renamed the animal Megalonyx jeffersoni in volume 1 of a work titled "Fauna Americana; being a description of the mammiferous animals inhabiting North America" (1825). Therefore, Harlan (and not Jefferson, Wistar, or the others) is cited as the first technical author of the genus and species Megalonyx jeffersoni." PrimalMustelid (talk) 15:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

PrimalMustelid - None of the sources you are citing made reference to the ICZN, which is the final arbiter of the authorship of names; under the ICZN, Jefferson was the author. A genus name does not have to be published originally in a binomial ("a valid Linnaean form") in order to be made available. As I quoted earlier in this thread: "11.4.1. A published work containing family-group names or genus-group names without associated nominal species is accepted as consistent with the Principle of Binominal Nomenclature in the absence of evidence to the contrary." Many genera originally coined prior to 1930 had no included species, and Megalonyx is one of these examples. Dyanega (talk) 17:13, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I am aware of that rule, but I find it questionable that Jefferson's work contained "genus-group names" at all. He uses the word "megalonyx" in virtually the same way he uses the word "lion" (for example, in table headers). Would you say that Jefferson also introduced a generic name Lion? If not, what is the principled difference between the words "megalonyx" and "lion" in Jefferson's article? Ucucha (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Jefferson did more than provide a name, spelled "Megalonyx", he provided a Latin description that accompanied the name. For names coined prior to 1930, that is all the Code requires. Again, there are hundreds of genus names, of some incredibly well-known taxa, that have been recognized as valid for well over 100 years that have no more evidence than this to back them up, but the Code not only allows us to recognize these poorly-proposed names, it compels us to accept them. Again, the Code explicitly says you have to provide evidence if you wish to claim the name was NOT proposed as a genus name, and you would need to submit a formal application to the Commission if you wanted to give the authorship to Harlan by setting Jefferson's name aside. The Code in its present form (i.e., a published book) did not exist in 1942 when Simpson made his claim that Jefferson was not the author, so his personal opinion (and that of any other taxonomist prior to the compilation and widespread acceptance of the Code in 1961) is irrelevant. The authorships of names change all the time, when scrutinized. Case in point: for decades, the overwhelming majority of genus names published by Dejean were treated as unavailable, thanks to Neave publishing a catalog in 1940 that said they were all unavailable. Then, in 2013, two taxonomists, one of them an ICZN Commissioner, reviewed all of these names and determined that nearly 1000 of these names were actually available, and suddenly Dejean became the author of all of those names, when someone else had previously been credited with authorship for over 70 years. Neave was wrong, and didn't have the Code to consult in 1939 when he wrote his catalog. All it takes to set aside a mistaken authorship is the evidence from the original work by the actual author, and proper application of the Code. This case, regarding Megalonyx, is trivial by comparison. Dyanega (talk) 21:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I have read the original descriptions of most existing scientific names for mammals, so I know that many old descriptions don't comply with today's standards. The Code is rightly very permissive for names published before 1930, because otherwise many prominent names would become unavailable. But there is a flipside, which is that being too permissive may mean making too many names available, and that also leads to instability. For example, I still don't see why your argument would not imply that Lion Jefferson, 1799, is also an available name. Contrary to what you wrote above, Jefferson did not provide a formal Latin diagnosis for "megalonyx" (unless I missed it), and in any case such a diagnosis is not a requirement under the ICZN, only under the botanical code.

Article 1.3.5 of the ICZN excludes names used "as means of temporary reference and not for formal taxonomic use as scientific names in zoological nomenclature". My contention is that Jefferson used "megalonyx" in that way: he did not use a formal system of scientific names. Ucucha (talk) 14:41, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the Latin description refers to this ... I will venture to refer to him by the name of the Great-Claw or Megalonyx, to which he seems sufficiently entitled by the distinguished size of that member. Jefferson is providing a Latin name and its basis on the properties of the animal.

What other animals were described by Jefferson? If there are others, were they accepted and what type of description is there? —  Jts1882 | talk  15:15, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Jefferson's work contains an extensive table (pp. 249-250) of the dimensions and characteristics of the bones, which is - quite frankly - better in many respects than most of the contemporary descriptions then being published by "real" taxonomists. Not only that, these characters were presented in direct comparison to the same bones of a lion, and thus indisputably qualifying as a formal diagnosis (my insertion of the word "Latin" above was a brain fart). He even stated the type depository! Again, something that "real" 18th-century taxonomists hardly ever did. For a paper published in 1799, the taxonomic content of Jefferson's work was exemplary, even if he was skimpy on the nomenclatural aspect. Ucucha, I'm quite serious - if you feel so strongly that Jefferson's authorship is wrong, and that you can provide evidence that he was not using Linnaean nomenclature, then please go ahead and submit a petition to the ICZN to suppress that work and give the authorship to Harlan. If your case is compelling, then you should have your proverbial "day in court", but until then, no one has ever formally contested Jefferson's authorship, so it stands. Frankly, if a cranky pre-ICZN pedant like Neave saw fit to acknowledge Jefferson as the author, I think that convincing even more pedantic active ICZN Commissioners to deny Jefferson's authorship is going to be very difficult. A final minor point: the ICZN does not apply the concept of "stability" in certain contexts, such as dates, authorships, and gender agreement. These parameters can and do change without affecting nomenclatural stability, as in the case I mentioned above where several hundred genera changed authorships and years due to a single publication validating Dejean's authorship. That same publication DID point out the few cases where the valid name of a genus would change due to Dejean's name having seniority over a name in use, and they DID point out that these few cases threatened nomenclatural stability - not because of the change in authorship, but because of the change in the validity of a name. The Code, and Commission, are very clear on the distinction between what affects stability and what does not. Dyanega (talk) 16:44, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I should say something briefly about Wistar. Since Wistar authored a second description of Megalonyx, using the same bones, and in the same publication as Jefferson, an argument could possibly be made that the name should be considered as having competing simultaneous authorships, but this would be a little tricky to justify under the provisions of Article 50. While both authors provided Code-compliant descriptions, the thing is that Wistar cedes authority to Jefferson (admittedly in a subtle way, but it is clear enough), and that skews the interpretation of authorship in Jefferson's favor. It would be difficult to justify applying Article 50.6 here, giving authorship to Wistar rather than Jefferson (this would also require a petition to the Commission). One of the very minor differences between the two works, and one of the reasons to point to Wistar's paper, is that towards the end, on p. 531, he makes reference to "the megatherium" and "the megalonix". It's worth pointing out, in the context of the argument regarding whether or not he and Jefferson were treating these as names in the Linnaean sense, that the name "megatherium" was in fact a Linnaean-system name published and made available by Cuvier in 1796, and the observation that Wistar de-capitalized it cannot be construed as evidence that he was rejecting the Linnaean nomenclatural system. The more obvious conclusion is that people were not, in 1799, in the habit of always capitalizing Linnaean names, even when they were in fact being recognized as Linnaean names. The other thing is, Jefferson and Wistar used different spellings: "-onyx" versus "-onix" (the latter also used by Harlan). If there is ever a petition to grant Wistar (or Harlan) authorship, that changes the original spelling, and that would possibly threaten stability. Dyanega (talk)

References

Notability of taxa inquirenda

Hello! Trying to do some cleanup at Category:Taxa that may be invalid, and while most are fairly easy to resolve, I was wondering how we should treat taxa inquirenda. Do they get the same free notability pass that an accepted validly described taxa does, or should they be redirected to a parent taxon? Or is there a secret third thing I should do for these? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:08, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Taxa inquirenda are generally not be considered notable and should be deleted if possible. Unfortunately, this is often more trouble than it is worth and if we wait long enough they may be able to be either sourced as accepted, or redirected to a senior synonym. Loopy30 (talk) 22:11, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

At least as far as fossil genera are concerned, dubious taxa are considered equally notable as valid ones. Ornithopsis (talk) 01:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

@Loopy30, thanks. My usual practice for unaccepted species is to redirect to the parent taxon since they can be easily resurrected if they are accepted later, so in the future I'll treat inquirenda species in the same way.

Is there a discussion to that effect somewhere, @Ornithopsis? I usually don't deal with fossils anyway, but just so I know for future reference. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure whether there has ever been a formal discussion of it, but it is an accepted standard on our side of things. For instance, pretty much every dubious non-avian dinosaur genus has an article (e.g. Ponerosteus, Iuticosaurus, Walgettosuchus), and quite a few non-dinosaur taxa as well (e.g. Leogorgon, Barracudasaurus, Tontoia). Ornithopsis (talk) 01:42, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense. Like I said, I don't usually deal with fossils - mostly the invalid ones in that cat are snails - but if I do, I'll know to leave it be. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hiding synonym lists in taxoboxes

Long lists of synonyms for species or genera in taxoboxes are often best set up to be initially hidden. To make this simpler, I have now added the necessary code to {{Species list}} (of which {{Genus list}} is a synonym). Basically it only requires adding |hidden=yes before the list of taxon name/authority pairs. See Template:Species list#Hiding the list. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Appreciated. Will be nice not to have to look up the "collapsible list" syntax every time I want to do that, and then usually getting the double-wrapping wrong in some way. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Elmidae: that's exactly why I did it! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Same problem here, too. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Neoselachii into Elasmobranchii

See Talk:Elasmobranchii#Merge_Neoselachii_into_this_article. Participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:25, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to change Eukaryota to Eukarya

See Talk:Eukaryote#Eukarya or Eukaryota? for a discussion to change from using Eukaryota to Eukarya. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Adherence to correct spelling of scientific names as determined by nomenclatural Codes

User:UtherSRG has, in the process of refusing to allow an uncontested move of an article from an incorrect spelling of a genus name to the ICZN-compliant correct spelling of that name, stated today that "We aren't beholden to the ICZN." As an ICZN Commissioner, I think it's important to establish, here, that third-party sources that are in demonstrable violation of the ICZN (or the other nomenclatural Codes) are not acceptable as sources for Wikipedia (except in the context of being cited as using the wrong spelling). Just because 9 out of 10 authors misspell a scientific name does not mean Wikipedia has to accept that as the correct spelling, if even a single authoritative source exists that demonstrates that a different spelling is correct under the relevant Code. Is it really necessary or appropriate to compel editors to submit a formal request to WP:RM every time they find an outright and easily-confirmed error in a taxonomic article in Wikipedia, instead of simply fixing it?

Scientific names are not a "popularity contest", and no organism can have more than one spelling of its scientific name; only one spelling is correct, and all other spellings are not, and need to be fixed if they appear anywhere, Wikipedia included. More to the point, there are no third-party sources that take precedence over nomenclatural Codes, so there should be no expectation that - as UtherSRG suggests - a scientific name shouldn't be changed in Wikipedia until and unless there are multiple third-party sources available for citation that use the correct spelling. That's certainly not how taxonomy works, and I don't really think that all the admins here would agree that this is how Wikipedia works, either. In fact, in taxonomic practice, species-rank scientific names can change spelling even where NO publication appears with the correct spelling: this often happens with mandatory gender agreement (e.g., when a genus is synonymized with a genus of a different gender, authors do not always publish the new spellings of all the included species names; it's "an exercise left to the reader"). It is therefore entirely possible for the correct spelling of a scientific name to have ZERO published citations - but the Codes tell us what the correct spelling must be, even if it is never literally published, and that same accepted principle certainly should cover Wikipedia. Is this really subject to dispute?

This isn't a petty matter, or personal thing, this is a really fundamental aspect of how the science of taxonomy works, and how it interacts with Wikipedia, and I think it's important to be clear whether or not Wikipedia acknowledges formally-accepted rules of science as having primacy, so I hope we can have a civil discussion about this. It affects ALL scientific names, which are governed by well-established nomenclatural Codes, and account for a very large percentage of the articles in Wikipedia. If there is nothing explicit in Wikipedia policy regarding the need for scientific names to comply with the relevant Codes, then maybe now is a good time to make a push to do so. Dyanega (talk) 20:19, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

If the original genus name is clearly verifiable in the original description, then i see no problem with changing it to that, even if the majority of taxonomic literature is incorrect. I would like to see evidence from the academic literature that the spelling error is acknowledged if available. The problem is though, why would researchers trust the spelling of species on Wikipedia over what other scientists are using in the academic literature? I certainly wouldn't on first glance.

I think a more significant issue is your mass changing of species names to correctly match the grammatical gender, which results in species names that have never been used outside of Wikipedia. That's essentially WP:OR, and it doesn't really do anything to correct what researchers are using, because why trust Wikipedia over the academic literature? This is something that needs to be resolved in academic venues, rather than the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:56, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I suppose that WP:COMMONNAME was the argument used, which would make it a Wikipedia issue. I would argue that (for extant species anyway) that binominal can hardly be described as common names. This would be different for dinos (e.g. T. rex), and I opened a can of worms by moving something boldly, but I do have move rights. If I'd have found an article about a taxon using the scientific name misspelled, I'd have probably just moved it without the RM. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:27, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Preferrably changes like these would be done with reference to the proper ICZN communication and/or entry on the matter. The Morrison Man (talk) 21:51, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding self-made corrections to several species names in article space is not only WP:OR, as previously stated, but also extremely confusing to the public and should be avoided at all cost. If the ICZN has issues with a nomenclature, it should resolve these issues with the concerned researchers and avoid doing it via proxy encyclopedia. The nomenclature used on Wikipedia should reflect the current scientific consensus on the matter in the published sources, not the opinion of private individuals, be them ICZN consultants or New Latin amateurs. Any species names that you have changed in the past to satisfy the expectations of the ICZN should be moved back to their situation within the sources. Don't forget that Wikipedia is often used as a generalist and practical handbook, even for researchers, and can give to the people with power to change the nomenclature the false impression that the changes have been done in effect in the litterature, which is often not the case. By modifying Wikipedia articles arbitrarily to satisfy your opinion on the requirements of the ICZN, you're actively going against the interest of the ICZN in the long run, and spreading potential disinformation on the Internet.

When I tried, myself, to include an etymology for Stegotherium back on my early editing days, inferred on the etymology, in New Latin, of these terms, this addition was criticized, and I took it down, due to it never occuring in any sources consulted. Similarly, your expectations on spellings are in a quite similar situation.

If 9 out of 10 authors misspell a scientific spelling, this is a misspelling. If 10 out of 10 authors misspell it, this is a consensus. As an ICZN commissioner, you should be able to correct, by yourself, any infractions to the code, or at least to contact the respective authors. Wikipedia is not a proxy for a scientific dispute, but must observe the consensus. One paper would suffice, but we need at least one paper.

Mandatory gender agreement, or anything like that, only concerns scientific publications. Wikipedia should be a reflection of those scientific publications, not the scientific publication that makes the decision. The correct spelling of a scientific name can't be decided by one random editor here ; if we allow you to take these kinds of decisions, which we shouldn't, we would also allow any other editor to add their own interpretation of the correct New Latin name, which would quickly become, as we say colloquially around here, the Far West, and would end up doing infinitely more harm than good to public perception of scientific names, academic consensus, and naturally to the ICZN itself.

A really fundamental way of how Wikipedia works is by removing, by all means necessary, any original research, and to focus on substantiated observations in the sources. Contrarily to academic publications, Wikipedia is only a repository of information already available elsewhere, and as such can not be the support of any taxonomical change, even if a code comes into conflict with it. I'm entirely favorable with the ICZN's effort to standardize scientific nomenclature, but Wikipedia is not the place for such an effort. All modifications done to already existing article to correct its declensions or genderizations should be treated as original research if not substantiated by at least one published work.

In the case of Cyrtophleba/Cyrtophloeba, the ICZN doesn't matter much. What matters is that Rondani, the genus author, takes natural precedence, and that any subsequent author committed an orthographic mistake. If this name had not been effectively published, the ICZN would not take precedence, as the correct orthograph would be the only one present in the source material, Cyrtophleba, as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I've grown to know a bit a number of my fellow editors, and I know for a fact that, for most of them, knowledge of Latin, Greek, and the, often tricky, Latin-Greek fusion that is taxonomical Neo-Latin can be quite lackluster. Forcing them to systematically correct any scientific name they stumble upon to respect a code that is outside the general guidelines of Wikipedia will be a quite dangerous endeavor. Larrayal (talk) 00:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Now that a few people have weighed in, I hope I can be allowed to address a few of these points. The argument I was making was general, not focused on the specific case that triggered it, but since User:Larrayal raises that case, let's use it as an example. What it exemplifies is the conflict between authoritative and non-authoritative sources, and my argument is that an editor who is competent enough to distinguish between authoritative and non-authoritative sources should be allowed to act on that knowledge. KNOWING that a given source is spelling a name wrong, and another right, and acting accordingly, does not - I would contend - constitute "original research" any more than consulting a dictionary for the spelling of a word. I assume that Wikipedia accepts the spelling given in a dictionary before any other sources, no matter how many have it wrong. For example, when I Google Search for "tumeric", the exact match only, I get over 5 million hits. However, that spelling does not appear in Wikipedia except as a redirect to the correct spelling. If editors are able to exclude "tumeric" from Wikipedia because it is misspelled, then it should be just as easy to exclude a misspelled scientific name when there is an authoritative source that shows it is wrong, and create a redirect - just like for "tumeric". In the case of Cyrtophleba/Cyrtophloeba, the ICZN is crucial to the resolution. Why? Because Rondani spelled it both ways in the original publication, and only the ICZN gives explicit instructions as to how such a case is resolved. In fact, the list of misspellings is extensive: CRYTOPHOEBA, CYRTHOPHLAEBA, CYRTHOPHLEBA, CYRTOPHLEBA, CYRTOPHOEBA, CYRTOPLOEBA, and CYRTHOPLAEBA - but only Cyrtophloeba is accepted under the ICZN, because it was selected under ICZN Article 24.2.4 by the original author acting as First Reviser. There is one print source that explains this, and one online source, the BDWD. There are numerous other sources that use the wrong spelling, including some sources that people who don't know any better will generally consider authoritative, such as GBIF. Bear with me here, please, because this very, VERY intimately relates to the argument that several of you have made, that Wikipedia exists outside of the academic sphere. It most emphatically does not. Wikipedia is linked inextricably to all of those online resources like GBIF, ITIS, IRMNG, BioLib, Fauna Europaea, IPNI, WORMS, Fossilworks, etc., both directly and through intermediates like Wikidata and Wikispecies. Most of those sources, however, are not authoritative sources of either taxonomic data, or nomenclatural data. Some are aggregators, and accumulate both good and bad information, without discriminating, and most of the others are manually-curated by people who are not taxonomists. What this means is that a lot of misinformation exists, and persists, through this interactive network of online sources that are effectively immune to being corrected. Even a world authority is unable to go in and fix a misspelling in any of these sources. This directly contradicts the claim made above that somehow taxonomists could exercise control over the appearance of misspellings online. They CANNOT. Aside from taxon-specific resources like the BDWD, the majority of online sources of scientific names are NOT screened by taxonomic experts, and most are unresponsive to external feedback. The name Cyrtophloeba is a perfect example of the problem - there IS a definitive published source that very explicitly gives the correct spelling and explains it, as well as the BDWD, but only a few of the many online sources have incorporated this information. GBIF, for example says that Cyrtophloeba and Cyrtophleba are BOTH "accepted" names, which is literally impossible, but because GBIF lists the latter misspelling as "accepted", other sources have picked it up and propagated it. Wikidata does not include Cyrtophloeba at all, because Wikidata is generated from Wikipedia, and until recently, Wikipedia used the wrong spelling. The point is that PRINT PUBLICATION of the correct spellings of names typically does little - or nothing - to impact the appearance of these names in the various online sources, because that's not how these online sources work. There is either a time lag, or a labor lag, or some barrier, so what appears in print may or may not eventually find its way into these sources. That's where Wikipedia is different, and crucially important to the scientific community. Wikipedia (and Wikispecies) is perhaps the only venue where new scientific knowledge can be disseminated immediately and accurately. You don't seem ready or willing to acknowledge how important that is - the claim that Wikipedia is not used by academics is utterly disingenuous, as it ignores how little reliance modern scientists place on print publications, and instead rely primarily on finding information online. I've been helping train taxonomists for the past 25 years, and they now use Google Search for essentially everything, and most have never used a library. For almost any scientific name you type into Google Search, Wikipedia is going to be the first result. The next most common results are going to be these other online sources like GBIF, ITIS, IRMNG, BioLib, IPNI, and such. Since Wikipedia is the only one of these sources where errors in scientific names can be fixed directly, it is essential that Wikipedia ALLOW for misspellings to be fixed there. Otherwise, scientists - yes, scientists, not just laymen - are generally going to accept the results of a Google Search uncritically; in a very large number of cases, they won't know when a name they have typed in is misspelled, or what the correct spelling is, UNLESS there is an entry in Wikipedia that explains it. In other words, a misspelled name that has found its way online is going to propagate, proliferate, and confuse people until and unless there is an entry in Wikipedia that sets things straight. I am going to ask those of you who think I'm overstating the case to try an exercise: without referring to Wikipedia or Wikispecies, how easily can you determine, definitively, which of these two spellings is correct: Lepisma saccharina or Lepisma saccharinum? It's one of the most common insects in the world, so it SHOULD be easy, right? This demonstrates exactly the opposite of the claim that academia can keep its own house in order - academics use online searches to do their research, and especially for things like the spelling of scientific names, the majority of authoritative sources are online, and NOT in print. Wikipedia is supposed to present facts, not misinformation, even when that misinformation is widespread. Do people honestly feel that an editor who discriminates between misinformation and fact is engaging in "original research" by doing so, and therefore prohibited from fixing errors? To use one of the examples above, it IS original research if you manufacture an etymology that does not appear in a dictionary, but NOT original research if you're consulting a dictionary that does contain it. I don't see how consulting any of the nomenclatural Codes, and citing that Code, is fundamentally different from consulting and citing a dictionary. Dyanega (talk) 17:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm with Dyanega on this one. The fundamental issue, I think, is what is meant by "verification", given that "verification not truth" is the requirement here. The most reliable source for the correctness of a scientific name that is governed by a nomenclature code is that code, not usage, whether by professional biologists or others. Of course we must mention widespread orthographic variants, but our articles should be titled and should use the name that is correct under the relevant code, always provided this can be clearly sourced to the code. (An advantage of the areas in which I mostly edit, plants and spiders, is that there are taxonomic databases regarded as authoritative for these groups, which usually have the correct names under the Codes and will make corrections if they are told and accept that there are errors. Also correcting botanical names seems to be less controversial – botanists have only recently abandoned Latin descriptions, so are still expected to know some Latin and follow gender agreement, etc.) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I also agree with Dyanega perpetuating clear errors is not in keeping with the concept of providing accurate information. I also do not consider such corrections as WP:OR there are afterall references with either spelling. As such the editor here should make their decision between those publications based on an assessment of compliance to the ICZN Code. It is also risky to accept incorrect spellings as, although possibly not the case in this situation, it can lead to unnecessary homonyms being apparent (pseudo-homonyms as they are not really homonyms they are incorrect information) and as an Encyclopedia striving for accurate information should be a priority. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Im NOT with Dyanega. If a spelling is not found in any source, we here at wikipedia can never, at any point be the source that first publishes it. I would highly suggest reading OR and deeply contemplating the repercussions if this dicussion were happening at the wider village pump forums. I suspect that Dyanega would at the very least be chastised, if not outright topic banned for violation of POV COI editing rules. Its problematic that Dyanega continues to introduce "corrections" in instances where there IS no reference to the orthographic variation being used.--Kevmin § 19:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, there are two distinct issues here. The thread started over a case where there were multiple spellings in the literature, and there was a source that explained which spelling was correct under the provision of the ICZN. When there are multiple spellings in the literature and a code-based argument for which spelling is correct, we should follow the code-based argument. UtherSRG's argument that we should determine the spelling to use by application of WP:COMMONNAME is nonsense. That's not how Wikipedia does taxonomy. If a species has been placed in different genera we don't decide which genus to place it in by looking at the number of Google hits for every combination. We follow recent sources that have coherent genus concepts. And when the IOC changes the vernacular name of a bird (usually due to a change in circumscription, but sometimes with no change in circumscription), Wikipedia changes the vernacular name (IOC vernacular names for birds are not WP:COMMONNAMEs, but COMMONNAME is not the sole thing to consider in titling articles).

The other issue, that Dyanega has brought up before is whether Wikipedia should correct spellings when there is only one spelling in the literature, and the spelling in the literature is incorrect under the provisions of the ICZN. This happens a lot with lepidoptera because lepidopterists don't care about gender agreement. Wikipedia should not be the only source for a spelling that is found nowhere else in the literature. I do see species epithet that I suspect don't agree with the gender of the genus. But I'm not certain that the gender of the genus is what I suspect it to be. And I'm not certain that the species epithet isn't a noun in apposition that doesn't need to agree with the genus. I guess it would be a little less OR if I changed a spelling while providing a reference that explicitly gave the gender of the genus (but I suspect a big part of the lepidoptera problem is that such references don't exist). Plantdrew (talk) 21:11, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I was referring to the case at hand specifically where there are multiple publications. The original spelling is always published it's in the original description, subsequent spellings are erroneous unless a nomenclatural explanation has been given. Which would mean you would have at least two publications to choose from if there are two spellings. I do appreciate that WP as an encyclopedia cannot make the first move on this I totally agree with Kevmin on that but this is unlikely to be the case in most instances. The reason I do not consider it WP:OR is because in the absence of a publication justifying an alternate spelling for a species name the only correct spelling is the one in the original description. That is not original research, you are following the original description. If there is a justifiable spelling change in a publication that is still not original research because again you are just following a review publication and should be doing so. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 21:48, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The issue I was involved with there was only one known primary source and no known tertiary srouses using the corrected spelling at the time. Later it was found there were more tertiary sources. And while I'd called out COMMONNAME, what I intended was to wait for multiple tertiary sources to confirm the spelling correction. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Having thought more fully about this, I no longer have an opinion one way or the other about correcting onwiki, but I think the correct action for incorrect emendations made in recent scientific papers is that a request for correction should be made to the relevant scientific journal. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia follows taxonomic precedents set by the existing literature, Wikipedia should never itself attempt to set precedents; we follow, don't lead. We have clear rules about that at WP:OR and WP:synth. This is not the right venue to emend names, that should be done through publications or petitions within the relevant fields. Only when such a process is finalized and accepted, then we can change it here accordingly with no problem if it can be cited. FunkMonk (talk) 09:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

At no point have I said anything about emending names. Let's be perfectly clear about that. Changing the spelling of a species epithet from "striatus" to "striata" when it is transferred into a feminine genus is not emending the spelling - under ANY of the nomenclatural Codes, these are gender-mandated spelling variants of the same name, and changing one variant to another is not an emendation; an emendation is a change that results in a different name, like changing "striatus" to "stratus". What I am and have been referring to in this thread are - primarily - these mandatory spelling changes that, under the various Codes do not ever need to be published in order to take effect. Gender agreement is simply the most common mandatory case, but there are other similar situations (such as when there are two spellings of a name in the literature and only one is valid). I will give the most common and broadest example that occurs: a genus-level phylogenetic analysis is published, in which genus A and genus B are synonymized, and/or genus Y is separated from genus X, of which it had previously been a synonym. Each of these genera may have dozens to hundreds of constituent species, but since the paper is about the generic classification, the authors do not list all of the re-combined species names. Hundreds of papers like this are published each year. MANY times, the species affected by the generic reassignment are moved into genera of a different grammatical gender, and MANY times, this means the spelling of some species names will need to be changed because they are adjectives. The point I am trying to establish here is what policy should apply, in Wikipedia, in this sort of situation; if Wikipedia adopts the new classification, then I argue that editors should also comply with the relevant nomenclatural Code and adopt the necessary revised spellings of the species names, even when the individual spellings have never appeared in print. If a botanical revision comes out that says that the genus Gonolobus is now a subgenus of Asclepias, that would mean over 100 species presently treated as masculine need to be moved into a feminine genus. If an editor changes the present Gonolobus article so it appears as a subgenus of Asclepias, they should make the required changes to all the affected adjectival names in the list, and move any bluelinked articles to a new, correct title. In such a situation, it is entirely possible that it could take several years before anyone published all of the new spellings in a citable source, so a policy that insists on waiting for a citable source to appear is, I would argue, entirely inappropriate in such cases. A rare species like Gonolobus barbatus might not have its new name (Ascepaias barbata) appear in print for decades, if no one is actively publishing about it. It does not make sense to me to say that editors would be forced to make an article titled "Asclepias barbatus", a spelling that directly violates the ICBN and misleads readers, just because the name Asclepias barbata had never been published. Here's the thing about this example: in this basic scenario, the name Asclepias barbatus would never have been published anywhere, either, so if the principle is to never use unpublished names in Wikipedia under any circumstances, editors would be unable to do ANYTHING whenever genus affiliations are changed without the publication of a new species list. Such a strict policy stands to do more harm than good, and that's why I would instead argue that we need a policy that allows editors to adhere to the nomenclatural Codes when contending with lists of species and titles of articles whose spellings are demonstrably incorrect - i.e., that an editor who changes the spelling of a name to comply with a relevant nomenclatural Code is NOT violating the prohibition on "original research", and NOT going to have their edits reverted. Dyanega (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

It is still not our job to do. We report what is written elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, we can and must report when mis-spellings are common – but this doesn't stop us saying that they are mis-spellings. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Actually, if UtherSRG's comment is taken at face value, editors are NEVER allowed to say something is misspelled until and unless there are mutlitple published sources that say it is misspelled, and those sources are cited. Dyanega (talk) 17:18, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Indeed. Correct. Anything else is WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. It is not our job to correct errors in publication. It is only our job to report what has been published. If no publication has used what the ICZN calls correct we should not use any unpublished spellings. To use an unpublished spelling is OR and SYNTH. If there are multiple spellings in one or more publications, we can note this. We are not to make the determination as to which is correct. Less strictly, we do have to make some editorial decisions, such as what to put in our taxoboxes, etc. However, we should make some note in the body of the article along the lines of "most publications use X spelling, while some (fewer) publications use Y spelling". We can point to the ICZN and note what the code says is correct. But we should not make the correction beyond this. Again, to go further than this is OR and SYNTH. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Going further - when a publication specifically calls out a mispelling and makes the correct and then later papers adhere to this correction, we can at this point drop the misspellings. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

UtherSRG - I'm not trying to badger you, honestly, I do understand where you're coming from, and why you might perceive "granting an exception" as a "slippery slope" instead, but my not-so-hypothetical example above is one I would like to know how you would address, given the strict prohibition your policy entails. To reiterate: if a paper came out that sank the genus Gonolobus into the genus Asclepias without providing a list of species, and no one published an updated list that included all of the new name combinations for, say, 10 years, are you saying that Wikipedia editors would have to wait for 10 years to list the Gonolobus species under the genus name Asclepias simply because there was no published literature placing any of those individual species into Asclepias? If so, does that not seem like a policy that is detrimental to the goals of Wikipedia? Dyanega (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Question 1: Yes. We report what has been published. Question 2: No, for OR and SYNTH is more detrimental. It just isn't our job to do that work. The paper that makes that change should note the gender change required. (Not that we can make that happen...) I don't even think they would have to list all 100 species; they can simply say that they note the gender change of the genus and perhaps list a small number of actual changes. (Even that smells too close to OR and SYNTH now that I re-read it.) I suspect they would be referring to some of those species anyway to make the determination that the genus should be demoted to a subgenus; if they do refer to some species and continue to use the older spelling, it is even harder to justify making the change. But no, I doubt we'd have to wait 10 years, as I'd expect other sources to pick up the gender change and start using the appropriate new names, and then we can point there. Basically, if there is no primary, secondary, or tertiary source we can point to, we are out of bounds to make a change. Pointing to the ICZN's code is not sufficient; to do so would absolutely be SYNTH. Either the original paper should note the change in some way (preferably by a full listing of the name changes), or later papers or other secondary publications would have to use the newer spellings, or some reliable tertiary source such as a database would have to make those changes. If none of those happen, we can't point to some place for a reader to verify the change, so we should not make the change.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we do go and make the change to those 100 species in Gonolobus and then 10 years pass and still no one else has published anything about any of those 100 species, then Wikipedia looks like we don't know what we are talking about, that we make stuff up on our own. Wikipedia has no deadline. We can wait as long as we need to have a source note the change and then we can pick it up. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay. Now let's say that in those ten years, the type species of Gonolobus, Gonolobus macrophyllus, has had a new publication about it which squarely places it within Asclepias, but the remaining Gonolobus species have not.

Are you then arguing that we should move Gonolobus macrophyllus to Asclepias, while retaining all the other species at Gonolobus—in spite of the fact that the status of the genus is tied to its type species, and our acknowledgement of the new placement of the type species therefore inherently means Gonolobus cannot be the correct name for any of these lingering species?

Because if anything would make Wikipedia look like we don't know what we're talking about, it's that sort of thing... AddWittyNameHere 19:44, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dyanega:, I feel like I must be misunderstanding your example, because that's not how the ICBN works. You can't publish a paper saying "Gonolobus is a synonym of Asclepias and all Gonolobus species now have combinations in Asclepias". Well, technically I guess you could publish such a paper, but it would not establish the combinations in Asclepias. You need to actually publish each combination and make it explicit that you are doing so: "'Gonolobus is a synonym of Asclepias... Asclepias barbata comb. nov., basionym Gonolobus barbatus...". The person who invokes the magic words "comb. nov." then get credited in authority citations (following the parenthetical name of the author of the basionym). As far as I'm aware, if it was published as Asclepias barbatus, that would still count for establishing the combination, but would be a correctable error.

POWO (and Wikipedia) treats Genyorchis as a synonym of Bulbophyllum. We have an article on Genyorchis macrantha; the POWO record states "This is name is unplaced". Nobody has ever published Bulbophyllum macranthum (and maybe nobody will ever need to; if somebody says that Genyorchis macrantha is a synonym of Bulbophyllum fooianum, POWO could go with that synonymy and get rid of the "unplaced" flag).

I also hadn't understood the ICZN to work like you are implying. You can just lump a genus without explicitly publishing new combinations for the species (and you can split!!! a genus by just saying "some of the species should go in this other genus" without enumerating which species are affected)? Lumping may lead to secondary homonyms. Wouldn't those need to be dealt with by explicitly publishing replacement names? Plantdrew (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

yeah this comes down to what people can do and should do..... Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:45, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

There has been a lot of interesting discussion about this, but I think it comes down to whether nomenclatural codes or Wikipedia rules take precedence when choosing the name for the title of a Wikipedia article. Doesn't this dichotomy fall under WP:TRUTH and more specifically Wikipedia:Wikipedia is wrong? Esculenta (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

well Dyanega they do have the issues of OR and SYNTH here on Wikipedia, personally I think the slippery slope could be avoided but the intracies of policy and how to impliment them is a difficult discussion on Wikipedia. On Wikispecies we would alter all the names accordingly as we update the new combination, however in saying that we have no OR or SYNTH policies and hence do not face that issue, plus as a smaller wiki with all our editors being at least somewhat involved in taxonomy it is possibly a little easier for us. This of course means it will be parsed to Wikidata and can eventually end up on Wikipedia anyway. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Higher-level taxonomy of lancelets

I was having a discussion on my talkpage with @Ucucha: User_talk:Hemiauchenia#Authority_for_Amphioxiformes regarding the authority of the order Amphioxiformes, the order used for lancelets. The taxonomic authority of Amphioxiformes also seems obscure. It's not listed in academic papers nor in ZooBank [10]. The earliest usage Uchucha could find is Berg, 1937 [11]. During the discussion, it came up that WoRMS doesn't even recogise Amphioxiformes, only the class Leptocardii. Should Amphioxiformes be removed from the taxobox? Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:30, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Found this with a couple of references to 'Ordo Amphioxi' if that's any use? It has Branchiostomidae listed as a child. YorkshireExpat (talk) 20:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Bonaparte's classification (1846 I think) was influential but is not what we should use to decide on taxonomy in 2024. I've seen both "Amphioxi" and "Branchiostomiformes" for the order in various places. Ucucha (talk) 21:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, was just the earliest thing I found, so thought it might give some pointer towards the authority. YorkshireExpat (talk) 09:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

A related question: We have two separate articles Cephalochordate and Lancelet. Ostensibly the former covers the subphylum Cephalochordata and the latter the class Leptocardii and order Amphioxiformes, the only extant cephalochordates. There are some contradictions about whether there are one or two families. There are some poorly known and questionable fossil stem cephalochordates, but for almost any practical purpose "cephalochordates" and "lancelets" are the same. Should the two articles be merged? Ucucha (talk) 21:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Both articles should be merged Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Update: Hemiauchenia dropped the name "Amphioxiformes" from lancelet and redirected cephalochordate to lancelet. I also merged in Branchiostomatidae, since only one family is usually recognized, and added some taxonomic history to the lancelet article. Ucucha (talk) 02:39, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

FotW5 uses order Amphioxiformes, with two families: Branchiostomatidae and Epigonichthyidae. The edits on WoRMS date back to 2011-2013, so why should we follow WoRMS over FotW5? Even if lancelets aren't considered fish, FotW5 is a more recent taxonomic work covering lancelets. Is there something more specific or recent that supports the WoRMS treatment? Treatment as one article on lancelets is fine, though. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:01, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Their family Epigonichthyidae is paraphyletic according to recent molecular phylogenies; the topology is (Asymmetron, (Branchiostoma, Epigonichthys)). Few sources focused on lancelets talk explicitly about family names, though. Ucucha (talk) 15:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Duplapex vs Duplaplex

Ugh... References on the article spell it with only one "l". IRMNG uses the second "l", and puts a note that says the one "l" spelling in incorrect. What to do? Here we have tertiary source explicitly saying primary source is incorrect. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Unlike with correcting the spelling of the species name to match gender, there's rarely a good reason for changing the spelling of a genus name unless it is preoccupied, which as far as I can tell is not the case for Duplapex. The original describing paper very clearly uses the "Duplapex" spelling, and in the absence of a ZooBank entry for this taxon [12], I think we should default to the original description. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:45, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I wonder if the IRMNG entry updater meant to fix the entry, but just left a note for it to be fixed later? *shrugs* Ah... if only we have perfect data entry... - UtherSRG (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

One can only dream! IRMNG in particular seems to be inconsistent in a lot of things, even moreso than WoRMS, at least from my experience. —Snoteleks (Talk) 19:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Really bogs down my groove in cleaning up taxobox/taxonbar-related issues... XD - UtherSRG (talk) 19:06, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

The last person to update the IRMNG record for this genus (3 months ago) was Tony Rees, who edits Wikipedia as User:Tony 1212. And IRMNG, as I understand it is largely a single person effort by Tony Rees, and he does not want it to necessarily continue to be a single person effort (see Vision section here) IRMNG is, as denoted by the first letter of the abbreviation, an "interim" database and not the last word on anything. I find it to often be a useful resource. Can we not shit on people who are maintaining databases (mostly) single-handedly?

I've contacted Tony1212 via his Wikpedia talk page over issues I've found on IRMNG, and he has made changes based on my concerns. Talk to him. Plantdrew (talk) 03:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've asked questions and he's made changes. It's very useful as it covers things other sources don't. The problem is this huge scope and some taxa are based on older classifications. Other aggregator sources like ITIS also have this problem and even WoRMS, which has active curators for some sections, or CoL, which uses third party specialist databases, have some taxa with very dated information. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Does the paper give an etymology for the name? If it's based on a folded pair of something (dupla- and -plex), then I believe the name would be correctable under the ICZN code as it would be a spelling change based on the Latin. We can't do that for Wikipedia, but IRMNG could. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The paper is available on Researchgate and has the following explanation for derivation of the name:

Duplus means double, apex means peak, referring to the two unique doublure spines.

Not sure the Latin is correct or if it should use a genitive (-apicis or -apicum), but it's not -plex. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, the ICZN does not correct spellings based on their etymology - Article 32.5.1 explicitly prohibits corrections to spelling based on incorrect Latin usage by an author. There are, accordingly, a lot of malformed names that have never been corrected - like "nigrus" or "pulchrus". They're like nails on a chalkboard, but they can't be touched. As an aside, a friend published a species named "tolkeini", which would have been correctable if he had said in the paper that it was named after J.R.R. Tolkien, but he did not, so it's not possible to correct it, because Article 32.5.1 prohibits the use of external sources of information. Dyanega (talk) 16:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Article 11.8 of the ICZN says that generic names are nominative singular, i.e. Duplapex would be correct. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Just found this paper that uses both spellings, so perhaps that's what Tony 1212 meant at IRMNG... - UtherSRG (talk) 16:52, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

This paper was published about a month before the latest update to the entry at IRMNG, so is quite possibly the origin of the misspelling. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks guys / guyesses (if any) for the above comments and alert. Yes, the IRMNG record was wrong, now fixed ("Duplapex") and no, I did not previously spot the error (just noted the discrepancy) when adding a reference for the family placement as my more recent edit last November. All good now I hope, also a note added RE the recent (unrelated/coincidental) single-place misspelling in another paper. Multiple pairs of eyes are good!! The only issue being that at present, IRMNG does not have a system to alert "power users" of the downstream package when a name (spelling) as recorded by IRMNG has been changed i.e. corrected - users have to discover this for themselves (a bit sub-optimal) - something to think about down the track. And yes, previous comments are correct, once a name is published in whatever form, that form stands, unless changed by an ICZN Opinion (cannot be emended for grammatical or other reasons, species gender agreement excepted). (May not apply to families, where the termination is formed separately from the stem, and is sometimes published incorrectly). Thanks all, happy to be in the loop regarding any other IRMNG issues spotted (no system is perfect, but I/we do our best). Note also that comments can be added to https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tony_1212 where I will hopefully be alerted to them automatically. Regards, Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:00, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

From a comment above: "IRMNG in particular seems to be inconsistent in a lot of things". Well, the species treatment/s can become out of step with the genus treatments - the latter are updated semi-continuously as resources permit, the former are "frozen" as at 2014 and unlikely to be changed in the future (resources are concentrating on the genus level and above these days). And yes, the higher taxonomies can have inconsistencies, which have generally been inherited from the multiple (and sometimes now outdated) sources used, and I try to address as discovered, but sometimes when it is a big task it gets shelved. But happy to take on notice, any specific issues, unless they concern species of course! Regards - Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

What to do about authority dates

I think many of us have encountered several taxa whose description date jumps between two years, because we either display the first date of publication of the reference, or the date of the volume/issue to which the article belongs. For example, many taxa can be assigned either to "Cavalier-Smith 2017", because the paper was published in December 2017, or to "Cavalier-Smith 2018", because it belongs to a 2018 volume or issue within the scientific journal. Could we reach a consensus? Do we prefer the volume date or the first publication date? —Snoteleks (Talk) 12:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

It used to be that the date of physical publication is the one to use. In older works this sometime meant the authority date was several years after the work was completed. For electronic journals, the information must be deposited at Zoobank. Not sure if deposit at Zoobank would take precedence over physical publication if both were done. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

We shouldn't make this decision and we should report what the third party sources report for authority dates. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

At the risk of being perceived again as an unwelcome authoritarian voice: the question is about what to do when third-party sources do not all agree. Here, again, the nomenclatural Codes have explicit rules for determining the correct date of publication. In the case of the ICZN, this is regulated under Articles 21 and 22, and a distinction is made between the actual date (determined by external evidence) and the imprint date appearing in the work itself. For example: "Ctenotus alacer Storr, 1970 ("1969"), or Ctenotus alacer Storr, 1970 ["1969"], or Ctenotus alacer Storr, 1970 (imprint 1969), or Ctenotus alacer Storr, 1970 (not 1969), was established in a work which, although published in 1970, carried an imprint date of 1969; Anomalopus truncatus (Peters, 1876 ["1877"]) was established in a different genus from Anomalopus in a work which, although published in 1876, carried an imprint date of 1877." Realistically, the only "wiggle room" offered here that can lead to non-erroneous discrepancies in external sources is (1) that new evidence can be found regarding actual dates, so you can have a body of literature citing a name as being from year X, and then after someone publishes new evidence, subsequent literature may all use year Y instead, and (2) citing two dates is optional, so you might have one source that says "Peters, 1876 (1877)" and another that says "Peters, 1876" and those are not actually different from one another. It's the responsibility of WP editors, unfortunately, to determine which third-party sources are reliable, and which ones are not - but the nomenclatural Codes do give guidance, and I would urge editors to know those rules and only cite sources that are compliant. Dyanega (talk) 16:09, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

As for the "deposit in ZooBank" question, that's not enough, in and of itself, to make a name available. For digital publications under the ICZN, the date of publication of a nomenclatural work is the date the work fulfills ALL of the criteria of availability, of which ZooBank registration is just one. Works published digitally and also in print take the date of whichever form of the publication was issued in a Code-compliant manner first. It's happened quite a few times where a digital publication was not Code-compliant, but the print version of the same work WAS, and if they happen to be in different years, then it is the year of the print publication that is correct under the Code. Dyanega (talk) 16:16, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

So it seems that the year of print publication would be correct in most modern cases. In fact, I do see third party sources report the print date and not the digital date. —Snoteleks (Talk) 17:12, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

By the way, most of the time third party sources do not mention the year at all. That is why I'm asking this. —Snoteleks (Talk) 17:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

If none of the sources prints a year in the authority, it is not our job to research what the ICZN would have prefered. We should follow suit with what the third party sources have done. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hypothetical case, then: suppose there are three sources each with a different date. One of those three sources cites the ICZN. Do you cite all three sources and say, in Wikipedia, that the date is disputed, or do you ignore (and not cite) the two sources that don't cite the ICZN? Dyanega (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

User:Snoteleks said: "So it seems that the year of print publication would be correct in most modern cases." Well in my experience, not necessarily (maybe 30%, maybe 50%...) Let us say the official issue of a journal volume is dated for 2024, but the work appeared online first in 2023. Them if as Doug says all the criteria for effective e-publication were fulfilled in the online version (including an included ZooBank identifier), the nomenclatural acts in that work would correctly date from 2023. Otherwise, they would date from 2024, other fulfilled criteria for print publication being equal; but if that work was actually available in print form in 2023 (irrespective of the imprint year) then the names contained would date from 2023 as well. How one would cite the article could also be different from how one would cite the authorship for the names; would it be e.g. Jones & Smith, 2024, Jones & Smith, 2023, Jones & Smith, 2023 ("2024"), or other, I am not sure... Tony 1212 (talk) 18:30, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

There's also a provision in the ICZN that when the date is not specified or demonstrably incorrect that "the earliest day on which the work is demonstrated to be in existence" is the date to be adopted.

Under the botanical code, it's not just the date that something was actually printed, but the date that the work was distributed "to the general public or at least to scientific institutions with generally accessible libraries". There was a case where a a self-published journal wasn't distributed to libraries until many years after the imprint date. In the time between the imprint date and the the distribution to libraries, several taxa named in the self-published journal were named separately by other people. The names published by the other people were deemed to have priority, with the publication dates for the self-published journal being set to when libraries received it (there is pretty strong evidence that the claimed imprint dates for the self-published journal are completely fraudulent, but the researchers who determined that the library reception dates should be used avoid accusing the self-publisher directly of fraud and treat the situation as if he had actually printed the journal on the claimed dates and then left the printed copies in a box in his house for several years). 19:45, 15 February 2024 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 19:45, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

For this specific question, I'd go with the paper that cites the ICZN and cite that paper. Barring the ICZN support of one possibility out of three, I'd probably would question including the year at all. For something less small, I may include some discussion on how there is some disagreement, include the information from all reputable (ie IS, RS) sources. Multiple data points that contradict yield a discussion in the article as to the disagreement, and data supported by multiple sources and multiple types of sources will get more weight. This may seem contradictory for an encyclopedia, but it is not our job to get the facts straight; it is our job to report information that can be verified (WP:V). Correct data that is unable to be verified is worthless to the encyclopedia. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how a citation to the ICZN helps. The ICZN defines the rules, but unless it manages a database (which could be cited directly) I don't see how a paper citing the ICZN identifies the date of a particular publication. For plants we have IPNI (which isn't necessarily right, but tries to record the dates of publication) and Taxonomic Literature (Stafleu and Cowan) and its supplement (Stafleu and Mennega). Lavateraguy (talk) 20:17, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

To be straightforward, I do not like the idea of not using dates. I would prefer if, when no clear option available, we had a consensus to use either the volume date or the online published date —Snoteleks (Talk) 20:03, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_57#Authority_dates, I think the actual date of online publication should be taken as the authority date, regardless of when the volume is dated. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Excellent, as long as we are all in agreement. I for one think it makes more sense. —Snoteleks (Talk) 22:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

> I think the actual date of online publication should be taken as the authority date

Only if the online version contains all the requisites for effective e-publication as defined in the Code (talking zoology here BTW). Otherwise, the name is not published (for nomenclatural purposes) until the print version appears... Tony 1212 (talk) 23:00, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Here are the criteria for acceptable e-publication as set out in the ICZN Code at the present time: (from https://code.iczn.org/criteria-of-publication/article-8-what-constitutes-published-work/?frame=1#art-8-5):

8.5. Works issued and distributed electronically

To be considered published, a work issued and distributed electronically must

8.5.1. have been issued after 2011,

8.5.2. state the date of publication in the work itself, and

8.5.3. be registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank) (see Article 78.2.4) and contain evidence in the work itself that such registration has occurred. [My bolding - Tony: this is an occasional failing; a more common failing is no ZooBank registration at all]

8.5.3.1. The entry in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature must give the name and Internet address of an organization other than the publisher that is intended to permanently archive the work in a manner that preserves the content and layout, and is capable of doing so. This information is not required to appear in the work itself.

8.5.3.2. The entry in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature must give an ISBN for the work or an ISSN for the journal containing the work. The number is not required to appear in the work itself.

8.5.3.3. An error in stating the evidence of registration does not make a work unavailable, provided that the work can be unambiguously associated with a record created in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature before the work was published. Tony 1212 (talk) 23:06, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Tony here, sorry but although this can work in the majority of cases it does not in all. Some journals are substandard when it comes to publishing and keep the initial date of upload as the visible date of the publication, these pre-prints are not available for nomenclature, its not until the final and stable version is published online that the work meets the code and is considered published for the purposes of nomenclature. Failing that it waits for the printed version to come out, even then I know of cases that are extremely difficult. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:43, 16 February 2024 (UTC)