Preface
This is the official Report on the deliberations and decisions of the ten sessions
of the Nomenclature Section of the XVIII International Botanical Congress held in
Melbourne, Australia, in July 2011. The Section took place on five consecutive days
prior to the Congress proper. The Section meetings were hosted by the School of Botany
at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Technical facilities included full electronic
recording of all discussion spoken into the microphones as well as a series of screen
shots capturing what was displayed via computers on the overhead screens. Text of
all proposals to amend the Code was displayed on one screen, while the relevant text
of the Code itself was displayed on another screen allowing suggested amendments to
be updated as appropriate.
There was a strong female presence in leadership positions, despite the ratio of registered
members still being skewed toward the male side (approx 33% of the registered members
were women). The Section had the honour of being welcomed by the President of the
Congress, Judy West, who was also a registered member of the Section and actively
contributed to debate on the
Acacia
issue. The Secretary-General of the Congress, Karen Wilson, was very active during
the entire Nomenclature Section, which is no surprise as she is secretary of the General
Nomenclature Committee as well as acting as the spokesperson for the Special Committee
on Electronic Publishing. Sandra (Sandy) Knapp did an exemplary job in the role of
President of the Section. Her handling of the procedures, debates and personalities
was an impressive feat and was all conducted in a very cheerful and positive atmosphere.
She contributed to a complete record by keeping the use of microphones very much under
control, admonishing those who attempted to speak without a microphone with a friendly
but firm use of humour. Pauline Ladiges and her team from the School of Botany ensured
that the entire complicated proceeding ran smoothly and comfortably.
Nomenclature Section of the XVIII International Botanical Congress, Melbourne, Australia,
July 2011. — Photograph by Michael Silver / Photonet; reproduced by permission of
IBC2011.
A preliminary report of the Section meetings was published soon after the Congress
(McNeill & al. in Taxon 60: 1507–1520. 2011). It includes a tabulation of the preliminary
mail vote on the published proposals, specifying how the Section acted on each and
detailing amendments and new proposals approved upon motions from the floor. It also
includes the full report of the Nominating Committee as well as the Congress resolution
ratifying the Section’s decisions, neither reproduced here. The main result of the
Section’s deliberations is the new Melbourne Code, which was published as Regnum Vegetabile
154, on 19 December 2012 (McNeill & al. in Regnum Veg. 154. 2012)—a more slender volume
than previous editions as it does not include the Appendices (except for App. 1 on
the nomenclature of hybrids). It was also published online, on the same date (see
http://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php). The other Appendices will be published
as a separate volume in 2014.
The present full Report of the Melbourne Nomenclature Section conveys, we believe,
a true and lively picture of the event, retaining the flavour of goodwill and humour
that permeated the Section. It is primarily based on the mp3 electronic recordings.
Where necessary, in case of doubt, they were supplemented by the comment slips submitted
by almost all of the speakers and scanned into PDF [portable document format] files.
Access to the screen shots from the lecture theatre screens was also used to accurately
record proposals from the floor that were rejected, as the text of these was often
submitted electronically and not read out in full. With these sources combined, and
with all motions and voting results double-checked through the soundtrack and published
preliminary report of the Section meeting based on two parallel series of notes by
the Rapporteur and the Recorder, we are confident that the record published hereunder
is accurate and complete.
Before it was cast into its present, final form, this Report went through a succession
of phases. Due to advances in technology, this involved fewer phases than the previously
published Report of the Nomenclature Section of the St Louis Congress held in 1999
(Greuter & al. in Englera 20. 2000). It is worth noting here that, for various reasons,
the Report of the Nomenclature Section of the Vienna Congress held in 2005 are still
in progress and will likely be published after the present Report. The Melbourne Section
was, as already noted, recorded electronically. This recording was then professionally
transcribed by Pacific Transcription, Queensland, Australia and cross-checked and
edited by Anna Monro. The edited version of the transcript was then heavily re-edited
by Christina Flann, to convert it into a report format. At the same time some portions
were rearranged to ensure that the Report reflects the sequence of relevant provisions
in the Code even when the order of the debates differed. Deviations from the chronology
of events are indicated in the text by italicized bracketed notes. The resulting report
was then further edited by Nicholas Turland.
As in the case of previous nomenclature reports, which the present one follows in
style and general layout, the spoken comments had to be condensed and partly reworded,
rarely rather drastically. For this reason, indirect speech has been used consistently.
Additions by the authors of this Report are placed between square brackets; they include
explanatory or rectifying notes, records of reactions of the audience (to illustrate
the sessions’ emotional background) and reports on procedural actions. As in previous
reports, the index to speakers has been integrated with the list of registered Section
members.
The Section in Melbourne was well attended, particularly given the distances most
members had to travel to be present. There were 204 registered members in attendance
carrying 396 institutional votes in addition to their personal votes, making a total
of 600 possible votes representing 56 countries (detailed by McNeill & al. in Taxon
60: 1509, Table 2. 2011). There were 11 card votes, in which participation was high,
the proportion of members voting ranging between 72.5% and 94.2% (the latter for a
new proposal dealing with
Acacia
).
As is always to be expected, the geographical composition was uneven with a predictably
relatively high representation of Australians (34%) and the familiar trend of strong
(67%) representation of Anglophone countries (Australia plus United States, Canada,
Britain and New Zealand). Mainland Europe was represented by 30 members (15%). China
was represented by 10, Taiwan by 6 and India by 5 members. The low African (4%) and
South American (2%) presence is far from ideal. As noted in the Preface of the St
Louis Report (Greuter & al. in Englera 20: 7. 2000), these distortions are to some
degree unavoidable and are somewhat compensated by a better balanced representation
of institutional votes. However, African countries were represented by only 28 institutional
votes (7%) and South American countries by 38 (10%). Despite its vast collections,
Russia was represented by one member holding 10 institutional votes. For comparison,
the Anglophone countries listed earlier had 158 institutional votes (43%) and mainland
Europe 120 (30%). These inequalities have deep historical roots and are compounded
by uneven access to funding to attend the Section meetings. Re-evaluation of the institutional
voting system via the Special Committee on Institutional Votes created in Melbourne
will hopefully offer some solutions at the next Nomenclature Section at the XIX International
Botanical Congress to be held in Shenzhen in 2017.
It is worth noting that, despite the series of highly charged articles relating to
the
Acacia
issue preceding the meeting, all debate on the issue was undertaken in a positive
atmosphere, focussing on finding a solution to the dissatisfaction, and the results
were graciously accepted by most.
Several significant decisions were made by the Melbourne Section, most visibly the
change of title from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature to the International
Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. In addition to this change and
the separation of the Appendices of conserved and rejected names, suppressed works
and binding decisions, there were five other major changes to the rules of nomenclature
adopted in Melbourne: the acceptance of certain forms of electronic publication as
constituting effective publication; the option of using English as an alternative
to Latin for the validating descriptions or diagnoses of new taxa of all organisms
treated under the Code; the requirement for registration as a prerequisite for valid
publication of new names of fungi; the abolition of the provision for separate names
for fungi with a pleomorphic life history; and the abandonment of the morphotaxon
concept in the nomenclature of fossils. It is worth stressing that these fairly momentous
decisions were all taken in a very positive, good-humoured atmosphere. Thanks for
that are due to Sandra Knapp and the team, who made it all run smoothly. We also thank
Pensoft Publishing for agreeing to publish this Report as an issue of PhytoKeys and
to sponsor its open access. Our thanks also go to the International Association for
Plant Taxonomy for contributing the costs of producing this Report.
We would like to dedicate this volume to R. K. (Dick) Brummitt (1937–2013), whose
tireless dedication to the world of botanical nomenclature was legendary. He was indispensable
in his years based at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, serving as secretary of the
Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants (the former Committee for
Spermatophyta
). He trained generations of people in the art of botanical nomenclature and contributed
in so many different ways to the advancement of the Code. His input, expertise and
opinions will be sorely missed.
Christina Flann, Nicholas J. Turland & Anna M. Monro
Note: The figures given in parenthesis for each proposal in this Report correspond
to the result of the preliminary mail vote (Yes: No: Editorial Committee: Special
Committee).
Eighteenth International Botanical Congress Melbourne 2011
Nomenclature Section
Bureau of Nomenclature
President: Sandra Knapp
Vice-presidents: Barbara Briggs, Walter Gams, Dmitry Geltman, Werner Greuter, Gideon
Smith
Rapporteur-général: John McNeill
Vice-rapporteur: Nicholas J. Turland
Recorder: Brendan J. Lepschi
First session
Monday, 18th July 2011, 09:00–12:30
Knapp welcomed everyone to the University of Melbourne and opened the first nomenclature
session by inviting the President of the XVIII International Botanical Congress to
address the Section.
West welcomed the Section members to Melbourne and thanked Ladiges and all her helpers
for the reception hosted by Botany at Melbourne University the night before. She noted
the importance of the Nomenclature Section of the Congress as representing most of
the world’s leaders in botanical nomenclature with an intricate knowledge of the Code
as well as a lot of people who had not been to one of these Sections before. She highlighted
the importance of the opportunity for early-career people to learn more about the
Code, since it plays such an important role for taxonomy and our discipline as a whole.
She felt that understanding the importance of the deliberations during the week offered
a really good learning experience. She described being bamboozled for a while at the
first Nomenclature Section she attended, but described it as a really good opportunity
for people to learn from each other. She talked about coming together as a taxonomic
community to make decisions that impact taxonomy in a collegial manner and encouraged
taking that seriously and voting with thought. She mentioned key decisions to be taken,
including
Acacia
, electronic publishing and mycological proposals, and wished a week of good discussion
for the delegates present for the Nomenclature Section, which was, she added, one
of the biggest.
Knapp went through various housekeeping details, thanking West and Ladiges, introducing
the local team: Erin, Emma, Stephanie, Karen, Rose, Daniel, David and Trisha, mentioning
the new aspects of a Twitter tag: #ibc18, Facebook page: facebook.com/ibc2011, wifi
password and outlining the daily schedule: 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with lunch and two
tea breaks. The Bureau of Nomenclature was presented: President Sandy Knapp, Rapporteur-général
John McNeill, Vice-rapporteur Nicholas (Nick) Turland and Recorder Brendan Lepschi
assisted by Anna Monro. The appointment of Vice-presidents for the Section was announced:
Barbara Briggs (Australia), Walter Gams (Netherlands), Dmitry Geltman (Russia), Werner
Greuter (Switzerland) and Gideon Smith (South Africa). She explained that a Nominating
Committee was required at each Nomenclature Section to prepare slates of candidates
for election to the Permanent Nomenclature Committees, which do the work of nomenclature
between International Botanical Congresses. The importance of these Permanent Committees
was emphasized, as they consider and make recommendations on proposals to conserve
and reject names, and serving on them is a big job. The following Nominating Committee
was appointed: Barbara Briggs, Chair (Australia), Patrick Brownsey (New Zealand),
Katherine Challis (U.K.), Ali Dönmez (Turkey), Renée Fortunato (Argentina), Hugh Glen
(South Africa), Tseng-Chieng Huang (Taiwan), Paul Kirk (U.K.), Bob Magill (U.S.A.),
John Wiersema (U.S.A.), Sebsebe Demissew (Ethiopia) and Chin-Sung Chang (China).
McNeill noted that the secretaries of the Permanent Nomenclature Committees had already
prepared lists of their suggestions for membership of the Permanent Committees for
the next six years, and invited any further suggestions to be passed to Barbara Briggs.
He added that the role of the Nominating Committee was primarily to see that these
suggestions were appropriate, that there was good geographic and disciplinary balance,
and that things were being done properly and in order.
Knapp introduced the tellers appointed by the Bureau: Bronwyn Collins (Australia),
Christina Flann (Netherlands), Lulu Rico Arce (U.K.) and Nadia Talent (Canada), who
would count a card vote should any be needed. She reiterated the importance of the
number of new participants present for botanical nomenclature as a dynamic area of
endeavour. Regrets from some familiar faces from Nomenclature Sections past were noted.
In particular Dick Brummitt, a person who had served nomenclature over many, many
years in various capacities, unable to attend due to health reasons, was sent best
wishes and hopes for a recovery very soon as his presence would be missed. An in memoriam
booklet of botanists who had passed away since the last Botanical Congress was available
at the registration desk.
Knapp went on to discuss practical issues given that it was one of the biggest Nomenclature
Sections to date with a record number of proposals. The numbers registered in St Louis
were 256, in Vienna around 250 and there were about 200 people registered for this
Nomenclature Section. The number of proposals had also gone up—218 in St Louis, 312
in Vienna and 338 in Melbourne. She concluded that this meant more business to get
through in the same amount of time and all members were requested to be brief and
to the point so that the Section could do its business in the most efficient way possible.
Knapp proceeded with the following announcements:
The proceedings would be recorded and those wishing to speak were requested to speak
slowly and clearly.
All speakers were required to wait for the microphone and preface their remarks with
their name and home base.
Contributors should be brief, concise, stick to the point and remember the aim was
to facilitate botanical nomenclature.
After speaking everyone was asked to submit a written version of each comment, either
on comment forms or via e-mail ibc_recorder2011@csiro.au for those who could no longer
actually write with a pen (Knapp gave herself as an example). She added that, as Greuter
had said at St Louis, sometimes the difference between what was said and what was
written down could be quite amusing.
Knapp finished with a personal plea to act as a community and show the outside world
a commitment to have nomenclature serve the advancement of science. She exhorted everyone
to come together and make the week something that would be remembered very positively
once the IBC began the following week.
McNeill outlined the way in which a Nomenclature Section operates. As it was a very
large Section with a lot of people who had not previously been at a Nomenclature Section
meeting it was deemed worthwhile to take some time to go through a general outline
of the process. The main business of the week concerned the consideration of the published
proposals to amend the Code, a synopsis of which had been prepared before the Congress.
The Nomenclature Section functioned as an integral part of the Congress. At one time
the Nomenclature Section was comparable to a physiology section or a taxonomy section
and met during the Congress. In the last 40 or 50 years the Nomenclature Sections
had met separately in the week preceding the Congress. As an international body, the
general procedures for meetings throughout the world were followed, but a Section
was not governed by any particular national set of rules such as Robert’s Rules of
Order. The rules were decided by the Section based on the broad principles that apply
to general parliamentary debate and discussion.
All of the discussion dealt with proposals, whether procedural ones or proposals to
amend the Code. A proposal had to be made and seconded by somebody. Modification of
the proposal could be made by moving an amendment. Then discussion was confined to
the amendment and the proposal to amend must be seconded. Only if seconded would the
Chair allow discussion. Once seconded, discussion must be confined entirely to the
amendment and not to the original proposal. If the amendment was defeated, that was
the end of the amendment. If it was adopted then the amended proposal became the substantive
motion. Then discussion could resume on the proposal and a final decision taken. Normally
the majority was a simple majority of 50% but in certain situations a Section had
adopted different procedures. There was a preliminary mail vote on all published proposals.
This was described in the Code as being a guiding mail vote. One of the ways in which
previous Sections had taken guidance from the mail vote is to agree that any proposal
to amend the Code that receives 75% or more “no” votes is not discussed at the Section.
It is ruled as defeated, unless somebody proposes that it be taken up and discussed
and four other persons supported that request. He proposed that this Section adopt
the same procedure, that any proposal to amend the Code that received 75% or more
“no” votes in the mail vote would not be discussed unless moved by one person and
supported by four others.
Malécot asked for clarification regarding the value of 75% because for Art. 7 Prop.
D on the list 75% was given, but when computed it was 74.55%.
McNeill suggested that rounding up was inappropriate although understandable and it
would be best to consider it when the proposal came up. [This was agreed.] He continued
outlining the procedures, noting that previous Sections had adopted a rather similar
procedure in a slightly different situation. As the published proposals had to be
submitted by November of the previous year, things may have happened in the interval
and new proposals could potentially justifiably be proposed during the meeting. Previous
Sections had required that this also be supported by four other persons. This would
also apply to any substantive amendment. It would not apply to ordinary amendments
to proposals that had already been published, but if somebody wanted to make a dramatic
change in a proposal, that would be another matter and would fall under the same rule.
Decisions would be voted on, normally by a show of hands, if the result was clear
then that was resolved. If the vote was not clear from a show of hands, then people
would be asked to show the cards that they had, to indicate institutional votes as
well as individual votes. If a show of cards was not clear or if any member of the
Section wished to have a formal vote, endorsed by the rest of the Section, then a
card vote could be called for. All members of the Section were issued with a sheet
with a number of numbered tags. In a card vote, one of these numbers would be designated
for that particular vote. Cards that were issued to individuals for individual votes
had a letter “P” associated with the number for personal votes. Those issued for institutional
votes did not have any letter added. This was because there had been some question
as to the role of institutional votes in decisions of Sections and this seemed an
easy way to get data on the issue. Members would be asked to deposit their cards into
a gorgeously coloured green box for a “yes” vote and a suitably red box for a “no”
vote.
Knapp commented that for colourblind men, the boxes also had the word written on the
side.
McNeill continued explaining that another general feature of most rules of procedure
was that, for a proposal to be accepted or an amendment to the proposal, a majority
must be in favour. It had been the practice of Nomenclature Sections to establish
different requirements in certain situations. One of these was the percentage vote
required for an amendment to the Code to be successful. In line with all recent previous
Sections it was proposed that a 60% majority, a so-called supermajority, be required
to approve any amendment to the Code. For all other matters, except as the Section
may later decide, including any procedural matters, the normal, simple 50% majority
would apply. He added that this included some situations when there may be a 60% vote
for accepting a change to the Code, but there may be two alternative ways in which
the same effect could be achieved. In a case of choice between alternatives, the Chair
may rule that this choice only require a 50% majority. He reiterated that any change
to the wording of the text of the Code would require a 60% majority for that proposal
to be accepted.
The following procedural decisions were taken (moved by the Rapporteur, seconded,
and accepted without objection):
Any proposal to amend the Code that received 75% or more “no” votes would not be discussed
unless it was moved by one person and supported by four others.
A 60% majority would be required to amend the Code and a 50% majority for all other
matters.
New proposals and substantive amendments to alreadypublished proposals required a
proposer and support from four additional people.
The final matter the Section had to consider was whether or not to make a special
rule on the majority required in dealing with recommendations by the General Committee
for botanical nomenclature on conservation and rejection of names. There had not been
one procedure adopted by recent Nomenclature Sections. Prior to the Vienna Congress
no special voting provision was ever made in such cases. Until Vienna, had there ever
been a vote that needed to be counted, a simple majority would have applied. The Nomenclature
Section in Vienna adopted the approach that the special status that the Code gave
to General Committee recommendations in Art. 14.14 was such that their rejection might
be looked on as analogous to reversing a previous decision of a meeting, something
for which many rules required a supermajority. Members of the Section were reminded
that there was a proposal to amend Division III of the Code. Namely Div. III Prop.
C proposed that the Code require a 60% majority to approve a recommendation from the
General Committee.
For the general benefit of people not as familiar with procedures of conservation
and rejection of names as others, McNeill outlined that the Appendices to the Code,
the lists of conserved and rejected names, were developed by a process set out in
Art. 14 of the Code by which proposals must be published and then considered. They
must be sent to the appropriate Permanent Nomenclature Committee for the particular
group, the Committee for
Algae
,
Fungi
,
Bryophyta
, Vascular Plants, or Fossil Plants, and were then studied. Anyone who wished to make
presentations did so and these Committees were required to have a 60% majority for
recommending any either positive or negative action. The General Committee then reviewed
these to make sure that that Code had been appropriately followed and made its recommendation.
These recommendations were published and brought to the Section. Until Vienna no special
voting provision was made for dealing with such recommendations, which meant that
it was a simple majority. In Vienna the procedure adopted was that it should be a
60% majority to reject a recommendation from the General Committee. There was a current
proposal to amend the Code to require a 60% majority to accept such a recommendation.
There was no recommendation from the Bureau, and it was simply being brought to the
attention of the Section so that if people wanted to make a proposal, one way or the
other, they could do so. If not, like any other proposal it would simply require a
50% majority.
Knapp asked if there anyone who wanted to make a proposal on the percentage required
to either accept or reject recommendations from Committees.
Thiele moved that, as in Vienna, a 60% majority be required to reject a General Committee
report or recommendation on conservation and rejection of a name.
Knapp clarified that the motion on the floor was to require a 60% supermajority to
reject a General Committee recommendation.
[The motion was seconded and approved.]
Knapp confirmed that the Section would adopt a 60% supermajority for any proposal
to reject a General Committee recommendation and asked if there were any other proposals
on the issue. She went on to say that to accept General Committee recommendations
would require a simple majority.
McNeill clarified that this was not the case, that it would go through unless there
was 60% against. What this meant was that if there was opposition to a proposal, then
that opposition must require 60% of the votes to carry, otherwise the recommendation
would be accepted by the Section of the Congress. He noted that there had only ever
once been such a vote.
Barrie requested clarification that a 60% requirement would be for specific proposals,
not for the report itself. Acceptance of the report would require 50% plus one.
McNeill explained that in terms of the normal practice with reports, some reports
were simply reporting on what a Committee had done over the last six years. For example,
the reports of the Permanent Committees on special groups did not come directly to
the Section with particular recommendations unless they were procedural. This meant
that the report was received and a 50% simple majority was required to accept it.
The only situation under discussion was that those recommendations coming only from
the General Committee, involving the conservation and rejection of names, would be
accepted unless 60% of the Section voted against them. This would apply whether presented
as a package or, should controversy be expected, presented individually.
Luckow questioned whether that meant that only 40% of the group had to approve something
from a General Committee recommendation, that only 40% of the Section were needed
for approval of a recommendation from the Committee.
McNeill corrected this to 41% and confirmed that this was the case.
Luckow added that this in essence meant that the people in this room were giving up
their power to make decisions on nomenclature to a smaller committee.
McNeill refuted this and suggested that they were judging that the expertise of the
Special Committee was such that it should only be overturned if a really large number
of people at the Section decided to do so.
Luckow pointed out that there was no discussion of the proposal before we voted on
it and she wanted to clarify so that people in the room knew that essentially the
General Committee would be making decisions in most cases, not the Section.
Van Rijckevorsel added that there was a subtle distinction involved. First, there
was a difference between recommendations and reports. A report of the General Committee
was published. A recommendation was something put before the Section. Secondly, what
had just passed without discussion was that the recommendations that were handed out
in the package—so for this event only and for this report only—had been passed unless
someone managed to raise more than a 60% majority. It was a unique procedure, only
for this Section and without any direct reference to the report that was passed.
McNeill clarified that it was perfectly correct that receiving a report was simply
a matter of confirming that it is a report of the Committee, that it is in order and
that it is not just something the secretary wrote overnight and it has nothing to
do with what the Committee did. It was a formality, and the Section would accept the
Committee’s report in order to discuss it with a simple 50% majority, and it was unlikely
to ever be voted on further. The issue was the matter of recommendations that had
been made from the Committees for particular groups to the General Committee and then
endorsed by the General Committee with an appropriate majority, 60%, and then presented
to the Section. The judgements of each Section were independent, and the report from
the General Committee later in the meeting would look then at the recommendations.
There may well be more than 60% of people against them. He pointed out that this was
not unique, it was exactly the procedure that was adopted in Vienna.
Knapp pointed out that a vote had already been taken and there had been an opportunity
for discussion, but suggested that more discussion was possible if the Section felt
that was needed. She wished to confirm that voting to receive reports required 50%
and a 50% simple majority was required to accept the General Committee’s recommendations.
McNeill replied that this was not the case, the only situation the proposal from Thiele
applied to would be those recommendations made by the General Committee that involved
the conservation or rejection of names, material that would eventually appear in the
Appendices of the Code. Luckow described it perfectly clearly and correctly that this
was a situation in which there needed to be at least 41% of the people at the Section
voting “no” in order for something to be stopped.
Knapp corrected him to 61% saying “yes”.
McNeill apologized and amended his comment to clarify that 41% needed to say that
they did not want the name in question conserved or rejected otherwise it would be
conserved or it would be rejected. [He presumably meant to say that 41% needed to
say that they did want the name in question conserved or rejected otherwise it would
not be conserved or it would not be rejected.]
Barrie offered to try to clearly state what was under discussion using the description
of Van Rijckevorsel of the difference between a report and the recommendations. The
report from the General Committee, of which everyone had a copy, was something the
Section could accept with a 50% majority. After the report had been accepted, if there
were any objections to any particular recommendation in the report, that would require
a 60% vote in order to overturn the recommendation. This would not mean that 40% of
the people are controlling the room, at least in terms of the report as a whole.
Greuter offered the point of view of someone who had worked for several periods both
on a Special Committee and on a General Committee. The Code left matters concerning
conservation and rejection of names to special bodies. These were nominated and given
a mandate and sometimes recommendations by this Section. He described them as having
expertise, doing their work skilfully and graciously, looking into every proposal
critically and with considerable input of time. He felt it was one of the strengths
of the botanical nomenclatural system. Art. 14.14 of the Code ensured that proposals
approved by the General Committee were, for practical purposes, accepted under the
Code. He thought that requiring a 60% majority to overturn a General Committee Recommendation
by the Section was fair and logical. He argued that the Section would not have the
knowhow or the necessary literature available to form considered opinions on individual
cases and suggested that should a Section ever decide to take matters in their own
hand, his prediction would be that skilled people would no longer be willing to serve
on the Committees. The second point that he wished to make was that the discussion
of an individual proposal in the Section was not in order. Had he been present in
Vienna in his former capacities, he would not have allowed that because the Code does
not provide for that. The Code provides for rejection, not for approval of the reports
of the General Committee. He approved of the way it was going to be handled, in the
sense that 50% to accept the report and 60% against to overturn a decision was acceptable,
but disapproved of discussion of individual cases.
Sebsebe Demissew requested further discussion of the issue, as one of the problems
with the
Acacia
issue was that this was not really clear in Vienna. His opinion was that, as in any
democratic institution, the views of the Committee should be respected, but that a
60% majority for rejection was too much.
Knapp summarized that the General Committee report was received, with a 50% majority,
a simple majority. In that report were recommendations. If an individual would like
to overthrow that report, then by all rules of parliamentary procedure a higher majority
was needed to overthrow something that had been accepted. To overthrow something in
that report a supermajority of 60% would be needed.
McNeill closed the issue by pointing out that a vote had been taken and unless people
who voted “yes” had changed their mind it was time to move on. He introduced the final,
normally routine, procedural matter the Section had to deal with before considering
proposals to amend the Vienna Code. The Code was prepared by the Editorial Committee
appointed in Vienna charged with implementing the decisions that the Congress, through
its Nomenclature Section, had made in Vienna. It was, of course, produced after the
Congress, and the Section now had to ratify the Vienna Code as reflecting the decisions
of the Vienna Congress before it became the basis upon which amendments could be proposed.
He moved the motion that the Section ratify the Vienna Code; this was seconded.
Gereau called for more discussion as ratification of the Vienna Code without any further
discussion would have completely ignored a number of issues that had been widely discussed
and widely accepted as in need of discussion by a large number of people.
Knapp opened the floor for discussion.
Luckow felt that part of the reason there was a problem with ratifying the Code had
to do with the
Acacia
issue. The argument had been made by Gerry Moore that parliamentary procedure was
breached. She requested clarification as to whether ratifying the Vienna Code would
include automatically accepting the
Acacia
decision, or whether that could still be brought up as an issue.
McNeill replied that ratifying the Code would mean acceptance of the Code as it is,
including the conservation decision on
Acacia
. He went on to say that it did not rule out any amendments to the Code that could
be proposed. Two such proposals had already been published: one by Dick Brummitt that
had received very negative support in the preliminary mail vote; and another by Nick
Turland that would require support by five people for it to be discussed. He was clear
that socalled compromise proposals to amend the Code relating to
Acacia
were quite open for discussion. He was also clear that by accepting the Vienna Code
as it stood, the Section would be agreeing that it was correct and
Acacia
was conserved with
Acacia
penninervis
as type. He explained that the only argument against that would be that the Vienna
Section acted improperly and took an invalid decision by adopting the procedure in
question. He then pointed out that given what the Section had just adopted for the
Melbourne Congress, it would be rather hard to argue this case. No Section would have
the power to change a conservation proposal; once a name was conserved and in the
Code it may never be deleted. The Code would have to be amended to alter this and
it would apply to all names. He finished by saying that discussion of the so-called
compromise proposals regarding
Acacia
was still open, but discussion on the matter of the conservation of
Acacia
was closed.
Knapp clarified that the ratification of the Vienna Code was the basis for the following
debates with a simple majority vote as a procedural matter. A “yes” vote implied acceptance
of the entire Code, including the voting procedure used to approve or reject the Committee
reports presented in Vienna. A “no” vote implied the rejection of some part of that
process.
Van Rijckevorsel wanted to make a small clarification regarding what he considered
were a few historical inaccuracies in the explanation by Greuter. He accepted the
accuracy of the broad picture, namely that there had never been any discussion on
recommendations by the General Committee, but took exception to the suggestion that
the power to approve had been transferred to those Committees. Historically he claimed
this was inaccurate because the power to decide had always lain with the Section,
despite it never having exercised it nor established any associated procedures. The
matter before the Section was whether the printed book was an accurate representation
of the decisions taken at Vienna, and many felt that it was not because it was handled
improperly. He suggested the alternative that it was possible to accept the book minus
the
Acacia
entry, as a phantom entry, something that was printed inadvertently.
Knapp explained that the current discussion was of the proposal to accept the Vienna
Code as it was printed and that anything else would have to be a new proposal.
Thiele reiterated McNeill’s point that the principal objection to the Vienna Code
had been that the method of voting that pertained in Vienna was incorrect, improper
and invalid. Given that this Section had just made the same decision on the voting
mechanism he agreed that it would be a tall order to try to argue that the Vienna
process was invalid. He suggested that the Section should accept the Code as printed
as the basis for the meeting.
Rico thought that the Code was correct with the exception of one single entry in Division
III, which was the re-typification of
Acacia
. As she understood it, this was a provisional entry that needed to be ratified here.
If the Section ratified the Code as it stood, this particular issue would be forgotten.
Knapp reiterated that voting “yes” on ratifying the Vienna Code meant acceptance of
the entire Vienna Code and ratification of it as the basis for further discussion.
Voting “no” meant an objection to some part of the procedural process.
Gandhi requested that the choices be shown on the screen.
Knapp accepted this suggestion. She explained that she was not ignoring people but
trying to balance out the debate between those for and against ratifying the Code
as it stood and asked if there was anyone who would like to speak for ratifying the
Code. [No-one stepped forward.]
Luckow disagreed with Thiele in the sense that the situation for
Acacia
was different, as pointed out by Greuter, because the 60% vote was a particular case
just for
Acacia
. She maintained that it was a very different situation and that what had just been
voted on was not the same thing as in Vienna.
McNeill in turn disagreed with Luckow, stating that it was quite clear from the record
that the proposal for the procedure with regard to a 60% majority to overturn any
recommendation of a Permanent Committee [the General Committee] took place prior to
any discussion. It applied to all the recommendations, not just to
Acacia
. The fact that
Acacia
was the only one that went to a vote was the only thing that was different. The same
procedure would have applied for each of the other names had there been any questions
so it was indeed the same.
Knapp decided to exercise her prerogative as Chair and pointed out that the Section
had not convened to discuss the past. She repeated the importance of moving forward
as a community. The issue under discussion was whether the Section would ratify the
Vienna Code as a basis for the following debates with a simple majority vote as a
procedural matter. Again it was explained that the proposal on the floor was that
the Section either accepted the Vienna Code including the
Acacia
decision or did not accept the Vienna Code and then would move on to what to do next.
Knox questioned whether it would be possible to propose a modification for the ratification
because the
Acacia
issue was obviously something that concerned many people, some were heavily invested
in the debate. He identified a desire to avoid making a mistake at an early procedural
stage that might somehow box in any possible later discussion. He stated that it was
obvious that the Section needed to ratify the Vienna Code but wondered if it was possible
to propose a modification that we ratify all of the Vienna Code except for the points
pertaining to
Acacia
.
Knapp confirmed that this was possible but that no-one had made such a proposal.
McNeill observed that there would have to be some rationale for such a proposal explaining
why the Editorial Committee failed in its duty.
Funk called the question.
Knapp explained that when someone called the question a supermajority of the Section,
60%, needed to agree that it was time to vote. [The Section voted on moving to a vote
on the ratification of the Vienna Code.] She reported that there was a very clear
majority for moving to vote on whether the Section ratified the acceptance of the
Vienna Code in its entirety.
[A card vote was called for.]
Knapp repeated that the vote was a simple majority, 50% plus one for the motion to
carry; “no” meant rejection of some part of the process used to arrive at the Vienna
Code, “yes” meant acceptance of the entire Vienna Code. Ratification was presented
as a formal motion, which had earlier been seconded and this was approved in the card
vote [373: 172; 68%].
Knapp, during the count of the card vote, returned to one of the traditional pieces
of business skipped at the beginning of the Section, the list of those botanists who
had died in the period between the two congresses prepared by Dan Nicolson previously,
and this time by Larry Dorr and Dan Nicolson. Unfortunately the list was far too large
for every name to be read out. She expressed thanks to both Larry and Dan for putting
in a huge effort and finding a lot of people who had passed away and who were not
recorded at the last Congress. She took the opportunity to mention just a few people
in particular from the list: Rogers McVaugh and Piers Trehane, who were contributors
and editors on the Code and had contributed a great deal to nomenclature over the
years, Santiago Castroviejo, who was a much-valued member of the IAPT Council, Armen
Takhtajan, well known to students and an addition since the list closed on 30 June,
and Paul Fryxell. Because the Section was in Australia and it was not possible to
read all the names, she had identified all the Australians who had passed away: David
Ashton, Nicholas Batianoff, John Stanley Beard, Roger Black, Jenny Chappill, George
Chippendale, Lori Cobb, Betty Conabere, Ed Cross, Edgar Dell, Thamarapu Desikachary,
Ludwik Dutkiewicz, Rica Erickson, Helen Hewson, Surrey Jacobs, Bob Royce, Dorothy
Shaw, Mary Tindale and Bryan Womersley. She finished by adding to the list a muchvalued
friend and colleague who could be considered an honorary Australian: Chris Humphries
from the Natural History Museum.
McNeill then introduced another traditional motion: “that for the revised Code to
arise out of this Congress, the Editorial Committee [yet to be appointed] be empowered
to change, if necessary, the wording of any Article or Recommendation and to avoid
duplication, to add or remove Examples, to place Articles, Recommendations, and Chapters
of the Code in the most convenient place, but to retain the present numbering in so
far as possible, and in general to make any editorial modification not affecting the
meaning of the provisions concerned”.
[The motion was seconded and approved.]
Knapp noted that there were a number of compromise proposals about the typification
of
Acacia
that had been put forward, one of which was heavily defeated in the mail vote, and
another of which would need to be proposed from the floor. She suggested that the
Section should decide whether to discuss these proposals early on or leave them until
later.
McNeill mentioned that there had already been quite an extensive debate and unless
the Section proposed otherwise this issue should be dealt with at an appropriate point
in the proceedings. In planning the meeting it was felt that it might be better to
concentrate on
Acacia
issues in the first session to look at the implications and decide what to do on a
further day, but that was up to the Section to decide. He invited anyone who would
like to consider the various published compromise proposals and any others that might
arise, otherwise the normal procedure of proposals would begin, dealing with the general
proposals first.
Knox proposed the motion that a fixed amount of time was set aside for an initial
discussion on the compromise proposals to get everybody up to speed on the issues
regarding the typification of
Acacia
, but decisions were deferred until the scheduled time in the meeting. This would
allow an initial airing of people’s thoughts on the matters so that during lunch and
other free times, people could reasonably discuss amongst themselves what some of
the implications were.
[The motion was amended to specify that the limited amount of time would be 30 minutes
and seconded.]
Ladiges queried when the decisions would be made.
Knapp explained this would be at the right point in the Code.
McNeill added that it would depend on the form that the first discussion took.
Passalacqua wished to return to the earlier debate and decide on rules in the Code
for accepting or rejecting recommendations.
Knapp pointed out that this was not germane to the proposal to have a 30 minute discussion
on the compromise proposals for the typification of
Acacia
.
Passalacqua apologized.
Greuter spoke against the amended proposal giving two reasons. First, he expressed
a wish that the proceedings of the nomenclature of the Melbourne Congress would be
published more rapidly than those of the Vienna Congress, and explained a procedural
reason that it was easier for those preparing the proceedings if the proposals were
discussed in the appropriate place where they appeared in the synopsis, and suggested
that it was also easier for the participants to keep a record. The second reason he
gave was that waiting may result in one or other of the proposers withdrawing their
proposal.
Glen supported the proposal for a half an hour discussion because some of the Section
members were still too jetlagged to make sensible decision on this important issue.
Lewis also supported the motion and suggested that the 172 votes against the earlier
motion were probably from those who had a specific interest in the
Acacia
vote. He agreed with West that there was a need for the Section to be transparent,
clear and honest. He expressed a worry that if the discussion was put off for too
long, because of the underlying current of disagreement, the two sides looking at
Acacia
were going to continue to niggle at each other, putting various impositions on the
whole proceedings. He argued that the Section needed to try to come to some sort of
clarity and vote on the issue later.
Knapp reminded the Section of the proposal: to have a half an hour discussion of the
Acacia
compromise proposals now and to vote on those proposals at a later date in the week,
when they come up at the appropriate time in the Code.
[The motion was approved.]
[The general discussion on the
Acacia
issue took place here but has been moved to prior to Art. 29 in accordance with a
logical order.]
Knapp moved to the order of business usually undertaken in the Nomenclature Section,
namely starting at the beginning of the Code with proposals to change the Code.
Greuter strongly suggested to the Bureau that they number the sheets handed out for
writing up the comments. This was in their own interest as he felt those reporting
on the Congress would be completely lost otherwise.
Knapp reiterated that the comment sheets needed to have name, institution and city,
the date and time filled in including whether it was morning or afternoon so that
the comments could be correlated with the recording.
General proposals
* indicates that the Rapporteurs suggested a special meaning for an Editorial Committee
vote in the preliminary mail vote.
Prop. A (87: 27: 4: 2).
McNeill introduced General Prop. A, from Hawksworth and others in Taxon. The proposal
was to establish more clearly that the Code covered mycology, the study of fungi,
as well as botany, commonly defined as the study of plants, by a series of insertions
in the Code. He specified that it would involve inserting “and mycological” after
“botanical” in the title of the Code, replacing “requires” by “and mycology require”
and replacing the word “plant” by the words “plant and fungus”, and inserting “and
mycologists respectively” after “botanists” in Pre. 1 and inserting in Division III,
in the endnote [Div.III.1 footnote], “and mycological” after “botanical”. The aim
was to make the Code a little more politically correct in referring to fungi as well
as algae. He invited the proposer to speak.
Hawksworth gave background to the proposal. At the International Mycological Congress
in Cairns in 2006, there was a strong feeling that the move should be made to a separate
code for mycology quite independent of the botanical Code, and the same view had emerged
at several other mycological meetings in recent years. He was not in favour of having
a proliferation of codes, and therefore this proposal was put together to avoid having
a separate code. It was voted on at the International Mycological Congress in Edinburgh
in 2010, where there was strong support: 71% of the mycologists present were in favour
of the proposal. If the proposal was not accepted by the Section meeting he suggested
that a new code for mycology would be inevitable.
McNeill added that the proposal received 87 for and 37 [sic!] against in the mail
vote, and it had been considered by the Nomenclature Committee for
Fungi
, which supported it with 78% for.
Prud’homme van Reine introduced himself as secretary of the Nomenclature Committee
for
Algae
, and continued that they were very unhappy with this proposal. The proposal meant
to establish more clearly that the Code covers mycology as well as botany, but he
wanted to know why this was not extended to the algal groups in the kingdoms Chromalveolates
or Stramenopiles, the Excavates, the
Rhizaria
etc., referring to a 2004 paper by Patrick Keeling, in the American Journal of Botany
[DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3732/ajb.91.10.1481]. He pointed out that the fungi and
the animals both belong to the unikonts, the only eukaryotic kingdom that included
no algal groups, adding that the
Microsporidia
were closer to the fungi than any group of animals. Within the Nomenclature Committee
for
Algae
there was very little enthusiasm about changing the name of the Code or replacing
in the Code the word “plant” with “plant or fungus”. They maintained that there were
already too many details in the Code that were only of interest of mycologists. The
suggestion to add “mycology and phycology included” between brackets to the title
of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature did not get enough positive votes
in the Committee for
Algae
to make it possible to add this suggestion as one coming from that Committee. However,
he offered this suggestion as a individual. He summarized that every addition of mycology
or mycologists and comparable terminology to plants in general is unacceptable for
the members of the Committee for
Algae
. What they wanted was a simple, clear Code that covered all, not a complex, muddied
Code that covered bits and pieces. This was the reason he gave to reject the proposal.
Gams was strongly in favour of the proposal to avoid having separate codes. He found
the case for a BioCode very debatable, and a MycoCode even more. He observed that
the fungi are heterogeneous, just like the algae, as Prud’homme van Reine had pointed
out. They contain some biflagellate, zoosporic fungi as well as the
Chromista
, but for nomenclature, they were “the fungi”. He added that algae had always been
taught in connection with botany, but fungi were increasingly being recognized as
a separate group of organisms in their own right.
Demoulin outlined his background in both mycology and phycology and agreed with Prud’homme
van Reine but felt that in the political context of the day, even if he considered
it silly to make all the additions in the Code (he had abstained in both the Mycological
Congress and in the mail vote on this issue), he agreed with Hawksworth and Gams that
it was necessary to accept the proposals. This was to avoid more temptation of secession.
He advocated moving to less and less diverse rule and hoped eventually for a BioCode.
Gandhi conveyed support for the proposal from the Harvard University Herbaria.
Greuter observed that this had been discussed before and at that time mycologists
accepted that “botany” could cover them but not “plants”. He pointed out that there
was something to the same effect already in the Code, a footnote to the Preamble that
read: “In this Code, unless otherwise indicated, the word ‘plant’ means any organism
traditionally studied by botanists”. He suggested that this might be slightly better
worded to speak of organisms treated as plants in botanical tradition. Regarding the
second proposal, to speak of plants and fungi, or plant and fungus, or fungus in all
relevant parts of the Code, he suggested one might then substitute “plants” by “organisms
treated as plants”, which would also cover all the algae, even the blue-greens, which
are still dealt with under the botanical Code by a majority of those who worked with
them, and would avoid proliferation or the lengthy expansion of the familiar title
in botanical tradition, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
Hawksworth remembered developing the footnote as a stopgap, but the reality was that
was not acceptable to mycologists. He reiterated that if the situation was not changed,
then there would be a parting of the ways.
McNeill asked Hawksworth if it would be feasible to avoid “plants and fungi” everywhere
by using “organisms” more extensively.
Hawksworth agreed that “organism” would be an acceptable alternative instead of “plant
and fungi” if it was made clear in the Preamble that “organism” covered the different
groups.
McNeill asked if Hawksworth was prepared for his proposal to include the option for
the Editorial Committee to seek to remove “plants” and replace it by “organisms”.
[He was.]
Glen noted that “traditionally treated as plants” was all very well if you knew what
the tradition was but felt that a generation or two in the future may no longer have
that knowledge. On those grounds he would vote for the proposals because it offered
a clear definition and would still allow generations in the future to understand it.
Annette Wilson agreed with Greuter that the footnote itself seemed rather clumsy in
using the concept of tradition, and wondered if it would be possible to have a statement
at the front of the Code setting out which organisms are covered, and then using the
single word “plant”. She disliked the use of the word “organism”, because it could
create confusion with zoology.
Harley suggested that the Preamble could include something to the effect that it covered
all organisms not already treated in the Zoological Code.
McNeill pointed out that there was also a bacteriological or prokaryote Code.
Gereau explained that organisms covered by the Code were already defined in Pre. 7
and this could be editorially moved to a more prominent position. He felt that the
issue was political. The mycologists wanted the changes in the Code in order to retain
the use of the Code. If having mycologists adopt a second code was highly undesirable,
he felt that the Section should vote for Gen. Prop. A, otherwise they should vote
against it.
Herendeen disagreed that it was only a political thing. He claimed that the title
of the Code was also biological and the International Code for Botanical, Mycological
and Phycological Nomenclature was biologically sensible. He suggested staking out
the ground covered in the title of the book, and then coming up with some more succinct
terminology to use inside. He pointed out that some of the phycologists could already
decide which Code they wanted to publish under.
Kirk explained that it was the “P” word that mycologists object to: “plant”. He supported
Greuter’s suggestion to use “organism”. He offered the radical solution of removing
the title, and just calling it the ICBN, without an expansion.
Knapp asked Hawksworth if he would consider that a friendly amendment.
Hawksworth thought too many mycologists would remember what the “B” stood for. [So
would not.]
Malécot explained that in the Zoological Code, the first Article, 1.1.1, was “For
the purposes of this Code the term ‘animals’ refers to the Metazoa and also to protistan
taxa when workers treat them as animals for the purpose of nomenclature”. He felt
that this would be desirable in the botanical Code and suggested moving Pre. 7 to
Pre. 1, with some editorial modification to treat all of mycology and phycology.
Wiersema expressed the support of his mycological colleagues from the United States
Department of Agriculture for including mycology in the title and asked for clarification
as to whether the friendly amendment to change “plants and fungi” to “organism” had
been accepted.
McNeill had the impression from Hawksworth that it would be acceptable if “plants
and fungi” was replaced everywhere with “organisms”, having spelt out which organisms
were covered by this Code. The issue of the title was a different matter.
Wiersema commented that the friendly amendment would have implications for other proposals
such as the next one, Prop. C where the word “plant” appeared using “fossil plant”
instead of “plant fossils”.
Barkworth wondered if Herendeen had formally proposed an amendment to add phycology
as well as mycology to the title.
Herendeen was suggesting that revising the title to reflect the fact that this Code
covered fungi and algae was a sensible thing to do. He formally moved a motion to
amend the proposal to modify the title to be the “International Code for Botanical,
Mycological and Phycological Nomenclature”. [The amendment was seconded.]
Prud’homme van Reine reported that the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
was not in favour of putting phycology in the title although it was very much in favour
of using “organism” instead of “plant”.
Alvarado also thought it would be a good thing to include phycological as well as
mycological because, if people who work with fungi wanted to include their discipline,
it was fair that people who work with algae should also be explicitly included. He
elaborated that the three disciplines currently existed, even if the group that phycologists
studied was polyphyletic.
McNeill asked for clarification from Prud’homme van Reine as to the rationale for
the Committee for
Algae
being unhappy with including the word “phycological”.
Prud’homme van Reine repeated that the desire was for a clear Code that covered all,
not a complex, muddied Code that covered bits and pieces. He did not think it necessary
to enter all the divisions and four kingdoms of algae.
McNeill asked for further clarification as to whether the word “phycological” did
not cover the four kingdoms of algae.
Prud’homme van Reine clarified that it did, but that the Committee for
Algae
thought it was unnecessary to make the Code thicker again, but that use of the word
“phycological” was not wrong.
Demoulin requested clearly separating the sensitive issue of the title from the issue
of what was going to be used in the rest of the Code. He thought there was some agreement
about using “organism treated as plant” instead of “plant”, which for editorial purposes
he thought would be much easier, but that this discussion should be left for later.
He felt that it was politically important to add mycology in the title. Given that
he thought the Section should do that, even though he thought it was silly, he wanted
to know if the phycologists still considered they were covered by “botanical” and
still did not want to be added, or, if it was inescapable to have “mycological” in
the title, he wanted to know if they would prefer to also have “phycological” added.
McNeill thought Demoulin was asking for a representative from phycology to establish
for the Section if it would be better from an algal perspective to have “botanical
and mycological”, or “botanical, mycological and phycological”.
Knapp asked if there were any comments on that from the phycological community.
Prud’homme van Reine [who appeared to be the only phycologist present] accepted that,
if there was nobody else, he would have to comment. He admitted that he made the same
proposal himself in the Committee for
Algae
, but the Committee did not want it, although he himself wanted it, very much. He
joked “if nobody tells the others, yes, do it!” [Laughter.]
Head supposed that he represented the palaeophycological community and felt that if
the Section were to go with fungi specifically, then algae should also be included.
He supported the amendment to include in the title both “mycology and phycology” because
it explained what the Code covered concisely and truthfully.
Knapp checked there were no more comments and that the Section was ready to move to
a vote on the amendment to the title. The proposal would read, instead of inserting
“mycological” after “botanical” in the title of the Code, that “mycological and phycological”
would be inserted after “botanical” in the title of the Code.
McNeill pointed out that this was not the final decision. This was simply moving from
talking about “botanical and mycological”, to talking about “botanical, mycological
and phycological” if the amendment was passed.
Knapp confirmed that everybody understood what was being voted on and that the Section
would vote on the amended proposal afterwards. She noted that it would be a simple
majority vote. [The amendment was accepted.]
Second session
Monday, 18th July 2011, 14:00–17:50
Knapp took the opportunity after lunch to reiterate a couple of housekeeping points.
Greuter had brought up an issue about the comment slips and she explained again that
it was important to fill in the date and time. The Nomenclature Section photograph
was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 pm, and she encouraged everyone to come
“dolled up”. She reported the personal and institutional votes for the earlier vote
ratifying the Vienna Code in an attempt to gather data about the influence of the
different votes. The total was 373 “yes” and 172 “no”, a simple majority [68% in favour].
The institutional votes were 247 “yes” and 136 “no” [65% in favour]. The personal
votes were 126 “yes” and 36 “no” [78% in favour]. She concluded that “no matter how
you cut the pie, it came out the same way”. Then she returned the discussion to the
proposal to change the Preamble. The proposal had been amended to read “inserting
‘mycological and phycological’ after ‘botanical’ in the title of the Code”. Hawksworth,
who introduced the proposal, had also accepted editorially altering of “plants” to
“organisms”.
May moved an amendment to Prop. A (iii) that the footnote on page one of the Code
state “In this Code, unless otherwise indicated, the word ‘organism’ means any organism
traditionally studied by botanists, mycologists or phycologists.” [The amendment was
seconded.]
Knapp repeated that the proposal to be discussed was an amendment to change the footnote
to say “plant means any organism traditionally studied by botanists, mycologists or
phycologists” and then to replace the word “plant” throughout with “organism”.
McNeill clarified that, as qualified here, “organism” applied to all the organisms
covered by the Code, as opposed to special use of the word. He pointed out that it
was quite possible that in Prop. B retention of the word “plant fossil” would be acceptable
and that would be for the palaeobotanists to decide.
Greuter wondered if this could just be referred to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp explained that an amendment had been proposed, which was being discussed, and
would hopefully be voted on quite soon.
Gams suggested a friendly amendment. As the algae are usually much closer to plants
than fungi he suggested reversing the sequence: “botanical, phycological and mycological”.
Knapp felt that this might be able to be dealt with editorially.
McNeill added that the alphabet dictated something different, so that view might not
be accepted for that reason.
Prud’homme van Reine had been thinking that, since the higher plants are nested in
the green algae—the “dry greens”—it would be possible to get rid of the “B” word—botany—and
just call the Code the International Code of nomenclature of mycology and phycology.
He followed this quickly with the comment that this was not a proposal.
Herendeen suggested that in some cases, strictly going with the change to “organism”
all the time might be awkward and it might be easier to leave some of these editorial
changes for the Editorial Committee to decide, based on what made most sense in terms
of prose that worked. He recommended not getting too caught up in precise requirements
to replace this word with that word throughout the Code and allowing the Editorial
Committee to fine-tune it as appropriate.
McNeill thought that comment was very apposite to Prop. B, which would be discussed
in a moment.
Karen Wilson requested that in part (iii) of Prop. A the words on the screen be altered
to replace “plant” with “organism”.
Ladiges wanted to know if the very first sentence would have to be changed “The Code
covers mycology, the study of fungi, as well as botany”.
Knapp elucidated that this was part of the proposal, not part of the Code. She moved
to a vote on amending the footnote to read “mycological and phycological” after “botanical”.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Buck called the question on the proposal, so that the Section could finish at least
one proposal on the first day.
Knapp thanked him and called a vote on voting on the proposal. [There was a sufficient
majority in favour of voting.] Then she proceeded to the actual vote on General Prop.
A.
Greuter suggested a separate vote on item (i), for the title.
Knapp clarified that the Section had to vote on the whole proposal because the question
had been called and a two-thirds majority of those assembled had said they wanted
to vote. She read out the amended Prop. A, which was to insert “mycological and phycological”
after “botanical” in the title of the Code, replacing “requires” by “mycology and
phycology require” at the start of Pre. 1, replacing the word “plants” by the word
“organism”, inserting “mycologists and phycologists respectively” after “botanists”
in the footnote to Pre. 1 and inserting “mycological and phycological” after “botanical”
in Div.III.1 footnote 1.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
[The following discussion of a new proposal by Norvell, to amend the title of the
Code, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Norvell’s proposal
McNeill noted that the Section had already decided to make changes to the title of
the Code and understood there was some rethinking coming from the people who had proposed
the changes and they were suggesting a modification of what had previously been agreed.
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Norvell recapped that the new title was the International Code of Botanical, Mycological
and Phycological Nomenclature. She (in consultation with others) suggested that the
International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants would be easier as
it covered everything that the Code covered.
Demoulin thought that this was interesting because it was parallel to what the bacteriologists
had done with the change from International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria to International
Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes and it also avoided taking a stand in the controversy
between “algological” or “phycological”.
Alvarado disagreed with the proposed name. He felt that the previous one was better
because the three disciplines exist, but he felt that “algae, fungi and plants” excluded
Cyanobacteria
… [Audience dissent.]
Knapp instructed that there was to be “No violence in the Nomenclature Section!”
Alvarado continued that phycology included
Cyanobacteria
because phycology worked with algae and
Cyanobacteria
, but algae alone did not include
Cyanobacteria
. He preferred the first name and not the second one.
Hawksworth pointed out that the words were deliberately in lower case and reflect
how they were used in the committee structure. He elaborated that fungi written like
that included the slime moulds, for example, and other groups of algae that did not
happen to have chloroplasts; and algae used in that sense meant things studied by
algologists, including the
Cyanobacteria
. He thought it was very clear.
Knapp summarized that the vote was on changing the title of the joint Code from the
International Code of Botanical, Mycological and Phycological Nomenclature to the
International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants.
Norvell’s proposal was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. B (80: 25: 11: 2).
McNeill explained that “plant” would be replaced by “organism” not “plant and fungus”.
Barrie shared Herendeen’s concern that this would not be a rigid replacement. As a
member of the Editorial Committee, he felt it could cause problems if forced to do
this everywhere. In terms of keeping the text sensible and coherent he recommended
some freedom and leeway and suggested referring this to the Editorial Committee.
McNeill clarified that this was an amendment to refer the proposal to the Editorial
Committee. He felt that to some extent it was covered in the wording of the proposal:
“where this is intended to include all organisms covered by the Code”. “Plant fossil”,
for example, was not intended to cover all organisms.
Herendeen blamed living in Washington too long, but maintained that some could read
it to be very strict instructions on replacing the wording in all cases by another
word. He felt more flexibility was needed than what a strict reading of the proposal
might suggest to someone.
Knapp reminded the Section about what was voted on in the very beginning session:
that the Editorial Committee was required and requested by the Section to make sensible
changes.
Reveal suggested a friendly amendment that, after “Editorial Committee to replace
‘plant(s)’”, the words “as appropriate” be added. [The friendly amendment was accepted.]
Knapp moved to a vote on Prop. B, to instruct the Editorial Committee to replace “plant(s)”
where appropriate by the word “organism(s)” throughout the Code, where it was intended
to include all organisms covered by the Code.
Prop. B was accepted as amended.
Prop. C (90: 7: 16: 7).
McNeill introduced a quite different world, that of fossil plants. Prop. C was part
of a series of proposals by Cleal & Thomas designed to clarify that plant fossils
were being considered. The proposers were not present. The proposal received very
positive votes in the mail vote, 90 to seven. Furthermore, it was almost unanimously
supported by the Committee for Fossil Plants.
Herendeen introduced himself as secretary of the Committee for Fossil Plants. He had
discussed whether the wording was exactly right with Martin [Head], because fossil
fungi and fossil algae were also considered. He wanted to modify the wording so that
the text replacement would refer to plant, fungal and phycological or plant, fungal
and algal fossils.
McNeill felt that this was editorial.
Van Rijckevorsel, in view of what had just been passed, suggested it may be possible
in some cases to just use “fossil” rather than “plant fossil” as that would be much
less clumsy.
McNeill thought that this was something that should definitely be considered by the
Editorial Committee. The point of the proposal initially was to make a clear distinction
that these are in fact plant fossils, not fossil plants, and there was a very important
procedural and philosophical distinction being made in the proposal.
Knapp reiterated what the Section would be voting on: changing the words “fossil plant”
to “plant fossil”, which was a conceptual difference between a fossil plant and a
plant fossil, but that would be dealt with editorially.
McNeill clarified that there would be a recommendation that the Editorial Committee
deal editorially with whether it should be “plant fossil” or “plant, fungal and algal
fossil”.
Funk requested clarity on what was being voted on. She did not think that the changes
being proposed were what the Committee for Fossil Plants discussed and came out in
favour of.
McNeill explained that the proposal itself was quite clear. The substantive issue
was changing the word “fossil plant”, which implied dealing with plants as whole organisms,
to “plant fossils”, but, as Herendeen had pointed out in the light of what had just
been decided with regard to fungi, the editorial part was whether “plant fossil” was
used or “plant, fungal and algal fossil”.
Funk added the option of just “fossil”. If this is the Code of plants, algae and fungi,
unless specifically talking about one of those three groups she suggested it was unnecessary
to specify plant, fungal or algae.
Herendeen agreed completely that there would be places where “fossil” would be fine.
To make the proposed change consistent with what had just been decided, he thought
there was a need to consider broadening it as necessary. Some of the changes could
be handled by the Editorial Committee.
Malécot noted that there already was a definition of fossil in the text, under Pre.
7 footnote 1: “In this Code, the term ‘fossil’ is applied to a taxon when its name
is based on a fossil type, and the term ‘non-fossil’ is applied to a taxon when its
name is based on a non-fossil type”. He argued that as “fossil” was already defined
in the Code it would be possible to change all references from “fossil plant” into
“fossil”.
Knapp repeated that the vote was on changing the words “fossil plant” to “plant fossil”,
and, as editorially appropriate to “plant, fungal or algal fossils” instead of “fossil
plants” in the Code. The Editorial Committee would be able to use their discretion.
Prop. C was accepted. [McNeill & al. in Taxon 60: 1511. 2011 noted this proposal as
amended, but it was not officially amended according to the recording of the Nomenclature
Section.]
Preamble
[For clarity, the normal sequence has been restored. The following debate, pertaining
to Preamble Prop. A, took place during the Seventh Session on Thursday morning with
discussion on Art. 45.]
Prop. A (88: 17: 7: 2).
McNeill introduced Preamble Prop. A, that in paragraph 7 of the Preamble after “slime
moulds” the following phrase, “but excluding the phylum
Microsporidia
”, be included.
Redhead explained that
Microsporidia
were a peculiar group with thousands of species and potentially hundreds of genera.
The community that dealt with the
Microsporidia
had always considered them to be protists and assumed they were covered under the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature for many years. They continue to publish
them as if they were covered under the Zoological Code, even though they may recognize
that they may be fungi phylogenetically. Under that Code the names could be published
without Latin. He reported that the entire community of people working with
Microsporidia
wished to be excluded from the Botanical Code and continue on as they had traditionally,
being covered under the Zoological Code, and this had been cleared with the Commission
for the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature before making the proposal.
Prud’homme van Reine spoke on behalf of the algal group who had been asked for a recommendation
by mistake. The recommendation was not to accept this proposal. The reason he gave
was that no group of organisms had ever been excluded from the Code, except perhaps
in the Footnote 2 of Pre. 7 “For the nomenclature of other prokaryotic groups, see
the International code of nomenclature of bacteria”, the Code of prokaryotes. The
algal group felt that excluding a group of organisms from a code of nomenclature is
confusing the independent functions of a nomenclature and classification. In the new
prokaryotes Code, the first principle is “Nothing in this Code may be construed to
restrict the freedom of taxonomic thought or action”. He thought that was also what
the Botanical Code did. Moreover, as explained in the 17th Report of the Nomenclature
Committee for
Fungi
about the microsporidians, it was stated that “Molecular phylogenetics supporting
placement of the phylum
Microsporidia
within the fungi are recognized nomenclaturally in the Vienna Code, with most recent
papers treating the microsporidians as fungi”. He exhorted the Section not to accept
the proposal.
David pointed out that the Preamble actually said “The rules and recommendations apply
to all organisms traditionally treated as plants…”.
Microsporidia
had not been traditionally treated as plants and had been under the Zoological Code
up until very recently. He was against the proposal.
Demoulin noted that there was a difference in opinion between Redhead and himself
about whether the
Microsporidia
are such a special group that they need a special rule, one of the reasons he made
this general proposal was the reason that Prud’homme van Reine had given, no necessity
of a special ruling for
Microsporidia
. He agreed that most people would probably use the Zoological Code, but felt there
would be no harm in somebody wanting to transfer them to the Botanical Code. At Vienna
it was thought that the issue had been taken care of, just like
Pneumocystis
, but there was a loophole that Redhead found. His opinion was that, now the loophole
was fixed [see discussion later in proceedings: Art. 45 Prop. B], a special ruling
for this organism was no longer necessary.
Kirk wondered if the Section was proposing to ignore the wishes of the people who
studied
Microsporidia
. He added that it would lead to chaos because there would be two alternative naming
mechanisms for
Microsporidia
. One group would recognize names as valid and the other group invalid and vice versa.
The users of names outside systematics would further disregard the pronouncements
made at these meetings in the future.
McNeill summarized the two separate arguments he had heard against the proposal. The
one argument was from David, who felt that the Code already said that it covered organisms
traditionally treated as plants and that clearly excluded the
Microsporidia
. But he also got the impression from the other proposers that they were saying that
there was a mechanism by which, even if they wrote the description in English prior
to 2012, under the provisions that had been approved with Demoulin’s proposal [Art.
45 Prop. B] a name would be validly published under the Code. They were suggesting
that in fact it did not matter because the
Microsporidia
could be in one or the other Code. If this were the case, he felt that this would
be an extremely dangerous proposal to vote down, because it would lead to a situation
in which it was not known which generic names were homonyms under the Code. He had
every sympathy with the argument that the proposal was not needed because the Code
already said the
Microsporidia
were not covered, but if the argument was that they might become covered then that
would be very dangerous and he suggested it may be prudent for the Section to support
the proposal.
Harley felt that there needed to be some sort of liaison with those responsible for
the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
McNeill assured him that that had already happened, and because
Microsporidia
were organisms that had fallen previously under the Zoological Code, that Code had
a similar provision and they could continue to fall under it.
Demoulin suggested a friendly amendment to take care of what David had said: to add
to the footnote of the Preamble something like “
Microsporidia
, having never been treated as plants traditionally, are not to be treated under this
Code”.
McNeill suggested “excluding the phylum
Microsporidia
, never having been treated under this Code”.
Demoulin thought it was important to explain that it was from an already existing
ruling, which is the one in the footnote.
Redhead thought this was very dangerous because then it allowed interpretation of
other ambiguous groups. The rumen chytrid fungi were originally thought to be animal
or protists, and then they were recognized as being chytrids and people could say
“Well, traditionally they were not”. The same would be done with other groups of parasitic
and microorganisms that turned out to be fungi, and sometimes they were being treated
under the Code here as fungi. This case dealt with a very explicit exclusion, which
was agreed upon by the group dealing with the highly characteristic group of intercellular
parasites with a little coiled mechanism that do not look like anything else. Those
who work on them have all voted for them to be excluded from this Code. They want
it to be explicit and not as an example.
McNeill clarified that it was not being accepted as a friendly amendment and asked
whether it was being proposed formally as an amendment.
Knapp wondered if it was an unfriendly amendment. [Laughter.]
Demoulin clarified that the amendment was to replace the set of proposals on
Microsporidia
by a second sentence in the footnote to the Preamble that said “For example,
Microsporidia
, having not been traditionally studied by botanists, are not covered by this Code.
[The amendment was seconded.]
Norvell noted that the Code currently said “having never been traditionally studied”,
but since Vienna for six years
Microsporidia
had been included in the Code. Also the Committee for
Fungi
originally did support the amendment.
Prud’homme van Reine also made this point.
Malécot found it strange because it was an inter-Code problem. He argued that currently
the Zoological Code applied “to protistan taxa, when workers treat them as animals
for the purposes of nomenclature”. If the decision was made that
Microsporidia
were not governed by the Botanical Code, it would mean people working on
Microsporidia
would have the Zoological Code, which said that you can use the Zoological Code or
another Code. So there would be maybe some difficulties for these guys to decide which
Code to use; maybe the bacteriological one.
Demoulin interpreted “traditionally” to mean more than six years, a longstanding use
should be at least tens of years. He was happy if somebody wanted to amend the proposal
by making it clear that tradition was something more than six years.
Redhead pointed out that 100 years ago or more the very first microsporidian was described
as a yeast.
Knapp agreed this was a lovely point of fact and steered the discussion back towards
comments or discussion on the amendment.
[The amendment was rejected.]
To Harley it seemed crazy not to include them as plants, or at least as fungi if they
are actually such, because the same sort of problem could possibly occur with other
groups in the future. He could see that people who had been used to using one sort
of Code are not going to be very happy about changing, but suggested that this was
a temporary problem. If there was no serious technical difficulty in changing from
one Code to another, he was sure that the Section ought not to exclude them.
McNeill commented that the principles of both the International Code of Botanical
Nomenclature and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature were to keep the
content as stable as possible, and neither Code considered that phylogenetic information
on relationship should be the determinant as to what groups did or did not fall under
the Code. This meant it was not simply a matter of people getting used to another
Code, it was an issue of homonymy, which did not apply across the Codes. He made the
strong point that it is very desirable for stability that the systematic content covered
by each Code remain the same. This meant that the tradition was the important thing,
and what was really under discussion was whether the exclusion of the
Microsporidia
should be explicit in the Code or was it implicit, and the recent amendment for implicitness
had been defeated.
Greuter agreed that the Code was a code of nomenclature and, at least in theory, should
exclude taxonomy and taxonomic opinion, although this was not always possible as shown
by the case of
Microsporidia
. He wondered if it was necessary to state that they were a phylum and suggested taking
out the rank designation as a friendly amendment. [This was accepted by the proposer.]
Knapp reiterated that the friendly amendment was to delete the word “phylum” in the
proposal.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. B (76: 3: 34: 1).
McNeill introduced Preamble Prop. B, by Gandhi and Reveal making clear that the Appendices
were a part of the Code. “Names that have been conserved or rejected, oppressed publications,
and a glossary of [terms used and] defined in the Code are given in the Appendices”.
The Rapporteurs commented that it seemed appropriate so long as the wording was corrected
to refer to Appendices II–VII [whereas the proposal referred to App. I–VII].
Barrie suggested changing “oppressed” to “suppressed”, because it was “oppressa” in
Latin but it was “suppressed” in English. The publications were not being politically
persecuted.
Knapp reiterated that the Section was voting to add an item to the Preamble: “Names
that have been conserved or rejected, suppressed publications, and a glossary of terms
used and defined in the Code are given in Appendices II–VII”.
Prop. B was accepted.
Article 1
Prop. A (63: 8: 7: 25).
McNeill returned the proceedings to the more general portions of the proposals by
Cleal & Thomas regarding plant fossils. He drew attention to the very positive support
for Art. 1 Prop. A (63: 8) in the mail vote. The Nomenclature Committee for Fossil
Plants had considered it together with Prop. B and again gave it strong support, about
80% being in favour.
Greuter had been working with fossil plants, not because he knew anything about them,
but he knew something about fossil botanists and he had been learning a lot in the
process. He outlined that efforts had always been made to understand what those who
work with fossils wanted in the Code but felt that they did not always know it themselves.
He suggested that this had changed given the very complex proposal in question, with
large support in the fossil community. He felt there was still a number of difficulties
in the proposals starting with Prop. A (i), last sentence: “fossil taxon comprises
the remains … preserved in one or more preservational states, as indicated by the
description or diagnosis of the taxon”. As a nomenclaturalist he automatically added
“original” description or diagnosis, but looking at the Examples later, this was not
the case. It was not what was indicated in the original, in the protologue, but the
circumscription in terms of organs or whatever given by any worker at any time. Now,
if that was what the plant palaeontologists wanted, he felt it should be expressed
“depending on the circumscription of the taxon” instead of “indicated by the description
or diagnosis of the taxon”. His second point related to “‘organ-taxa’, ‘form-taxa’,
‘autapo-taxa’, or conceptual whole-plant taxa”. Looking at the Examples, he maintained
that these were three things and not four, because “autapo-taxa” was the same as conceptual
whole-plant taxa. He suggested “autapo-taxa” should be dropped and just left at whole-plant
taxa. He felt this was all too complicated for the Section to decide, so his proposal
was that the whole Article be referred to the Editorial Committee to implement the
necessary changes in close contact with the Committee for Fossil Plants, and hopefully
with a representative of palaeobotanists in the Editorial Committee.
Herendeen pointed out that there were three proposals, the first two, Prop. A and
B, were proposed by Cleal and Thomas, but the last part Greuter talked about was Prop.
C, authored by Bateman and Hilton. The Bateman and Hilton proposal received a very
negative vote in the mail vote and was not supported by the Committee.
Greuter stood corrected and limited his remarks to the first instance and not to the
second one. He did not withdraw the proposal to refer these proposals to the Editorial
Committee in close collaboration with the fossil plant community, and this was seconded.
Redhead requested that the Editorial Committee take into consideration any changes
that may take place for Art. 59 and adjust appropriately Prop. A (vi), which wished
to change Art. 11.1 so that it included “the use of separate names for the form-taxa
of fungi is allowed”. He believed mycologists in general did not wish to use form-taxa
even with changes in Art. 59.
Prud’homme van Reine pointed out an omission in Art. 1 Prop. A: in the emendation
of Art. 1.2, “(diatoms excepted)” was left out after the first words, [in the current
Art. 1.2] after “Fossil taxa”. He did not understand why this exception was deleted
in the proposal by Cleal and Thomas and why the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
had not been asked to give its recommendation here. He thought it was clear that the
exception had to be kept for at least ten genera of diatoms, some rather large in
number of species. He reported that none of the members of the Committee for
Algae
had voted in favour of the proposal by Cleal and Thomas.
McNeill noted this and did not think that it was at all deliberate, he apologized
that the nomenclature editor of Taxon [himself] did not notice the issue as there
was no intention of changing the status of diatoms.
Herendeen explained that the core of this proposal was to get rid of the concept of
morphotaxa for fossil plants, which had been a very problematic concept for quite
a number of years.
Prop. A was accepted on the understanding that fossil taxa excluded diatoms, and that
this would be made clear by the Editorial Committee.
Prop. B (44: 5: 26: 25), concerning two Examples, was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (17: 45: 12: 31) and D (12: 44: 18: 28) were rejected.
McNeill noted that the Committee for Fossil Plants had considered this and voted unanimously
0 to 11 to oppose Prop. C and D.
Article 6
Prop. A (110: 5: 9: 0).
McNeill moved on to a set of proposals by Turland, Vice-rapporteur, dealing with a
deficiency highlighted in the preparation of the Glossary.
Turland explained that when the Editorial Committee was preparing the Glossary in
the Vienna Code, it was realized that some of the very familiar terms in the Code,
such as nomen novum, new combination, new status, replacement name and avowed substitute,
were only explained obliquely in the Articles of the Code and they were not really
defined. The idea of the proposal was to explicitly define the terms in the status
definitions in Art. 6, which would also simplify some of the later Articles, for example
Art. 33.4, which had one of the oblique definitions in it.
Alvarado did not think it was necessary to define all the terms, because he felt that
people who work with the Code were trained botanists and were already familiar with
them. He did not think the Code was the place to explain the concepts, but rather
to use them.
Greuter was much in favour of the definitions. However, he was not happy with one
of the terms. He proposed an amendment to Art. 6.10 under Prop. A to replace “a nomen
novum” by “a substitute name, nom. subst.”. This was firstly because the other terms,
new taxa and new combination, were in English and nomen novum was Latin and secondly
because the English translation of nomen novum was new name, and past Editorial Committees
had successfully eliminated this term because it caused confusion. [The amendment
was seconded.]
McNeill noted that this had been alluded to by the Rapporteurs in their comments because
it was anomalous to have it in Latin as opposed to English.
Turland wished to clarify that Art. 6.9 would read “name of a new taxon”, Art. 6.10
would read “a substitute name” and the abbreviation, in parentheses, would be “nom.
subst.” and Art. 6.11 would stay the same, as “new combination”. He wondered if nomen
novum would be mentioned at all.
Knapp suggested that it should go in the parentheses.
Gereau opposed the amendment as he found nom. subst. more confusing and less informative
than nomen novum.
Applequist noted that there was a great deal of existing literature that used nomen
novum and thought it would be very confusing for people who had been brought up on
that literature to see the term suddenly disappear.
McNeill clarified that there was no suggestion of the phrase disappearing from the
Code.
David wanted to know if nom. subst. was supposed to be a Latin word, or two Latin
words. Was it supposed to be “nomen substantivum” or some such? He felt that having
nomen novum and nomen substantivum could be more confusing.
Knapp suggested that the Section was trying to wordsmith the Code as a committee and
that this could be left to the Editorial Committee to make sure that the changes made
sense.
McNeill explained that the amendment was emphasizing the use of “substitute name”,
rather than how it should be abbreviated.
Sennikov thought that “replacement name” was already a familiar term, and substitute
name was something not previously present in the Code, and suggested replacement name
as the major term to be introduced.
Greuter had no strong preference but added that the difficulty was that the Latin
abbreviation for nom. subst. existed but did not for “nom. repl.”
Van Rijckevorsel liked replacement name better than substitute name, and strongly
suggested adding a note that in the literature the term nomen novum was used extensively
for the same thing.
Ford-Werntz felt that the community understood nomen novum and favoured replacement
name over substitute name, giving the argument that a substitute was often temporary
while a replacement is something permanent.
Greuter accepted this as a friendly amendment, leaving open the question of what the
Latin abbreviation should be.
Turland requested clarification as to whether the amendment from Greuter was to change
all mentions of nomen novum throughout the Code to “substitute name” or “replacement
name”. He wished to know if the convention when publishing nomenclatural novelties
would not be to put “nom. nov.” any more but to put something different, possibly
“nom. subst.”
Alvarado felt that nomen novum had been a tradition, it appeared in a lot of historical
documents and it would be better to retain the term. He thought it was better to stick
to nom. nov. in Latin rather than changing it into English.
McNeill clarified that the proposed amendment did not rule out maintaining nom. nov.
as an abbreviation.
Norvell suggested it would be better to vote on this in two steps because some wanted
to retain nom. nov. First nomen novum and replacement name and second, what Latin
term should be used for replacement name.
Knapp clarified that the Section was currently voting on an amendment to replace nomen
novum with substitute name or replacement name.
McNeill responded to Norvell’s concern by suggesting that the Section might want to
recommend or decide on the Latin term to be used for the English replacement name.
Knapp returned the discussion to voting on the amendment.
Turland mentioned that part of his intention with the original proposal was to reduce
the three different synonyms used for the same term in the Code, which was inconsistent.
He recommended against introducing another alternative, so it was not obvious what
the main term should be for nomen novum or substitute name.
Levin made a point of order that because this was a friendly amendment, the vote would
be to replace nomen novum with replacement name, not substitute name.
Gams felt that the terms substitute or replacement were confusing, as it could refer
either to a name replacing another one, or to the replaced name. Replaced synonym
was already commonly used, and for substitute it was the same.
Sennikov stressed that nomen novum should be mentioned to avoid potential confusion
if it were removed from the Code.
Knapp proposed moving to a vote on the amendment, to replace “nomen novum” with “replacement
name”.
McNeill added that this was, as the English language term, the preferred term in the
Code.
Bill Barker requested confirmation that nomen novum would remain in the Code.
McNeill confirmed that this was the case.
[A show of cards was requested and, as this was close, Ulloa called for an official
card vote, which was seconded. The amendment was accepted on a card vote (325: 169;
65.8% in favour).]
Knapp tried to move to a vote on the proposal itself.
Turland first wanted to propose a slight amendment to the wording of the amended proposal.
[Laughter]. He assured the Section that there was no need to panic. After the accepted
amendment it stood as “a replacement name (nom. nov., avowed substitute)”. His proposed
amendment was to simply put nomen novum inside the parenthesis before nom. nov., so
it would read “a replacement name (nomen novum, nom. nov., avowed substitute)”. He
reiterated that “replacement name” would be the preferred term used throughout the
Code but it would not mean the users of the Code could not use nomen novum as a term
and journals publishing nomenclatural novelties could use nom. nov. as the abbreviation.
Sennikov pointed out that the proposal was regarding definitions, and in the third
part, on Art. 6.11, there were two terms combined altogether without separate definitions:
a new combination or a status novus. It was not clear to him from the definition what
this was exactly, and he requested a phrase be added editorially to provide definitions,
as a new combination or a status novus were two separate things.
McNeill agreed that this was an issue and noted that there was also another point
that the Editorial Committee would need to look at, in that, whereas new combination,
new name and replacement name all dealt with names, status novus was not actually
a name, but a name with a new status.
Greuter suggested that the Editorial Committee could clarify this by means of Examples.
Turland suggested for Art. 6.11 that, where it read “i.e. new rank”, it could read
“i.e. name at new rank”. He added another point that had come up during the coffee
break: status novus is Latin. In view of the result of the card vote he proposed we
simply change “status novus” to “new status” in English.
Knapp confirmed that the Editorial Committee would look quite closely at these issues.
She reiterated that Prop. A was to add three new Articles to Art. 6 and adjust the
Glossary as appropriate, meaning that the definitions would be in the Glossary as
well.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
Prop. B (106: 2: 8: 0).
Knapp introduced Prop. B: in Art. 6 Note 2 to insert “perhaps” before “by different
authors” and in the entry for isonym in the Glossary.
McNeill added that this was intended to clarify a discrepancy in the definition of
isonym.
Turland explained that it was to bring the wording in Art. 6 in line with that in
Art. 14.
Prop. B was accepted.
[A new proposal concerning Art. 6 was included as part of Wiersema’s set of proposals
relating to illegitimate family names, and the discussion can be found under the Tenth
Session on Friday afternoon.]
Article 7
Prop. A (103: 5: 8: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 7 Prop. A, which was a simplification of Art. 7.3 and 7.4
that would utilize the terms that had been defined having adopted Art. 6 Prop. A and
therefore made the wording simpler.
Knapp pointed out that as the Section had approved the amendment of Art. 6, those
amended terms would be used in this proposal as well, editorially, so there was no
need for further discussion of that nature.
Turland explained that Prop. A was not purely editorial because it was making Art.
7.3 parallel with Art. 7.4. One was discussing replacement names and the other one
dealt with new combinations or new status, so it was quite logical that they be parallel
in their wording. The proposal was to make them more consistent and simpler.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (15: 23: 73: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (77: 29: 7: 0).
McNeill explained that this proposal was part of a series seeking to clarify the nomenclatural
status of names of which there was more than one potential descriptive statement.
It would simply make clear what most people had assumed, that a name validly published
solely by reference to a previous effective publication was to be typified by an element
from that publication. In other words, if there was a validating description in the
protologue, there was no need to go back to any earlier ones. He drew attention to
the positive response in the mail vote of 77 in favour and 29 against.
Gereau felt that the wording of the proposal was particularly unfortunate, claiming
that the “solely” was completely unnecessary in this context. He maintained that if
a name was published by reference to a previously and effectively published description
or diagnosis, that was what it was published with a reference to. He also argued that
“from the context of the validating description or diagnosis” was an exceedingly vague
phrase that was possibly misleading.
Demoulin agreed. He did not understand the need for the proposal and opposed it.
Soreng felt the proposal needlessly restricted the elements that could be included
in the typification, which he felt should be left up to the typifying authors to make
a critical decision.
McNeill again explained that the proposal was intended to state what most people had
assumed, that the Article concerned had always been interpreted as dealing with a
situation in which a name was validated solely by a previously published description
and at the place of valid publication there was no description. He maintained that
“solely” was needed. He clarified that you would only apply Art. 7.7 when there was
no description in the place of valid publication. That was not assumed by everyone,
and it was possible to interpret the present wording as though you could go to any
description. If the wording of the proposal was defective then the Editorial Committee
would deal with that.
Govaerts wanted to know if the proposal would be retroactive, as it could have consequences
for previous lectotypifications.
Barrie emphasized that the only difference between what was in the Code and what was
being suggested was the word “solely”. If a name had been properly lectotypified he
did not think this proposal should destabilize the type.
Prop. C was accepted.
Prop. D (16: 82: 11: 1).
McNeill pointed out that Prop. D was overwhelmingly defeated in the mail vote.
Malécot clarified that there was actually 74.55% who voted no in the mail vote, not
75%.
McNeill confirmed that the no vote did not quite reach 75%. The proposal was to change
the phrase “context of” for material to “material associated with”, in terms of the
type in Art. 7.7.
Prop. D was rejected.
Prop. E (65: 28: 17: 0).
McNeill noted that the Example associated with the proposal was very bizarre but the
suggested addition was not unreasonable. He drew attention to the fact that it received
substantive support in the mail vote of 65 in favour and 28 against.
Greuter warned that the proposal was a typical example of a proposed wording that,
if adopted, could have quite negative sideeffects that were not necessarily obvious.
He argued that Art. 7.7 only made sense when limited to names of a new taxon. The
crossreference to Art. 32.1(d) meant that it also applied to new combinations and
nomina nova that were not solely validated by reference back. This was because the
typification was not relevant at that stage, but this became relevant for nomina nova
validated only, as the case usually was, by an element from the original context.
He suggested as a friendly amendment that the words “of a new taxon” be added after
“a name” and before the newly inserted “solely”. [The friendly amendment was accepted.]
He went on to deal with the second portion that appeared in bold in the proposal “or
explicitly excluded part of the material associated” etc., arguing that this should
not, in his opinion, apply to names above the rank of species because it would leave
us with circumscription method procedure, which had been banished from the Code presumably
since the type concept was introduced. His specific suggestion was, if the second
boldface passage was deemed desirable, which he did not object to on principle, then
it should be preceded by the specification “for names of a species or infraspecific
taxon”.
Prud’homme van Reine commented that the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
was unclear as to how to read the last sentence of the proposal, specifically “the
indication or descriptive and other matter”, should it be “indication of descriptive”?
McNeill refocused the discussion on the proposal, as he felt Prud’homme van Reine
had raised a general question on the wording of Art. 7.7 in the Code.
Sennikov returned to the issue Greuter raised concerning taxa above the rank of species,
claiming that this exclusion was already effected by the presence of brackets “(but
see Art. 10.2)” and felt no extra reference was needed.
McNeill asked if Sennikov felt that that excluded generic names.
Sennikov felt there was a hint in the brackets.
Greuter supposed that the Editorial Committee could clarify it as it deemed fit.
Knapp called for a vote on Prop. E on Art. 7.7 to amend it to “A name of a new taxon
validly published”, to insert the word “entire” before “context” and to insert the
words “or explicitly excluded part of the material associated with the validating
description or diagnosis” after the word “type” but before “(but see Art. 10.2)”.
Prop. E was accepted as amended.
Prop. F (12: 33: 63: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. G (80: 3: 29: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. G as a modification to an existing Example in the Code and
noted that it had received overwhelming support in the mail vote, with 80 in favour
and two against. The Rapporteurs commented that the correction of a long-standing
Example in the Code was a useful clarification.
Veldkamp introduced himself as a botanist in the Malesian area who had had a lot to
do with the Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius. It was a custom in the 19th and 20th
centuries to base new names on collections that people attempted to identify with
the Herbarium Amboinense. He noted that
Adenanthera
bicolor
was from Sri Lanka and the plant described by Rumphius was from Ambon, so he felt
it was rather dangerous to take the picture and the description of the Herbarium Amboinense
species as the type. He advised against doing this. There was a specimen at Kew collected
by Moon and labelled by him as such. This was an attempt to identify his specimen,
and it was very likely that it was a different species to what Rumphius had in Ambon.
Therefore he even suggested scratching the whole Example and certainly not accepting
the proposal.
Perry outlined her reason for suggesting changing the Example was because many people
were attempting to interpret it as meaning that the illustration was the type because
it was cited by Moon, not that it was part of the validating description. She had
not changed anything, just turned it round a bit to clarify. She noted that the Example
had been in the Code since 1981.
Barrie suggested referring the issue to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp concluded that Barrie was getting tired.
Reveal very politely addressed “Madam Chairman” and suggested that the whole matter
be addressed to the Editorial Committee with a purpose of resolving, with the help
of others, the taxonomic status of the name and whether the Example should be accepted,
modified or deleted.
Prop. G was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. H (13: 74: 7: 8), I (38: 49: 6: 7) and J (16: 61: 15: 6) were all withdrawn.
[These and others were replaced with a new set of proposals dealing with “sanctiotypification”.
All of the relevant discussion can be found under the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon,
including discussion begun during the Sixth Session on Wednesday afternoon.]
Prop. K (6: 14: *86: 2).
Turland outlined that there was a slight problem with the proposal and read from the
Rapporteurs’ comments: “However, the proposal stems from a slight misconception that
was unfortunately reinforced in the editorial process. Article 9 (along with Art.
8) deals only with typification of names of species and infraspecific taxa, whereas
Art. 7 deals with typification in general and so Art. 7.11 applies also to all typification
including that of names of genera and subdivisions of genera. The doubt that the proposers
perceived as to the requirements for typification on or after 1 January 2001 could
be resolved by the addition of a parenthetical ‘(see also Art. 7.11)’ at the end of
Art. 9.21. An ‘ed.c.’ vote will be so interpreted.”
Prop. K was referred to the Editorial Committee.
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 7 Prop. L, took place during the Seventh
Session on Thursday morning, with discussion on Art. 37bis Prop. A.]
Prop. L (39: 40: 12: 8).
McNeill introduced Art. 7 Prop. L as an additional proposal stimulated by the proposals
dealing with the requirement to register fungal names prior to their being considered
to be validly published. The proposal required the publication of fungal nomenclatural
acts, such as lectotypification, to be recorded in a recognized repository and dealt
with what was required for type designation to be effective. This was considered by
the Committee for
Fungi
, which supported it 71% in favour (10: 3: 1).
Gams outlined that the proposal was strictly connected with Art. 37bis Prop. A, where
the deposition and the registration of new names were made compulsory for validity.
In this proposal the same requirement for validity was also postulated for all actions
of typification. In another proposal this would only be a Recommendation. It was recommended
that these typification actions be registered in MycoBank or a similar organization.
Wiersema relayed the fact that his mycological colleagues [at USDA] did not express
support for the proposal.
Kirk pointed out that in order to be compatible with the proposal that had just passed
[Rec. 37bis A.1 during the Seventh Session on Thursday morning] it should be “identifier”
rather than “record number”.
Gandhi also opposed the proposal, preferring to see the type information cited within
the protologue.
Barrie wondered if requiring more than the name to be registered might cause problems.
The type already had to be attached to the name, so if the name was linked through
the registration number he questioned whether it was desirable to add the extra requirement
of having the type listed, because essentially that meant registering the type as
well. Would the name then not be validly published if there was a glitch and the type
did not get designated?
[One of the Microphone Runners had the temerity to suggest that someone had asked
a question that the President had missed.]
Knapp set them straight, that it was she who got to choose who spoke, adding that
no-one realized how much power she actually had. [Laughter].
Sennikov commented that the types were not automatically attached to the plant names
in such a way that, should a plant name be published, you could easily find a type.
He suggested that this was quite obvious for old names, and it was a real mess to
find the first instance of lectotypification for many names, and many people had spent
a lot of time doing so. There were many competing choices of lectotype selection,
according to him, and it may well happen for any name in the future that it could
appear to be lectotypified in some obscure source, and it was exactly the same issue
as for valid publication of plant names. He felt that typifications, lectotypifications,
neotypifications etc. should be registered and made available to the public in the
same way as new plant names. He argued that it was exactly the same issue, as it was
also a nomenclatural act; it must be registered and not be placed into the area of
grey literature.
Norvell noted that this was supported by a 71% vote of the Committee for
Fungi
.
Demoulin agreed with Barrie that there were already enough requirements for valid
publication and it added a risk of more names being turned invalid…
McNeill interrupted that it was not new names under discussion. This was regarding
registration of a nomenclatural act. All it meant was that a lectotypification was
not effected unless it was registered.
Demoulin continued that he believed there were people who would use the fact that
the type was not registered and then the name would be considered invalid.
McNeill explained that this was in Art. 7, which was dealing not with valid publication,
but with the effectiveness of a nomenclatural act—that is, a lectotypification or
a neotypification. If a lectotypification was not registered then somebody else could
come along and do it later. So this would not affect the valid publication of names.
Demoulin demurred.
Prop. L was rejected on a card vote (256: 187; 57.8% in favour).
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. M (46: 6: 58: 0) was withdrawn.
Article 8
Prop. A (79: 17: 15: 0).
McNeill noted that Art. 8 Prop. A had fairly positive votes, 79 to 17, and had been
proposed in association with other Articles to clarify that an illustration included
in the protologue was part of the original material. It was an attempt to clarify
what was meant, in botanical terms, by an illustration.
Barrie was concerned that the proposal seemed to indicate that photographs of a type
specimen that accompanied a protologue would now be considered type material themselves.
For example, a photograph of a holotype published with a protologue, whereas currently
these are not considered type material.
McNeill felt that the issue of whether they were considered type material was dependent
on the other linked proposal, Art. 9 Prop. E. He pointed out that some people would
say that any illustration in the protologue was original material, but the literal
wording of the current Note on that excluded them as being original material, which
was what Prop. 9 was concerned with.
Prud’homme van Reine spoke on behalf of phycologists and hoped that the proposal would
not be accepted because they were afraid that something would happen with all the
old pictures used in phycology. He suggested inclusion of the text “all pictures recorded
in the protologue are considered to be illustrations and will belong to the original
material”. The reaction by the Rapporteurs, that the proposal was useful because it
ruled out habitat photographs and the like was felt to be threatening. He reported
that phycologists were particularly afraid of the restrictions about the use of illustrations
because of Art. 39, which stated that validly published names of non-fossil algae
must be accompanied by an illustration from 1 January 1955. If the definition of an
illustration was to be changed now, he argued, this could lead to difficulties in
older descriptions and typifications in algae.
McNeill asked Prud’homme van Reine if he considered that there were illustrations
that would be the validating illustration for an algal new taxon that would be excluded
by this definition.
Prud’homme van Reine confirmed that he thought this could happen quite often, especially
for plankton, where photographs could include a number of things with only one of
them pinpointed as the type. He also referred to the many newer underwater photographs
of growths of algae that were more or less habitat photographs, but for phycologists
they depicted the type of the alga.
Turland requested clarification as to whether Prud’homme van Reine was suggesting
that such photographs would not depict a feature or features of the new taxon being
described.
Prud’homme van Reine replied in the negative [presumably against the suggestion].
He reiterated that he felt the comments of the Rapporteurs were dangerous regarding
ruling out habitat photographs and the like, as the definition of “the like” was not
clear.
McNeill replied that in considering a proposal to amend the Code, the Rapporteurs
do their best to interpret its intent, but the Rapporteurs’ comments do not appear
in the Code. What appears in the Code is the wording of the proposal. He felt it would
be surprising if an illustration that was considered a validation of a name of an
algae did not depict a feature or features of the new taxon described, as that was
the criterion [of a validating illustration]. When he mentioned a habitat photograph,
he was thinking of vascular plants, where you might have a view of a meadow with absolutely
no feature of an individual species visible. But presumably in no case would the illustrations
in question not include a feature or features of the new taxon described. He wondered
if names of algal taxa were really validated by a photograph of green scum, or something.
[Laughter].
Knapp clarified for Prud’homme van Reine that the Rapporteur meant that he would find
it very unusual if one would validate a new taxon on a photograph that did not show
a feature of the plant that was being described.
McNeill added that the suggested change in wording would not affect these names.
Prud’homme van Reine reiterated that in his Committee everybody was very afraid that
it would, because it was sometimes just one small dot or so [on a photograph] that
was important, and specialists understood that, but others quite often did not and
then they would say there were no data on the photograph. He preferred to be able
to make the choice and not have the Code already do so in this respect.
Sennikov explained that which illustrations were acceptable or not for typification
was defined in the definition of original material in Note 2 under Art. 9.2, so in
principle the proposal was not so dangerous as it looked. He felt that it was highly
desirable either to have explicit reference to the definition of original material
in the way proposed in the proposal or these definitions should preferably be explicitly
referred to each other or combined somehow so that they could not contradict each
other. Therefore he suggested that the definition of original material should be taken
in consideration while discussing this proposal.
Buck thought that part of the confusion was habit photo versus habitat photo and if
that distinction was understood then there should not be an issue.
Nic Lughadha was concerned that, by the definition “work of art or a photograph”,
this may inadvertently exclude some types of illustration, such as a nature print,
which she would not consider a work of art because it was mechanical, but it was also
not a photograph.
Van Rijckevorsel suggested adding the word “diagnostic” before “features” so as to
emphasize that the photo should show something diagnostic.
McNeill felt that the Code did not require descriptions to be diagnostic and that
that should be the same for an illustration, it just required that it show the organism.
It should be diagnostic from a point of view of good taxonomy but he was not certain
that it was required in the wording of Art. 37.
May explained that it was the lack of the word “diagnostic” that protected the concerns
of the Committee for
Algae
, as that allowed leeway so that if the illustration was a bit vague and fuzzy, but
at the time considered adequate, it was not possible to retrospectively decide there
was nothing diagnostic about it.
Greuter encouraged the Committee for
Algae
and others to submit examples to the Editorial Committee so that they could illustrate
what was and was not an illustration in definite cases. He felt that the wording was
fine but not clear enough, citing the example that the wording would encompass, without
any doubt, the photograph of metaphasic fig because it was a feature, not a morphological
feature but a feature and this would be useful to have as an example.
Annette Wilson was concerned about the wording “work of art” because she did not find
it an adequate description of a very broad range of illustrative material. It seemed
to her to encompass anything that was not a photograph, some of which were very obviously
not artistic. She pointed out that there were some awfully bad drawings out there.
Alvarado suggested replacing “work of art” with something like “image”, because images
can be of any kind and not just artistic.
McNeill suggested this was like saying that “Here and elsewhere in the Code an illustration
is an illustration, featuring a…”.
Knapp warned that the discussion was erring on the side of wordsmithing the Code again
and alerted the Section to the fact that this could take rather a lot of time.
Marhold suggested, instead of “work of art”, “drawing” might be better.
McNeill added that it could also be a painting. He felt that if the proposal were
to be approved the Editorial Committee would ensure that what had been expressed was
covered in terms of making sure that nothing fell between the gaps in the set of definitions
without changing the intent or the meaning.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (17: 44: 16: 23).
McNeill introduced the proposal, which dealt with problems that existed with microfossils
in that the material was very often on a slide and unlocatable. The author was trying
to find some way in which an illustration could originally be the type and suggested
in the proposal that it would be a surrogate for the type. The proposal received a
negative vote: 17 in favour and 44 against and a substantial number (23) wanted to
send it to a Special Committee. This was considered by the Committee for Fossil Plants,
which again was negative but not to the same degree as in some other cases. It was
split at four in favour, six against, so a 55% “no” vote. The Rapporteurs wondered
if the proposal was a little convoluted and if there was an option in this situation
of invoking what was currently in the Code for algae and fungi for which there were
technical difficulties of preservation, i.e. Art. 37.5, which was one of the situations
in which an illustration could be the type.
Herendeen commented on behalf of the Committee for Fossil Plants, which was against
the proposal, that there were a number of problems with fossil plants. Illustrations
were not allowed to serve in the place of a specimen as type. Traverse, the author
of the proposal, proposed the idea of a surrogate for the type if the specimen was
no longer able to be found or was degraded, but introducing the new concept of epitype
was found to be very problematic. The epitype would only work as long as the type
itself existed, so an epitype would not work for this problem. The Committee felt
that the proposal addressed a real problem but the suggested solution was something
that the Committee did not favour.
McNeill wondered if the Committee had considered the Rapporteurs’ suggestion of extending
Art. 37.5 to cover this situation. That related to technical difficulties of preservation,
where it was impossible to preserve a specimen for recent microalgae and microfungi
and it was possible to have an illustration as type. He noted that it was the only
situation in the Code in which an illustration was allowed as type [of the name of
a new taxon published currently].
Herendeen responded that the Committee had discussed that and it was not approved.
They did not want to open the door to illustrations serving in place of a specimen,
even if that specimen was impossible to locate.
Prop. B was rejected.
Prop. C (20: 84: 8: 0) was ruled as rejected.
[The following discussion, pertaining to a new proposal by Prud’homme van Reine concerning
Art. 8.4, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal
McNeill introduced a new proposal on Art. 8.4 by Prud’homme van Reine regarding type
specimens of names of taxa being preserved permanently. [The proposal was seconded
and supported by three others.]
Prud’homme van Reine explained that the proposal was to make explicit what was already
implicit by adding: “to remain alive in the inactive state”. He added that it was
easy to kill a culture by deep-freezing but that was not what was desired, it was
necessary to be able to work with the cultures later and they needed to be living
cultures.
Alvarado thought this was a good amendment and noted that in the Prokaryotic Code
it was essential to keep a sample of a living organism in a state as it was stated
there. He felt it was very important to also include that for
Cyanobacteria
and agreed that the proposal made it explicit.
Reveal, having a little knowledge of history, called the attention of the Section
to the herbarium in Berlin and several other herbaria in Europe during the Second
World War in the 1940s. He agreed that what was being mandated was perfectly reasonable,
providing electricity worked all the time and everything was done perfectly over an
extremely long period, because if something was destroyed, for example 50 years from
now due to war or accident, then there would not be any types. He thought it was necessary
to put something into Art. 8.4 that took into account that an inadvertent accident
would not invalidate the type. He did not know how to deal with the problems regarding
an unintentional accident.
Prud’homme van Reine responded that if the culture was lost then there was no type
anymore. [Audience muttering.]
Unknown speaker noted that if herbarium specimens were lost, there was no type any
more either.
May interpreted the situation that if the culture died it was just then like a specimen.
Hawksworth pointed out that if they were lyophilized they were not dependent at all
on electricity. He explained that these were little vacuumsealed tubes that could
be put in herbarium packets in a herbarium, so there was no basic difference at all.
He added that it was only the deepfrozen ones that could encounter the issue, but
in practice what people did with cultures like this was send duplicates, isotypes,
to a number of different collections and normal practice was to send them to at least
three.
Barrie wondered if the suggested wording was really any different to what was already
in the Code and was just adding something else in. It seemed to him to repeat what
“metabolically inactive state” meant, because that implied “you can be metabolically
inactive and alive, you can be metabolically inactive and dead, but…” [Laughter.]
He concluded that it did imply that these were alive.
Boyne was wondering if it was desirable to keep the cultures alive in an inactive
state so that they could be revived and studied later. Would there be a limit as to
how much of that inactive culture could be used, because if a person decided to take
the entire culture and revive it, would that no longer be considered the type? Or
do they have to take a sample of the revived culture and then refreeze it, for example,
and then would that be considered the same type?
Demoulin noted that there had been extensive discussion on the problem of a culture
as type during preceding Congresses and he did not think it was appropriate at the
end of this one to reopen the general discussion. He felt this was a minor amendment
that may be considered slightly superfluous but did no harm. His opinion was that
the amendment should be accepted and the general discussion should stop, despite it
being certainly very important, and he felt it was not the intention of the proposer
to open it again.
Kirk felt there was ambiguity here as to what were the consequences of this live culture
when it died. He interpreted the current Code that however many bits of the type were
preserved in the metabolically inactive way, when one was revived and it became living,
it was no longer the type because the Code specifically said the type could not be
living.
Herendeen called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Knapp moved to a vote on the addition of the words “to remain alive in that inactive
state” to Art. 8.4. She reported that the count was 46 for and 33 against, which did
not reach the 60% supermajority rule for inclusion in the Code, and so deemed that
the proposal was rejected.
Prud’homme van Reine called for a card vote. [Audience groaned.] He apologized.
McNeill asked if his Committee really thought it was that important.
Prud’homme van Reine confirmed it was.
Knapp reported that the results of the card vote, to include the phrase “to remain
alive in that inactive state”, was 290 “yes” and 145 “no”, i.e. 66.67% “yes”, so the
proposal to include that phrase had been passed.
Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal was accepted on a card vote (290: 145; 66.7%).
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Recommendation 8A
Prop. A (38: 52: 18: 1).
McNeill explained that Rec. 8A Prop. A sought to redefine the definition of protologue,
so as to make explicit that material that was not effectively published was excluded.
That would include electronic supplements to hardcopy papers. He added that it received
somewhat negative responses, 38 in favour and 52 against.
Van Rijckevorsel confirmed that the proposal was intended to explicitly exclude electronically
published material. He wondered if perhaps a more explicit wording would be more popular,
something to the effect that prior to a certain date electronic supplements were not
part of the protologue.
Barrie was concerned that putting “effectively published” was going to threaten things
like uncited illustrations used for type material and uncited syntypes. Introducing
this concept “as far as effectively published” could cause problems for the typification
of some names.
Redhead agreed with Barrie in worrying about effective publication of these illustrations
when he considered that in the past illustrations that had been deposited in herbaria
but were not effectively published may have been cited and could be used as types.
McNeill did not think that would be affected by the proposal because it was the citation
of the illustration or the citation of the herbarium specimen in the protologue.
Greuter noted that in Art. 9, the type was given as an element selected from the original
material. The type could be an unpublished illustration so he argued that the proposal
would introduce conflict between definition of a type and definition of original material
if it were passed.
McNeill felt that this was the point that Barrie raised.
Redhead remained worried about the issue, despite the comments from the front.
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (8: 82: 14: 2) was ruled as rejected.
Prop. C (8: 45: 52: 0) was ruled as rejected as it was an editorial change related
to Art. 32 Prop. I, which was rejected.
Prop. D (34: 44: 30: 0).
McNeill outlined that Prop. D recommended greater precision in the designation of
type.
Barrie relayed comments from the collections manager at the Field Museum Herbarium,
Christine Niezgoda, on the proposal: many herbaria do not have barcodes or accession
numbers on their specimens, so suggesting putting these on may be a little bit too
restrictive.
Alvarado commented that sometimes a description was written while the material being
described had not yet been processed and the numbers of the specimen had not yet been
assigned. He felt that it was a bit of a problem adding an accession number before
or at the time of description because sometimes herbaria work very slowly.
Thiele responded by mentioning the experience that many herbaria probably shared where
an unmounted specimen was not yet processed into the collection but used as type material.
He felt this was a very dangerous thing to do as there were many occasions where the
material subsequently got lost.
Knapp felt that this was a very interesting point but that it was not germane to the
proposal.
Kellermann wondered whether this had to be in the Code or whether it was more a matter
of a best practice of how to publish taxa and how to best write descriptions and cite
material.
Kirk interjected that that was what the Recommendations were for.
Knapp forbade talking without the microphone and threatened to send Kirk into the
time-out corner.
Prop. D was rejected.
Recommendation 8B
Prop. A (88: 0: 11: 7).
McNeill introduced Rec. 8B Prop. A, a proposal regarding a culture being designated
as a type. He noted that cultures that were permanently preserved were permitted to
be designated as types and the Recommendation was that the status of the culture should
be indicated, including the phrase “permanently preserved in a metabolically inactive
state” or an equivalent. He added that the proposal affected algae and fungi and received
substantial support in the mail vote with no negative votes at all and was supported
both by the Committee for
Algae
and the Committee for
Fungi
by about 80% majorities in favour in both cases.
Prud’homme van Reine was in favour of this Recommendation but the Committee for
Algae
proposed an amendment to replace “designated” with “intended to serve” and to add
“under Art. 8.4” after “as a type”. The reason given was that taxonomists may forget
to write down that material was permanently preserved in a metabolically inactive
state or they may do it incorrectly so the material was not really metabolically inactive
despite intending it to be type material. The amendment would clearly add to the Recommendation
that the type was according to Art. 8.4 and therefore “must be preserved permanently
and may not be living plants or cultures. However, cultures of fungi…”
Buck spoke strongly against the amendment arguing that intent is not the same as designation,
and it may not even have been mentioned in the publication. He recommended overwhelmingly
turning down this Recommendation because it was not possible to know what somebody
intended to do if they did not publish it.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Prud’homme van Reine relayed a comment from Robert Anderson, a member of the Nomenclature
Committee for
Algae
, who had been involved for 15 years in the study of algal cultures in the Provasoli-Guillard
National Center of Culture of Marine Phytoplankton, a well-known institute in the
United States of America, that the phrase “metabolically inactive state” was not precise.
Knapp highlighted that the proposal said “or equivalent”.
Prud’homme van Reine continued that he [Robert Anderson] assumed that the phrase intended
that a metabolic inactive culture could be made metabolically active again. He reported
that this was only possible by cryopreservation and lyophilization, and the latter
was not used for algae because there was incredible loss of viability of 5 to 20%
per year. However, cryopreservation only worked at temperatures below the glass transformation
temperature, which was approximately minus 135 degrees centigrade. At temperatures
warmer than minus 135 degrees centigrade ice crystals continued to expand and contract,
cutting up cellular material including DNA. If the intent of Art. 8.4 was that organisms
remain alive in an inactive state then it should say this, and thus he returned to
his earlier proposal…
McNeill pointed out that this was a totally new proposal that had nothing to do with
the proposal under discussion, except that both apply to “permanently preserved”.
He suggested it should be deferred to the end of the sessions with other business
and Prud’homme van Reine concurred.
[The discussion can be found after Art. 8 Prop. C.]
Prop. A was accepted.
Article 9
Prop. A (25: 38: 43: 0).
McNeill explained that Art. 9 had a series of proposals, Prop. A to D, designed to
address what was perceived as a conflict between Art. 9.1 and 9.2. The proposals received
mixed support, all were to a degree negative, some very substantially so.
Prado spoke on behalf of the proposers, who had detected a conflict between Art. 9.1
and 9.2, because Art. 9.1 mentioned the material “used by the author, or designated
by the author” as a holotype, whereas in Art. 9.2 this phrase disappeared and the
Article mentioned only a holotype being “indicated”. The intention was to make the
two Articles parallel. He did not feel that the suggestion would change the meaning
or definition of the holotype.
McNeill clarified that Prop. C particularly addressed that issue, as opposed to Prop.
A and B, which were more generally editorial. Regarding Prop. C, the issue seemed
to be how broad the word “indication” was considered to be. A holotype was defined
as a specimen, the one specimen used or designated by the original author. He found
it hard to see how to know that a specimen was a type if there was no such indication.
Buck contributed some hearsay evidence that, after having talked to Moran [senior
author of the proposal] about the issue, when it came to an institutional decision
about how to vote, he himself voted against these. [Laughter].
Gereau agreed with the Rapporteur-général that Prop. A and B attempted somewhat clumsily
to do the same thing that Prop. C actually accomplished. He did not see any further
clarity in Prop. A and found the phrase in the Note “and its duplicates (if any) accepted
as isotypes” particularly unclear in its definition and application. He thought the
consistency brought about by Prop. C was very useful and should be accepted, but that
Prop. A and B should be rejected.
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (11: 30: 65: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (33: 50: 27: 0) was rejected.
Prop. D (4: 33: 67: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. E (80: 20: 4: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 9 Prop. E, which returned to the definition of illustration
discussed earlier on. The proposal addressed the question of whether an illustration
published as part of the protologue was original material. This had been assumed by
many people to be the case, but according to the definition of original material—“those
specimens and illustrations (both unpublished and published [either prior to or together
with the protologue]) upon which it can be shown that the description or diagnosis
validating the name was based”—it was only an illustration that was used by the author
that could be original material. Very often both the description or diagnosis and
the illustration were produced based on the same plants, in which case this definition
would not apply.
Gereau emphasized that he felt this proposal was very dangerous. He felt that illustrations
known not to have been used by the author being candidates for typification was contrary
to all definitions of original material.
McNeill wondered if Prud’homme van Reine wished to comment, as he knew that the Committee
for
Algae
was very upset at any suggestion that illustrations should not be original material.
Prud’homme van Reine did not have a problem with this proposal.
Prop. E was rejected on a card vote (222: 246; 47.4%).
McNeill commented that this meant essentially that the situation still existed where
it was very ambiguous if an illustration associated with the protologue was part of
the original material, unless it was possible to establish that the author used the
illustration, which he pointed out was a rare event.
Prop. F (29: 17: 54: 2) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. G (45: 29: 26: 1) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. H (37: 33: 22: 12).
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 9 Prop. H, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Knapp suggested the proposal could be sent to the Editorial Committee.
Redhead requested clarification whether this was intended to mean just the illustrations,
the specimens that the validating author had and not anything in any earlier synonymy
or cited publications.
Perry clarified that it was only meant to reflect what was already in Art. 7.7, second
sentence.
McNeill suggested it would seem to imply what is actually available to the validating
author or indicated by them. He added that these were names relative to later startingdate
works. The proposal had gone to the Committee for Fossil Plants for their comments
and they supported it.
Demoulin thought it would be very bad if this passed because he felt it was premature
and dangerous as the later starting-point for blue-green algae was not yet decided.
He felt it was important to maintain the link between original author and revalidating
author or sanctioned author in the mycological system.
McNeill responded that it was a Note, so if it did make a change to Art. 7.7, then
the Editorial Committee could clearly modify the wording to make sure it did not depart
from the intent of Art. 7.7. He added that the Committee for
Bryophyta
, the Committee for Fossil Plants and the Committee for
Algae
all voted in favour, respectively 91%, 79% and 87%.
Demoulin was referring to the blue-green algae, not the fossils or the bryophytes.
He felt that the Code should not insist on this definition of original material.
Perry clarified that, as in Art. 9 Note 2, it would only apply to “normal names”,
not names typified under Art. 7.7 or 7.8. The aim was to try to rectify an oversight.
Gereau felt that a “yes” or “no” vote was needed. A “yes” would mean the Editorial
Committee would see it anyway, but he thought clear indication from the Section of
its will on this issue was necessary.
Prop. H was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. I (33: 54: 7: 5), J (31: 48: 10: 7), K (30: 42: 19: 6), L (29: 41: 21: 4) and
M (30: 42: 18: 7) were all withdrawn.
Prop. N (10: 38: 56: 3) was ruled as rejected as it was an editorial change related
to Art. 32 Prop. I, which was rejected.
Prop. O (93: 6: 7: 0) was accepted.
Prop. P (92: 4: 12: 0) was accepted.
Prop. Q (78: 9: 23: 0).
Barrie had a problem with the proposal regarding people who published names with long
lists of specimens where they were explicitly citing some as paratypes and saying
others were not. The proposal would mean that all material would be paratypes.
McNeill agreed that this would mean it was not possible to exclude material.
Barrie was concerned that this may restrict people’s freedom of choice in the way
material could be written up in protologues and descriptions.
McNeill thought that was open to question. The present wording permitted a specimen
to be cited in the protologue that was neither a holotype nor an isotype and that
was not stated to be a paratype, but the Code made it explicit that nevertheless it
was a paratype.
Prop. Q was accepted.
Prop. R (6: 51: 50: 0).
McNeill noted that proposal R was rather misleading, but the Rapporteurs had commented
that the Examples given would be quite useful to be included. That led in the mail
vote to a very substantial vote against and a similar vote to refer it to the Editorial
Committee. The Note would only be accurate if there was no autonymic infraspecific
taxon recognized. Whereas that was quite common in earlier publications, it was much
less so later on and this was not realized by the proposer.
Gereau found the proposal to be exceedingly dangerous and potentially destabilizing
as it was quite contrary to the current understanding of what a syntype was. To say
that all specimens cited under all infraspecific taxa were syntypes of the species
being described was felt to be very bad practice and should be completely rejected.
Veldkamp thought that there was a confusion between taxonomy and nomenclature. It
was clearly against the intention of the original author, who distinguished between
a typical infraspecific taxon and atypical ones. Therefore, the proposal should not
be sent to the Editorial Committee; it should be rejected.
Sennikov found the proposal to be absolutely erroneous because it is always assumed
that it was a typical variety of a species name that was typified and named varieties
that were included under that species name had separate types. Those syntypes that
were included under varieties were part of the original material of those varieties,
not of the typical variety, which was established by valid publication of those named
varieties.
Greuter suggested that all Examples suggested for addition, deletion or amendment,
except voted Examples, be referred systematically to the Editorial Committee, who
were free to use them or not. The Editorial Committee vote was just that the Editorial
Committee should take into account the Examples in the proposal and the comments on
the proposal were negative.
Prop. R was rejected.
Prop. S (6: 37: *63: 0) was ruled as referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. T (49: 20: 37: 0).
Van Rijckevorsel pointed out that this could have been handled editorially and he
had pointed it out before the meeting of the Editorial Committee of the Vienna Congress,
but it had not been not corrected. So he had taken the opportunity to rewrite it,
to do justice to the case.
Prop. T was ruled as referred to the Editorial Committee.
McNeill clarified that the only case where the Section would have to actually vote
something to the Editorial Committee was a voted Example, other than that it was undesirable
to formally vote that something should go to the Editorial Committee because all Examples
were automatically considered by the Committee and they had no obligation to either
include or exclude, unless it pertained to a voted Example.
Prop. U (28: 38: 21: 18) was ruled as rejected as it was a corollary to Art. 8 Prop.
B, which was rejected.
Prop. V (74: 6: 11: 7) and W (73: 6: 13: 7) were withdrawn.
[The discussion preceding the withdrawal of Prop. V is located with the set of proposals
relating to fungi with a pleomorphic life cycle in the Eighth Session on Thursday
afternoon.]
Prop. X (19: 8: 77: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. Y (10: 8: 88: 0) was ruled as referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. Z (12: 85: 10: 0), AA (21: 84: 3: 0), BB (18: 88: 4: 0), CC (17: 86: 6: 0),
DD (15: 92: 6: 0) and EE (7: 104: 3: 0) were all ruled as rejected.
Prop. FF (36: 5: *71: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. FF, which was supported reasonably strongly in the mail vote,
36 to 5, with 71 wanting it to go to the Editorial Committee. It regarded inserting
a new Note, to introduce into the Code the terms isolectotype, isoneotype and isoepitype.
He thought that the reason the terms were not in the Code was because they did not
have any nomenclatural significance. He noted that duplicates of lectotypes, neotypes
or epitypes did not have any status under the Code. If a lectotype was lost, it was
not the isolectotype that replaced it. A new lectotype must be selected from amongst
the original material that was eligible in the usual order. That was the reason they
never appeared in the Code, but he understood that this had created problems for overzealous
editors and others who had not wanted to include the term in publications because
it was not in the Code, although they were perfectly clear and explicit terms and
they appeared in the glossary that Hawksworth had recently produced and in many other
glossaries, but the desire was to include it as a Note to give it some authenticity.
Turland referred to the Rapporteurs’ comments where it was noted that “Prop. FF could
endow the three terms in question with the desired formal status, although it would
not be appropriate to include them in a Note because their application is not already
implicit in the Code. It would be much more suitable to include them as a Recommendation
following Art. 9. An ‘Ed.C.’ vote would be so interpreted”.
Reveal noted that forty-two years ago he had proposed this as a snot-nosed graduate
student and was thoroughly abused in Seattle. He found it a comforting thought to
see that it had come back and was keen to let his colleague defend his actions.
Gandhi had also made the same proposal in the Vienna Congress because there were a
number of editors from different countries, including his own departmental journal
who would contact him as they were uncomfortable using the term just because it was
not in the Code. The proposal was for other people who were doubtful.
McNeill reiterated the Vice-rapporteur’s point that it would make good sense if it
appeared as a Recommendation in the Code that duplicates of these particular categories
of type be so designated. He felt that it did not really represent a Note, because
a Note was something that reflects a rule that was not explicit in the rule itself,
but was implicit in the rule. There was nothing implicit in any of the rules about
what created those terms. On the other hand he felt that, as they were in wide use
and had obvious meaning, they were useful terms. Including them in a Recommendation,
if it would meet the needs of editors and others, would be the best way forward. The
Rapporteurs proposed an amendment that the content of the Note be included as a Recommendation.
[This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Prop. FF was referred to the Editorial Committee as amended.
Prop. GG (4: 98: 8: 0) and HH (18: 82: 8: 0) were both ruled rejected.
Prop. II (12: 15: 78: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Funk moved that the Section adjourn.
Knapp did so and thanked everyone for being brief, to the point and germane. She added
that if anyone had coffee cups that they brought into the hall, could they please
take them out, because if they did not, she and Ladiges would have to stay behind
and do the tidying up and they would be cross!
Third session
Tuesday, 19th July 2011, 09:00–12:30
Knapp welcomed everyone back and expressed pleasure at the number of people who had
returned. She went on to say that later in the week, there would be a discussion about
Art. 59, an Article concerning fungi. As the issues that needed to be discussed were
potentially not that familiar for those who normally dealt with vascular plants, there
were a number of documents available for members of the Section to familiarize themselves
with the arguments and the ideas proposed. Three documents were available: Declaration
on Amsterdam, a Critical Response to the Amsterdam Declaration and a letter of concern
about amending the Botanical Code. They could also be downloaded from www.mycotaxon.com.
Lorelei Norvell was identified as available for further information.
Kellermann requested a half-hour discussion as for
Acacia
because some of the mycology issues were so controversial.
Knapp noted that this had been discussed and was planned for when the issues arose.
Kellermann continued that it was likely that the issues would come up late in the
proceedings and suggested the half an hour be planned for Wednesday, instead of Friday.
Knapp confirmed that the timing would be looked into and that it had already been
agreed with the mycological community that there would be time for discussion. On
another practical matter she noted that the synopsis with the proposal under discussion
would be visible on one screen and the electronic copy of the Code available on another.
Article 9 (continued)
Malécot’s proposal
McNeill explained that although the day before had concluded Art. 9, there was an
additional proposal linked to what had been discussed and Malécot would present it.
Malécot summarized that, the day before, Prop. FF had been accepted as a Recommendation
dealing with isoepitype, isoneotype and so on. This was remaining from the Vienna
Congress, when there were four terms referred to the Editorial Committee to be introduced
into Art. 9 as a Note. These words were the three in Prop. FF and the fourth word
was “paralectotype”. Thus he proposed an amendment to Art. 9 in order to introduce
a new Recommendation that would read: “A paralectotype is a specimen cited in the
protologue that was not subsequently chosen as a lectotype and that is not an isolectotype
nor a paratype. Syntypes not chosen as a lectotype become paralectotypes after lectotypification”.
McNeill requested clarification as to whether Malécot was implying that they would
cease to be syntypes and would now become paralectotypes, so therefore would not be
in the normal sequence for future lectotypification.
Malécot replied that this would be from the time of lectotypification.
McNeill pointed out that the Code specified that if a lectotype was lost or destroyed
then there was a sequence in which material should be selected, and what was suggested
was not part of that sequence. He wanted to know if they would lose their status as
a result of this.
Malécot replied that they would not lose their status.
McNeill was not convinced and suggested that some other proposals would be required
to ensure that they did not lose their status.
Malécot had checked when there was a problem with a lectotype, and concluded that
it did not seem to be a problem.
Knapp asked if there were five people to second the new proposal [for a new Art. 9.6bis].
[There were; the proposal was seconded and supported.]
Redhead was totally confused by what the status would be.
Gandhi encountered such items frequently as part of the International Plant Name Index
project and his understanding was that in the past there was a debate whether to call
the residues paralectotype or lectoparatype. After discussion with his colleagues,
both at Harvard and New York, they believed that whatever was left after selection
of the lectotype should continue to be called syntypes.
Bill Barker hoped that these would remain syntypes, just as a lectotype was a syntype.
He felt that the solution to the problem that had just been raised was to change the
proposed wording to: “a paralectotype is a syntype”. This was also considered useful
instead of “other syntypes” in publications. Having a category to put on a det. slip,
which says “this is a paralectotype” by the person lectotypifying at the time, would
be very useful.
Buck thought “once a syntype, always a syntype”, unless it was raised up. He pointed
out that a paratype was not a real type and that paralectotype, adding the prefix
‘para’ to a real type, was a source of confusion.
Barrie agreed with Bill Barker that this was not a good idea and that adding a new
term was only going to confuse people. He felt this attempted to change the status
of specimens that already had a proper name. He had experience with people trying
to tell him that they had to change their syntypes to paralectotypes now, when the
term did not even exist in the Code. He also pointed out that people had tried to
introduce the term as far back as the ’70s. He thought it was better to leave it out
and keep calling them syntypes. He also made the point that the addition would have
to be an Article because it involved putting a new definition into the Code. It was
proposed as an Article but Malécot had suggested making it a Recommendation, in which
case it would have no force anyway and it would just result in more confusion.
Marhold was not sure that paralectotype was the right term but definitely wanted some
term for what remained from syntypes after lectotypification, as they were no longer
syntypes.
McNeill stated that they were.
Marhold repeated that they were not.
McNeill elaborated that under the Code they were syntypes and remained syntypes and
stressed that this was important from the point of view of how a lectotype was chosen,
should the existing lectotype be lost or destroyed. His concern was that this proposal
would change that sequence and therefore introducing it would require some other alteration
elsewhere although Bill Barker had pointed out a way in which this could be obviated.
Marhold did not feel that this interpretation was unanimous because he had encountered
several opinions, as editor of a journal, that if a lectotype had been chosen, there
were no longer syntypes in the true sense.
Sennikov found paralectotype to be a confusing term, for two reasons. First, as had
been pointed out already, he felt that “para” belonged to quite a low level of type;
a paratype was not a real type. Second, several people he knew believed that after
lectotypification the other syntypes lost their value so much that they could even
be thrown away without any danger to future nomenclature, because they were deemed
to have lost their importance at the moment of lectotypification. He argued that lectotypifications
can be overturned very easily, should some mistake be found, and such mistakes were
not that rare. For example it may be found that the original material was heterogeneous
and so the syntype that was selected as lectotype was not the best choice. He felt
that, in principle, lectotypifications could be subject to revision and the suggested
new terminology may exacerbate this erroneous practice.
Janssen requested that the relevant text in the Code be shown as there seemed to be
confusion about what happened to the remaining syntypes after lectotypification. [Art.
9.4 was displayed.]
McNeill confirmed that there was no suggestion that a syntype ceased to be a syntype
because of some other action.
Lendemer called the question.
Knapp asked the Section to vote on whether or not to go to a vote. [There was a sufficient
majority in favour of voting.]
Malécot’s proposal was rejected.
Knapp had forgotten to mention a proposal that the Bureau wanted to put to the Section
to automatically refer to the Editorial Committee, without discussion, any proposal
that dealt entirely with an Example, unless there was any objection to the motion.
Redhead suggested flagging voted Examples so they did not go to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp corrected the proposal to all Examples that were not voted Examples.
Talent queried what would happen when there were two proposals, one of which was really
an Example: could the Example be discussed with the paired proposal?
Knapp clarified that this would only apply to proposals that were solely to do with
Examples.
[The motion was approved.]
Recommendation 9A
Prop. A (86: 12: 13: 0).
McNeill introduced the first proposal by Prado and Moran under Rec. 9A, which addressed
a Recommendation that was a hangover from pre-Tokyo Codes. It should have been deleted
editorially at St Louis, but the authors had suggested a constructive change to the
Recommendation, which received very positive support in the mail vote, 86 to 12. It
was essentially saying that where no specimen was designated as type but a gathering
was cited, then it was recommended that the specimen housed in the institution where
the author was known to have worked be selected as the lectotype, unless there was
some evidence that other material was primarily used.
Buck suggested that the Editorial Committee should deal with “housed in the institution
where the author is known to have worked” as these herbaria are often in different
institutions, not where the author actually worked but where the herbarium ended up.
McNeill took the point.
Bill Barker had had the experience where syntypes that were in other institutions
were more representative of the protologue and added that some characters may not
be represented in the specimen at the home institution. He felt that where the author
worked was just one of the considerations, but that other considerations may take
priority. He was against the Recommendation as worded.
Gandhi noted that Rec. 9A seemed to be applicable to names published prior to 1990.
From 1990 a name would be invalid unless the institution housing the holotype was
designated as cited.
McNeill agreed that was correct, but thought the first phrase of the Recommendation
made that clear, because it was not possible to simply cite a single gathering but
no specimen after 1990.
Demoulin had voted against the proposal [in the mail vote] and would keep voting against
it because there were two points that he felt were not satisfactorily dealt with.
First, he did not see why it could not be a holotype and had to be a lectotype. He
gave a definite example of a potential problem that he felt was more important: the
author whose types were in different institutions. He had a paper in press in Flora
Malesiana, a report of a past symposium, where he had studied the typification of
Corner’s polypores and clearly shown that some of the collections of holotypes were
in Edinburgh, as many people had assumed, but several other holotypes, not lectotypes,
were in Singapore. It was not always easy to find out what Corner has done when his
herbarium was split between Europe and Singapore. He would prefer to have the whole
thing deleted.
McNeill commented that if they were indeed holotypes, this would not be applicable
and they would not just be a gathering with no institution specified. They would have
to be only a unicate, or else with an institution specified, or they would not be
a holotype.
Wiersema suggested that if the changes were not accepted, then the situation would
return to what it had been.
McNeill refuted this, as the clause would be deleted editorially because it was contrary
to the Code and the proposal was a suggestion to take what was there and make it meaningful.
He assured Wiersema and the Section that if the proposal was defeated, then the Editorial
Committee would simply drop it as a Recommendation as it would no longer be relevant.
Knapp reiterated that the vote would be to change the wording, amending the text of
Rec. 9A.4: a “yes” vote would change the text, a “no” vote would mean that the Recommendation
was deleted from the Code.
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (47: 55: 10: 0).
McNeill moved on to Rec. 9A Prop. B, which, along with the following proposal, was
providing and recommending more precise bibliographic information on type selection.
The Rapporteurs had commented that those who feel this is appropriate as a Recommendation
in the Code can support it. If you think it has too much detail, you will oppose it.
Gereau felt that the level of specificity in Recommendations was really trying to
do the work of editors and authors for them. He encouraged leaving the Code as a functioning
document that did not spell out every element of good practice, and assumed that editors
could hold authors’ feet to the fire and make these things happen.
Gandhi recounted a recent situation when an author published a new species designating
a holotype without having seen it but clearly noting that it had not been seen, although
the isotypes had. He felt that even though this proposal was quite rigorous, he was
not commenting that it should be accepted, but the concept seemed to be good.
Prop. B was rejected.
Prop. C (59: 49: 7: 0) was rejected.
Prop. D (16: 88: 11: 0) was ruled as rejected.
Recommendation 9C (new)
Prop. A (39: 46: 7: 10) was withdrawn.
Article 10
Prop. A (12: 22: *72: 0).
McNeill introduced the first proposal under Art. 10, to which the Rapporteurs had
made the comment that it would be perfectly logical to go further than the proposal.
The proposal was to delete the second part of clause (a) in Art. 10.5 but, as the
Rapporteurs had pointed out, the whole clause was redundant except in a case where
a type of a name of a genus or a subdivision of a genus was “otherwise chosen” [under
Art. 10.2]. He elaborated that if no species name was included in the protologue,
then it was impossible for an element [a type] to be in conflict with the protologue,
because the only elements eligible as types are those that are included in the protologue.
He went on that, in the case where a type was “otherwise chosen”, e.g. a specimen
that was the type of a species name, as opposed to a type of a species name that was
included in the protologue, then if this was in conflict with the description it must
be superseded, and he mentioned that this was already in the Code [in Art. 10.2].
The Rapporteurs had suggested that an Editorial Committee vote would be interpreted
as favouring deletion of the whole of the clause, and the result of the mail vote
on this particular proposal was 12 in favour, 22 against and 72 in favour of referring
to the Editorial Committee. He concluded that the mail vote had therefore taken the
view that the clause might be entirely deleted.
Greuter thought that the comments of the Rapporteurs were not quite accurate because
Art. 10 dealt with generic names, and in generic names the elements available as types
were the names cited in the protologue. He pointed out that these names could be misapplied
by the original author and gave the example of a very famous case,
Pseudolarix
, where designating a type under Art. 10 did not apply because there was only a single
binomial in the protologue. In that case, he argued that there was no choice but to
accept the binomial and its type, even if contrary to the explicit intent [of the
author?] and to the whole remainder of the protologue. He went on that if there were
several species mentioned by binomial when a new generic name was validated, and one
of them was blatantly misapplied and did not fit the generic concept in all evidence
and happened to be chosen as a lectotype, in those cases, the present provision made
sense.
McNeill requested clarification as to whether that was a vote against the proposal
or against the Rapporteurs’ editorial extension, or both.
Greuter clarified that it was against the Rapporteurs’ comments.
McNeill disputed the interpretation because he felt that if a person cited a name,
the fact that he may have misapplied the name did not mean he had not cited it, therefore
it was indeed part of the protologue, so he disagreed with the former Rapporteur [Greuter],
but took his point that it was arguable. He suggested that the Section may rather
just vote for the proposal and not the extension the Rapporteurs had proposed. He
proposed a vote first on the Rapporteurs amendment to the proposal [This was seconded
and supported by four others.] The amendment was to delete the whole of clause (a)
in Art. 10.5.
Knapp clarified that this meant deleting “it can be shown that it is in serious conflict
with the protologue and another element is available which is not in conflict with
the protologue”.
[ The amendment was rejected.]
Knapp moved to a vote on the original Prop. A, as published in the synopsis, which
was to delete the second part of clause (a) in Art. 10.5: “and another element is
available which is not in conflict with the protologue”. [A show of cards was called
for after the initial vote.] The Vicerapporteur pointed out that, because the previous
two times when there had been a show of cards and subsequently a card vote, the result
of the latter had been quite different to what was seen with the show of cards, and
so he proposed to go to a card vote. [The Section voted to do so.]
Prop. A was accepted on a card vote [290: 147; 66.7% in favour.]
Prop. B (3: 77: 1: 24).
McNeill pointed out that the next proposal, Art. 10 Prop. B, was a proposal for a
voted Example, which would be discussed. The Rapporteurs had cautioned that it could
be very nomenclaturally disruptive, were it to be accepted. The mail vote, to some
extent, reflected that, in the sense that there were only three in favour, and in
fact there was a 77% “no” vote. However, he felt that it was more complicated because
there was a genuine problem that had led to the proposal: to know exactly what works
were covered by the provision of the existing voted Example in Art. 10, dealing with
largely automatic methods of selection of a type.
The Rapporteurs had suggested that if the proposal was not acceptable to the Section,
as appeared unlikely given the mail vote, then it would be useful to set up a Special
Committee to try to clarify this by means of appropriate lists, or whatever way the
Committee chose. He suggested the Section consider the proposal first and, if it passed,
that was the end of the matter but, if it was defeated, there would be an additional
proposal to consider whether or not to appoint a Special Committee.
Gandhi elaborated a little on the proposal by saying that many generic names were
typified by Britton and Brown in their 1913 work [Manual of the flora of the northern
States and Canada, ed. 3] and that was what was listed in ING [Index Nominum Genericorum:
http://botany.si.edu/ing/]. Unless people read the Code very carefully, they would
take for granted that whatever was listed in ING displayed the correct type species
information. He went on that within that 1913 work it was clearly stated that the
authors were following the American Code of Botanical Nomenclature, which was purely
mechanical as far as the type species designation was concerned. He reported that
Britton did not always say anything about what kind of nomenclature he was practising
and, although everyone knew Britton was a promoter of the American Code, in a given
work he might not have cited such a statement. In the absence of citation of such
a statement, should we have to take it for granted that Britton was following the
American Code or was it left to our discretion? Gandhi also mentioned that it was
problematic whether what was cited in ING had to be followed or not. His belief was
that, as long as Britton did not state that he was following the “American Code”,
whatever typification he made was acceptable. He and Reveal had had extensive discussions
with both McNeill and Greuter to come up with some solution, whether to reject all
the typifications by Britton, or use some exceptions.
McNeill felt that that was a very cogent argument for a Special Committee.
Barrie thought that the proposal identified a real problem but did not think it would
solve it. He was in favour of having a Special Committee, especially if it was going
to come up with specific works that could be listed, and then the issue would be removed
from the Code, so that the lists could be ruled as mechanical whether or not they
actually were, and it would solve the confusion. He felt it was a problem that ING
accepted Britton and Brown typifications as they ended up in TROPICOS, so a lot of
people looked at them as being acceptable when actually, under the Code, later typifications
were correct.
Reveal [one of the proposers] urged the Section to vote “no” on the proposal and then
immediately vote for a Special Committee. He called the question. [There was a sufficient
majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. B was rejected and a new Special Committee was established to deal with the
issue [the Special Committee on Publications Using a Largely Mechanical Method of
Selection of Types (Art. 10.5) (especially under the American Code)].
Prop. C (34: 48: 7: 11) was withdrawn.
Article 11
Prop. A (70: 8: 32: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
[The following discussion of a new proposal by Herendeen on Art. 11.8 took place during
the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Herendeen’s proposal
McNeill introduced a new proposal by Herendeen on Art. 11.8: “Delete in Art. 11.8
all reference to subfossil and delete ‘subfossil’ from the Glossary”.
Herendeen added that it was a simple housekeeping matter to simplify the Code as “subfossil”
had no nomenclatural purpose and he argued that mention of it in the Code was not
useful. The suggestion was to get rid of it and simplify the text. [The proposal was
seconded and supported by three others.]
McNeill interpreted this as there being no doubt in the minds of scientists working
on Pleistocene material that they were dealing with a fossil. He asked if it was perfectly
clear when a thing was a fossil and when it was not a fossil.
Herendeen confirmed that it was.
Knapp moved to a vote on deleting the word “subfossil” from Art. 11.8 and the Glossary.
As the “ayes had it” she concluded that there were no longer any subfossils. [Laughter.]
Herendeen’s proposal was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Article 13
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 13, took place during the Seventh Session
on Thursday morning with discussion on Art. 45.]
Prop. A (83: 16: 5: 3).
McNeill introduced Art. 13 Prop. A, which dealt with the groups that fall under the
Code, making it explicit in discussion of startingpoint dates. He suggested that the
only issue for debate was whether it was necessary.
Dorr felt it would be better to state “names of
Microsporidia
”, rather than turn
Microsporidia
into an adjective.
Knapp suggested that could be dealt with editorially and felt it was a good suggestion.
Buck wondered if the Code had any authority to tell those who worked on
Microsporidia
what to do considering that the group was now excluded from the Code.
Knapp considered that the proposal was being helpful, and being helpful was always
nice.
Barrie pointed out that, since the Preamble had been changed, this would be a Note.
McNeill felt perhaps a footnote might be the best way to deal with it in an Article
regarding the starting points of groups falling under the Code, but that would be
decided editorially.
Alvarado thought it would be fine to add the words “Since 1 January 2013 microsporidian
names are governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature”, because
before that time they were still governed by this Code, at least since the Vienna
Congress, so if that was not added he wondered if it would mean that all the names
that had been published in the six years under this Code would be invalidated.
McNeill indicated they would not.
Knapp clarified that the vote was on Art. 13 Prop. A to add at the end of Art. 13.1(d)
the following sentence: “Names of
Microsporidia
are governed by the ICZN (see Pre. 7)” as a Note or a footnote.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. B (43: 20: 13: 24).
McNeill introduced a proposal from Silva to eliminate the later starting-point dates
for blue-green algae,
Cyanobacteria
, cyanoprokaryotes. The proposal had received quite respectable support in the mail
vote: 43 in favour; 20 against; 13 that it go to the Editorial Committee, which was
deemed a little difficult by him; and 24 that it go to a Special Committee. However,
he reported that it had also been considered by the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
, which was much less enthusiastic and in fact voted three in favour and nine against
the extension, 60% “no”. The Rapporteurs’ comments had summarized what the proposal
was: it pertained to a long-standing issue and the arguments were presented that any
later starting-point dates created problems because an arbitrary line was being placed
across a period in which binomial nomenclature was used, whereas in the case of starting
with Linnaeus, there had been no previous binomial nomenclature. He reported that
a second problem in this particular case was that the startingpoint work included
a large number of names that were not validly published, on the grounds that they
were not accepted by the author in the original work, and it was very hard to know
when they were later published. He suggested that that was presumably why there was
good support from the mail vote but very little support amongst the specialists and
the Committee for
Algae
.
Prud’homme van Reine spoke on behalf of the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
, which was against the proposal despite it being proposed by its chairman. He noted
that there was supposed to be a Special Committee on the harmonization of cyanophyte
nomenclature, which had encountered delays. The formation of the Special Committee
was very slow, but now a list of suggested members existed and that was in report
no. 10 of the Committee for
Algae
in February 2011. He suggested it would be better to wait another six years until
there was agreement with the prokaryote people.
Barrie provided a little background to what Prud’homme van Reine had said. In Vienna
there was a proposal to have a Special Committee look at reconciling this issue along
with some of the bacteriologists, but the problem was that no one signed up for it
in Vienna, so the Committee was never formed. Prud’homme van Reine sent him a list
later on but the Committee still ended up never being formed, so what was needed was
to reform the Special Committee, which already had members set up to be enlisted.
He suggested letting them do their work so that they could report again to the next
Congress.
McNeill thanked Barrie for mentioning that, because he was just going to raise that
next. That Committee was to report to the Melbourne Congress; the Committee automatically
ceased to exist after the Melbourne Congress, so it would be necessary to appoint
a new Special Committee on this topic, as was clearly desirable.
Demoulin was also chairman of a committee [the Committee for
Fungi
], and was not always in agreement with the majority of the Committee, and he sympathized
with Silva, who had given great attention to this problem, which he knew very well.
His experience was with the situation in the fungi, but half of his life was devoted
to algae and mostly blue-greens,
Cyanobacteria
. He hoped that the system of later starting points that he felt was impossible to
work with would be abandoned where possible. He suggested that Silva had already acted
as if there were no later starting points, giving his work for the Indian Ocean as
an example of his use of 1753 as the starting point.
Redhead noted that there was some overlap with the mycological literature for these
groups, for some of the names for things that were tremellaceous. He supported the
proposal.
McNeill did not think this would affect the names, because the starting point would
be determined not by the work it was in but by the identity of the type, so it would
have a 1753 starting point, even if it was in one of those works.
Knapp moved to a vote on eliminating later starting points for the cyanoprokaryotes.
Prop. B was rejected.
McNeill explained that the next vote would be to reestablish the Special Committee
that failed to report to this Congress, for good reasons as described, to deal with
the harmonization of the nomenclature of
Cyanobacteria
or blue-green algae.
Redhead requested a card vote, seeing as so few people voted.
McNeill noted that it was very clearly defeated nearly two to one and could not see
any basis for the proposal being successful, he did not expect a big bias in the institutional
votes but was willing to go to a card vote if Redhead insisted.
Bill Barker explained that the reason he did not vote was because it was being moved
to a Special Committee. He thought he could leave it to people who knew more about
it, and then it would be resolved if it was rejected by people who knew.
Knapp proposed a vote on establishing a Special Committee on this so that the Section
would be sure that the issue had been moved to the people who knew.
The motion was seconded and a new Special Committee was established [the Special Committee
on Harmonization of Nomenclature of
Cyanophyta
/
Cyanobacteria
].
Knapp hoped that people would sign up this time.
Prop. C (18: 81: 5: 6) was withdrawn.
Article 14
Prop. A (79: 21: 7: 1).
McNeill introduced Art. 14 Prop. A, which was seeking to resolve what had been a matter
that many had overlooked, that the Code permitted the conservation of names only at
the ranks of family, genus and species. It did not permit conservation of names at
infraspecific level, or of a subdivision of a genus. Consequently, if a generic name
was proposed for conservation with a type different from what would be the type under
the other provisions of the Code, and that generic name was based on the name of a
subdivision of a genus, then automatically the typification was broken, because the
type of the name of the subdivision of the genus must remain what it was under the
Code. Changing that would be tantamount to conserving a subgeneric name or a sectional
name. The proposal was seeking to overcome this difficulty so that such basionyms
could be treated essentially as conserved, whereas the broader issue of conserving
names of all ranks had generally not received much support at previous Sections. The
mail vote was quite positive: 79 in favour, 21 against.
Wiersema added that there were cases like this with the conserved generic names in
App. III and he knew of at least one case in the species name conservations. He felt
that the proposal was needed because there was ambiguity about how to interpret the
types of the basionyms in these cases, whether they would be the same as the conserved
type or not. He was strongly in favour of the proposal.
Gereau felt that the Section really needed to take a hard look at the whole philosophical
direction the Code was going and not just this particular adjustment. He asked whether
it was desirable that the Code was a set of basic principles from which any intelligent
person who cared to master it was able to apply the rules or a body of special legislation
on individual cases, so that the Code continued to grow in length and complexity.
He argued that opening the door to conservation at ranks other than of genus and species
was an undesirable move in the latter direction and should be roundly defeated.
Sennikov disagreed, saying that it was not a bad door to open the way to conserve
names of infraspecific ranks, for example, or sectional ranks. He felt that his was
the way to legally retain the original material and original types of conserved names
in cases when they were originally published at ranks different to those allowed for
conservation. He suggested taking this case as an exception and making a rule that
would allow retaining the original material and the history of those names already
in conserved entries in the Code.
Alvarado noted that sometimes genera were quite subjective and from an evolutionary
point of view the point at which a clade was named as a genus could be a little bit
arbitrary.
Knapp pointed out that this was a point about science rather than the current proposal.
Alvarado continued, claiming to be talking about the proposal as well, because sometimes
what was called a subdivision of a genus would, in another group of organisms, be
a genus itself. His point was that he thought that subdivisions should have the same
right to be conserved as genera.
McNeill clarified that the Code did not provide for that and there was no proposal
at the moment to do so. He also encouraged speakers to address whether the proposal
was one that was a step in what they would consider the right direction or not.
Hawksworth wondered whether it was time to reconsider whether this should apply at
all ranks or at least family and below, because there were certainly going to be cases,
for example
Aspergillus
, where the community would definitely want to conserve subgeneric names.
McNeill did not consider that that would be an amendment to this proposal, as it would
be much too extreme to be treated as an amendment. He pointed out that Hawksworth
was free to make a proposal later in the sessions to be dealt with in other business.
Hawksworth thought it would be good to get a general feeling of whether people would
welcome opening that up further.
Knapp suggested that the vote on the proposal in question may show the general feeling.
Hawksworth disagreed as he felt that was a different problem.
McNeill preferred to first consider the proposal and, if the Chair was agreeable,
then have a quick show of hands on the broader issue afterwards, which may provide
guidance as to whether it was worth preparing a proposal.
Hawksworth did not want to waste the Section’s time but thought it was something worth
revisiting.
Wiersema wanted to underscore that the proposal would not “open the door”. It had
been pointed out that perhaps some people wanted that door opened, but this was not
opening the door to conservation at infraspecific or infrageneric ranks. It would
still only be possible to conserve at species rank, or generic rank with this provision,
it just resolved some of the typification ambiguity when that was done.
Knapp thanked him for the clarification.
Van Rijckevorsel wanted to point out that there already were conserved names at other
ranks, namely in Art. 14.10, which said “A conserved name, with any corresponding
autonym, is conserved against all earlier homonyms”. So he felt there was a precedent,
the rule was that there were only listings at the primary ranks but conserved names
at other ranks already existed.
McNeill requested clarification as he did not understand what was meant, as a homonym
would necessarily be at the same rank.
Barrie thought that the argument was that the autonym itself was also conserved, along
with the conserved name, although he was not sure that he read it that way.
McNeill apologized as he had misheard homonym and not autonym. He felt it was an interesting
point but was not sure that it was immediately relevant to the proposal.
Knapp reiterated that Art. 14 Prop. A was to add a new penultimate sentence to Art.
14.1 to solve the problem that McNeill had been discussing.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (88: 11: 11: 0).
McNeill explained that Prop. B was also making clear something that most people had
assumed but was not spelled out in the Code, and that was that “The listed type and
the spelling of a conserved name may not be changed except by the procedure outlined
in Art. 14.12”. He elaborated that meant that both the orthography and the type were
already indicated as being conserved ipso facto, even if not being explicitly conserved.
Sometimes a name was conserved with a conserved type explicitly, in other cases the
name was conserved for other reasons and the type may be the type that would be correct
under the Code. But the Code made clear that that listed type was ipso facto conserved
by the very conservation process. This was a proposal to clarify that this also applied
to the spelling of the names, something that most had assumed. The mail vote was positive:
88 for and 11 against.
Demoulin for once did not agree with the Rapporteur, because he felt that, had this
provision existed 30 years ago, it would have been impossible to implement the change
in starting point in fungi that was made at the Sydney Congress. He thought some flexibility
should be retained in editing the list of conserved names, because when there was
a change in the Code, where new evidence was discovered, it should be possible to
correct an entry, not to reverse an explicit decision but for many, many things with
inherited entries that may sometimes need to be adjusted or corrected. After the Sydney
Congress, as the responsible person in the Editorial Committee for the conserved names
of fungi, he worked hard to get the list of conserved names in agreement with the
new rules, of course with the control of the Committee for
Fungi
. All the proposed additions were submitted to the Committee. He suggested that if
they had had to use this very precise and strict rule, they would have had to publish
it in Taxon and wait maybe two, three years before all the changes would have been
discussed in Committee.
Greuter agreed and also supported what was being proposed, in principle. He moved
an amendment to add the words “except in the case of correctable errors”, with perhaps
a cross-reference to Art. 60. What prompted him to do that was that in many cases,
such as had happened in the past and he felt would happen again, the rules in Art.
60 were modified. It could happen, for instance, that some Congress, however ill-advised,
decided to eliminate the hyphen. Proposals would then have to be made to modify the
entries in App. III or IV to take away all the hyphens that had been taken away by
a former vote on Art. 60 if this was unamended. He reported that there had been cases
in which there had been a misprint in App. III and the Code had been approved by the
following Nomenclature Section as a whole so the misprint became the conserved name
and, unless there was the possibility to correct these things, a proposal would have
been necessary to correct that misprint. [The amendment was seconded.]
Reveal gave the example of one instance in App. IIB, where there was a mistake made
in the editing so that the same place of publication was given for two entirely different
names and it was simply an entry error. This was known and had been corrected and
he argued that it had to be possible to correct editorial errors.
McNeill confirmed that was perfectly correct, but that this particular proposal would
not cover it. It would cover the issue of the misspelling, and there was at least
one name in the Vienna Code that was misspelled that went back a little before the
Vienna Code and had now been corrected. He agreed that it would not apply to the type
of case that was described because that was not the spelling of the name.
Reveal wanted to know how a simple error that was inadvertently made could be corrected
if there was no provision in this that allowed corrections of an editorial error.
Knapp reminded the Section that it was the amendment to add the phrase “except in
the case of correctable errors” under discussion.
Wiersema was not sure that a reference to Art. 60 was desirable, because there were
other correctable errors that might come into play if the gender was changed. If the
gender of a generic name was conserved and the ending of the species epithet that
might be the type had to be corrected, this would need to be possible.
Knapp asked if there was a friendly amendment to Werner’s amendment.
Wiersema suggested taking out the reference to Art. 60. [The friendly amendment to
the amendment was accepted by the proposer Greuter]
[The amendment was accepted as amended.]
Wiersema just wanted to confirm that by deleting Art. 60, an inadvertent typographical
error would be covered by correctable error.
Knapp confirmed that it would.
Prop. B was accepted as amended.
Knapp asked for a straw poll for Hawksworth as an indication of whether he should
spend any time working on his suggestion to extend the provision for conservation
and rejection to all ranks. She reported that there were slightly more against than
in favour and suggested that Hawksworth could do what he wanted. [Laughter.] She asked
those people who wanted Van Rijckevorsel’s printout of the various proposals for
Acacia
to raise their hands to receive a copy and when they ran out added that more copies
would be made in the next break.
Prop. C (74: 2: 15: 10) was withdrawn.
Prop. D (63: 16: 26: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 14 Prop. D addressing the names in App. IIB, which differed
from the other conserved names, as it was the list of conserved names of spermatophyte
families that were conserved not against any specific name but were a list of conserved
names. This was a proposal that not only should the names be conserved but also the
authorship and place of publication; always assuming that they were validly published
there. This was long thought to be the case and indeed there was provision in the
Code for it, but the footnote protecting that was deleted at St Louis [Tokyo Code
Art. 14 Note 1 footnote], and this had meant that a great deal of work had had to
be done on names that were thought fixed and established. It seemed to him that if
names were conserved and if they were in fact validly published, it should not be
necessary to continually change the authorship and place of publication by looking
at obscure late 18th Century works. The proposal posited that there should also be
preservation of the place of publication and the authorship in addition to the conservation
of the name and type, implicit in the family name. This meant an earlier isonym would
not displace the name as listed in App. IIB.
Turland added a few figures after the introduction to the proposal. Prior to the St
Louis Congress the authors and places of publication of the names on App. IIB were
protected by a footnote in Art. 14, which gave temporary protection but with no end
date to that protection. That footnote was deleted at the St Louis Congress and consequently
the names were subject to being corrected if earlier isonyms were found. Of the 466
conserved names on App. IIB, something like 40% were potentially published earlier,
and sometimes by different authors to what was stated in the Appendix.
He and Barrie, as a subset of the St Louis Code Editorial Committee, extensively reviewed
these suggested earlier isonyms to see whether they were indeed validly published
and whether they were ranked as families. Consequently the result was that 102 entries,
about 25% of the entries in App. IIB, were changed, so the names remained the same
and the types of the names remained the same, but the authors and places of publication
and dates of publications changed.
At the Vienna Congress there was a proposal to reintroduce the 1789 startingpoint
date for suprageneric names that had been in effect until the St Louis Congress, which
meant that some of the names that were pre-1789 in App. IIB in the St Louis Code had
to be changed to the first available validation after 1789. That was usually the actual
starting-point work, Jussieu’s Genera Plantarum of 1789, so 35 names that were attributed
to Adanson, for example, in the St Louis Code App. IIB were changed, mostly to Jussieu.
In the intervening six years between the St Louis Congress and the Vienna Congress
more and more suggested earlier isonyms also came to light. These were checked thoroughly
by the Editorial Committee again, and also by the then Special Committee on Suprageneric
Names. This resulted in a further 70 entries being changed in App. IIB. This has led
to tremendous instability between the Tokyo Code, the St Louis Code, and finally the
Vienna Code in the names in App. IIB.
In practical terms this meant that the names still had the same types so their application
was not affected. The only major difference really in a few cases was whether the
date of publication was changed, and there were two competing synonyms, both conserved
in App. IIB. It had necessitated about half a dozen “superconservation” proposals
where a widely used family name was actually predated by an earlier family that was
a synonym, or considered a synonym under certain circumscriptions. So the superconservation
proposal that had been necessary was to conserve the commonly used later name over
the less wellknown earlier name.
He read a paragraph from the proposal. “In conclusion, I cannot help but feel a little
sad about all the hundreds of personhours spent on this purely academic exercise that
might have been better applied to, say, science and conservation. Anyway, what is
done is done. What we could still do, however, is prevent a similar waste of time
and money in the future.” So his proposal was to extend the protection currently afforded
to App. IIB to include the authors together with the places and dates of publication,
which would be deemed to be correct even if an earlier place of valid publication,
by the same or a different author, was discovered.
Barrie added a little more background. The first list in App. IIB of the conserved
family names went into the Code in 1959 in Montreal. When this issue was looked at
in St Louis eventually he had gone back and started looking at the original writings
in Taxon by the authors who came up with the list and some of the discussion in the
report. It was pretty clear from that that their intentions were it would be a list
where not only the names themselves, but their authors and place of publication would
be conserved. They looked at it as a relatively small list, well-defined, fewer than
500 names, that they could all agree on would be used in this way.
Unfortunately that intention was never written into the Code, if it had been put into
the introduction to App. IIB then there would be no problem. The family names became
considered similar to the conservation of generic names where authors and place of
publication were not conserved. The way the Code was written they had to be treated
that way but the true intent of the list at the beginning was that everything would
be conserved, and it would just be a practical tool for people to use.
McNeill added that Bullock, the primary person [involved in compiling the original
list], chose the starting-point date of Jussieu’s Genera Plantarum simply because
it was so difficult to determine when things might have been first published that
he thought that taking it as an arbitrary starting point, and having the list as one
that was maintained regardless of earlier names that might come to attention, would
be appropriate.
Wiersema could not support the proposal as it was. He could support preserving the
place of publication, but felt that inconsistencies in the Code over time between
some of the Appendices could result from applying this to the authors and dates. If
there were valid reasons, e.g. that the authorship of some part of a work was attributable
to someone else, and there were conservation proposals for genera or species in that
same work, then the authorship in App. III could end up being different from the authorship
in App. IIB. There could be a similar situation with dates.
He thought that as long as the place of publication could be salvaged or preserved,
that was the most critical thing. He did not want to see the possibility of introducing
inconsistencies in the Code Appendices from one Appendix to the other over time if
the proposal was accepted.
McNeill interpreted that Wiersema was suggesting something similar to what he had
proposed for another Article, where corrections of errors would be excluded so that
the place of publication was maintained, but any error relating to that place of publication,
most notably the date and possibly the authorship, would be correctable.
Turland explained that his intention with the proposal was to go somewhat further
than that, but he conceded that it could indeed create inconsistencies, for example,
if a book was discovered to have been published two years earlier than was thought,
a name in App. IIB would have a fixed date, and then everywhere else where a name
from that same book was cited, the date would be the actual known date, which might
be different. Or it could be the author that was different. His question was why that
would be a problem, he wondered what problems it would cause.
Wiersema thought that people, himself included, looked to the Appendices to get answers
about the proper dates of publication, or the proper authorship. In family names he
did not think authorship was terribly important, and most people did not cite them
anyway. But he did think the place of publication was something that needed to be
worried about. In the proposal it was suggested that because of all the careful work
that had already been done the chances of these things causing problems in the future
were much diminished. He preferred to be able to correct things that needed correcting
over time. He suggested an amendment that the proposal only be concerned with preserving
the place of publication and allow correction of the authors and the dates.
Turland added that this would presumably also include errors of bibliographic citation,
although he thought that because App. IIB had been gone over so many times the chances
of any bibliographic errors remaining was small, but if, for example, the page number
was wrong, that would also be correctable.
Knapp summarized the suggestion to amend the proposal with the exception of correctable
errors, as was done in another amendment. [This was not accepted as a friendly amendment.
It was seconded.]
Reveal found that he was apparently responsible for what he thought was described
as a waste of time and energy… [Laughter.]
Turland confirmed that was indeed what he had suggested.
Reveal continued that he happened to disagree with that characterization of what he
had done with Ruud Hoogland and Werner Greuter and John McNeill and others, including
Nicholas Turland, for the last 20 years. He did not think it had been a waste of time.
It indicated the need for critical detailed review of what was done. Therefore, he
supported what Wiersema was suggesting by adding the amendment with the exception
of correctable errors, with “correctable errors” being understood to mean typos, or
inadvertent errors that were discovered. As for bibliographic citations, there were
going to be some, he gave the example that when somebody discovered when Dumortier’s
1829 work was actually published in 1830, which it was, then that would change.
Gandhi agreed with Wiersema and gave an example from a few months previous when he
was reviewing a generic treatment for Flora of North America. He had come across a
situation where in both ING and the Code a conserved generic name had incorrect authorship
because everyone just looked at the title of the book and assumed that the relevant
person printed on the title page was the author of the whole treatment, but for the
particular family, a different author was cited who was responsible for all the novelties.
So for Flora of North America and IPNI he had been able to correct the authorship
and so forth and ING would be correcting the details soon. He expected the same thing
for the Code.
Barrie had a couple of issues: one was, what constituted a correctable error? The
other was, how many errors would there still be in the list? First there was Bullock’s
list, which was fairly well done, and then he knew that Jim Reveal and Ruud Hoogland
had spent a lot of time beavering away at this, looking at these names, where they
were published, who published them and worked really hard to get them accurate.
He thought the list itself was for the most part probably pretty accurate. He felt
that any errors that remained were probably going to be going to be pretty infrequent
but he did not think they should be left and ignored. He suggested they could probably
be solved by putting a corrective conservation proposal in. Because he thought there
would be very few of them and it would not be an issue very often, he supported the
original proposal.
Harley felt that it was important to think of the future when it was possible that
people may not be quite so careful, and therefore the fact that changes may need to
be made should be allowed for. He was very much in favour of correctable errors.
Reveal responded to Barrie by pointing out that the wording in the proposal was “treated
as correct in all circumstances and consequently are not to be changed”, therefore,
a conservation amendment to make a change by this provision was prohibited.
Van Rijckevorsel understood that the last remark was not addressed to the amendment
but he was thinking of using Art. 14.8 as a model. So if there was something very
important, there was a mechanism to…
Knapp recommended keeping that comment for discussion of the proposal, because the
current discussion was on the amendment. She then moved to a vote on the acceptance
of the amendment to strike out the words “authors and dates of publication”, and leave
only “places”, and to add “with the exception of correctable errors” to Prop. D at…
McNeill requested clarification from the proposers of the amendment as he had the
impression that there were alternatives rather than both the deletion and the addition.
Wiersema clarified that he was proposing the deletion but was okay with the addition
at the end.
McNeill felt that the point was that they were alternatives and not both going in[to
the Code]; it was one or the other.
Wiersema clarified that it was just the last.
Knapp confirmed that the proposer was not suggesting that the authors and dates of
publication be deleted from the proposal.
Turland felt that that would be meaningless.
Knapp had understood that Wiersema was suggesting that both the deletion and the addition
were the amendment.
Turland summarized that if you found an earlier place of publication, it would be
a correctable error, so the rule would be meaningless.
Wiersema was not sure correctable errors would allow you to correct the authors as
in the Code, there was nothing specified as correctable that dealt with authorship
unless the whole of Art. 46 was considered to require correction of something having
to do with the ascription or some… but he wondered if those instances were considered
correctable and asked if the date of publication was a correctable error. He ended
by concluding that the part at the end was not necessary.
Knapp reiterated that the Section was voting on the amended amendment, which was to
just strike out “The authors together with” and “and dates”, so this left “the places
of publication” that were conserved.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Greuter felt that the amendment was fine. However, he had noted reading the synopsis
a fact that was not unusual: that was disagreement between a proposer and the Vice-rapporteur.
The fact that was unusual was that they were the same person in this case. [Laughter.]
Knapp asked Turland if he had a split personality.
Greuter explained that in the proposal, Turland had suggested and intended that the
citations should be maintained irrespective of whether the name was validly published
in that place. In the comments he had contradicted this together with the Rapporteur.
Greuter suggested that there were two ways out: let the original proposer’s intention
win, and in that case in those two places cited in the Rapporteurs’ comments [Art.
6.3 and 12.1] just add in parentheses “but see Art. 14 etc.” or let the present, strict
interpretation stand. In that case, the reverse would be done. His opinion was that
the original intent of the proposal was a better one, because if the entries of names
not validly published in the conserved place were to be altered, another problem that
had not been named would be encountered. There may be a validly published name in
that place but it may not be the name of a family. This had been a frequent problem
in the past, where they were orders or subfamilies, so they were not the validly published
name of a family where they were conserved. His opinion was that things should be
corrected completely and the present entry should win, notwithstanding possible errors
in rank or valid publication or ambiguity.
McNeill confirmed that Greuter was proposing an amendment, that this would also cover
what turned out not to be validly published names by appropriate qualification in
the Articles that were referred to.
Greuter added that this would be inserted by the Editorial Committee.
Turland had originally intended to do that until the Rapporteurs had their Rapporteurs’
meeting in the previous year where the Rapporteur had pointed out that what the Vice-rapporteur
was proposing was impossible. [Laughter.]
McNeill objected that he hadn’t said it was impossible…
Turland was keen to accept the change as a friendly amendment if it was deemed to
be possible by the Rapporteur.
McNeill clarified that the amendment was to add “including names which were not validly
published” and instruct the Editorial Committee to modify the Articles that would
preclude this. Essentially the difficulty was that a conserved name was being discussed.
He added that if a name was not validly published of course it was not a name under
the Code, but that “name” could be qualified by making this an exception in the definition
of that term.
Reveal highlighted that the purpose that Greuter had assigned to him and Ruud Hoogland
in the late ’80s was, among several things, to determine the validity of names. He
believed that there was not a single family name in which the validity was questioned.
Turland confirmed that there was not a single case that he was aware of, and he could
not actually remember any [past] cases. Maybe there were one or two cases from the
Tokyo Code where a name was found that was not validly published. He thought they
had found a few cases where they were, as Greuter had pointed out, at a different
rank.
Reveal believed that since St Louis that had been one of the things that they had
“wasted their time” to resolve. [Laughter.]
Turland agreed.
Reveal continued that if the Section wanted to vote on the amendment, that was fine,
but he would be surprised if there was any single name in App. IIB that was not valid.
Turland would also be surprised, but was not willing to bet his life savings on it
not being the case. [Laughter.]
Redhead suggested changing the friendly amendment to say “including names that otherwise
would not be validly published”, because it was certainly not desirable for names
to continue to be invalid. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment to the friendly
amendment.]
Knapp moved to a vote on the amended proposal to add a new Article to Art. 14: “The
places of publication cited for conserved names of families in App. IIB are treated
as correct in all circumstances and consequently are not to be changed, including
names that otherwise would not be validly published”.
Prop. D was accepted as amended.
Prop. E (45: 16: 45: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. E, which was just an editorial consequence.
Turland confirmed that Prop. E was a necessary consequence of what had just been passed,
whereby the Code said that a name may not be conserved against itself, and the proposal
simply allowed an exception to that rule, which would occur in the case of the Article
that had just been passed.
Knapp moved to a vote on Prop. E, which she described as the necessary corollary to
the amended proposal that had just passed.
Prop. E was accepted.
Prop. F (54: 34: 18: 0).
McNeill noted that the next proposal, Prop. F, continued in the same theme to extend
the same principle agreed to for App. IIB to the other Appendices in the Code: authors
together with places and dates of publication cited for conserved names of families,
genera and species in App. II, III and IV. Although App. IIB had been dealt with,
App. IIA had not been considered: it dealt with family names in certain other groups
that were conserved in the normal way against some other name(s).
Turland added that it seemed logical to amend the proposal to bring it in line with
what had just passed with similar wording to Prop. D.
McNeill understood that the proposer was going to change the proposal so that it was
of comparable wording to what had been approved for App. IIB.
Gereau felt that App. IIB was a far different beast than the other Appendices as the
amount of careful scholarship that had been expended—not wasted—upon it had produced
a very impressively clean and correct document. He thought that the other Appendices
had had a great deal of work put into them but nothing comparable to App. IIB, and
the current proposal went far too far and would constitute nothing more than the possible
enshrining of a lot of errors that should be corrected. So he felt it should be rejected.
Demoulin agreed that the Section could not accept the proposal for the same reason
already discussed on the former proposal, which finally was accepted but in an amended
form.
Redhead was also worried that there had not been the intense examination of the names
on the lists, and that enshrining them in such a way would fix a lot of errors that
were potentially in there.
Reveal suggested that because of Prop. D passing that the words “of families”, need
not be included in the…
McNeill interrupted that that was not the case, as he had pointed out, there was App.
IIA, which had not been covered.
Reveal understood that and questioned whether the intention was to extend this down
to all families that were conserved in App. II.
Turland confirmed that was the case.
Reveal suggested that what had been done for Prop. D should be deleted…
McNeill felt that could be dealt with editorially. The point was, he felt, whether
the Section wanted to support a proposal of this sort, the final wording would be
dealt with at the Editorial Committee and the two proposals would be integrated. One
had already been accepted; the one under discussion was much broader and would, of
course, include the other, and that would be dealt with editorially. The order was
chosen simply because there was a perception that there would be more support for
the first proposal than there may be for the one under discussion.
Wiersema did not support the proposal for the same reason as the last one, but also
for the fact that it said “correct in all circumstances and consequently are not to
be changed”. It would not allow for the possibilities under Art. 14.12 of amending
a conservation entry through a proposal. There were cases where that had been done.
McNeill had not appreciated that point when he read it initially and thought it a
valid one that the proposer might want to address. He noted that the thought that
this would exclude action under Art. 14.12, a proposal to change the type of a name,
to modify a name through the due process, was certainly not in the Rapporteurs’ comments.
This could simply be avoided by adding “are not to be changed except under the provisions
of Art. 14.12”. [ Turland accepted that as a friendly amendment.]
Barrie wanted to know if including names that otherwise would not be validly published
had implications for names of genera and species that it did not have for names of
families.
Knapp interpreted that he was asking whether including the clause for names that were
otherwise not validly published would have implications for names of genera and species
that were not applicable to names of families.
Barrie agreed as he had the feeling that there might be consequences for species names
that were not relevant for family names, but he was not sure, that was why he was
asking if anyone had thought about it.
McNeill could not envisage it.
Reveal suggested that the similar wording “except under the provisions of Art. 14.12”
also be added to Prop. D.
McNeill thought that he was assuming that would permit names that were not validly
published to be retained, just as had been done for family names in App. IIB.
Turland queried as to whether Reveal was proposing an amendment to what had already
been passed.
McNeill thought that Reveal was suggesting this should be entirely parallel to what
had already passed, that he wanted clarification as to whether Prop. F included the
clarity that Greuter suggested, that it was clear that names that would otherwise
be not validly published were treated as such, because this would then also be an
exception to Art. 6.
Turland confirmed that this was his intent, although he thought that this was covered
at the end.
Knapp agreed it was included at the end but thought that Reveal was proposing something
different: making a new amendment to the proposal that had already passed and she
thought that could be dealt with editorially.
Reveal was just suggesting that when the Editorial Committee dealt with the two items
that they make sure that, if Prop. F was turned down, that the provisions from Art.
14.12 went into Prop. D.
Norvell was concerned that correcting a citation in the Code for a conserved species
name when it was found that an author and date of a work should be changed would no
longer be possible. Obviously the place of publication also would be changed.
McNeill confirmed that it would mean if an earlier place of publication was found,
that would become irrelevant. Whatever was accepted as the place of publication of
the conserved name would be retained.
Norvell referred to a case where all three items—the authors, the place of publication[,
the date]—everything had changed because an earlier combination had been found…
McNeill explained that the whole point was to prevent what was perceived by the proposer
and by many others to be unnecessary changes. The work had been done in conserving
a name. What was really wanted was to be able use the name. It did not really matter
where it was first published once it was established that this was a name that was
going to be used.
Norvell was opposed to the proposal.
Pennycook knew of a case of a fungal genus name that had been conserved with a fictitious
publication, based on a total misunderstanding of the literature, and wished to know
if this would be preserved for all posterity without any opportunity to change it.
Turland requested confirmation that the publication did not exist.
Pennycook confirmed this.
Turland thought that in that case he did not see how it could be protected because
it did not exist.
Sennikov added that the proposal was very much needed, and it was a good complement
to the principle of conservation, because should the authorship or the place of publication
be changed to something earlier it would be a totally different name with different
original material, probably a different type. He felt the proposal was good even though
it might not be fair in all cases to the history of botany, to the earlier authors,
so that this history would not be retained; but conservation was not fair to history.
Redhead felt that, given that the Appendices in question had not been as thoroughly
vetted as the family lists in App. IIB, perhaps the application of the proposal could
be delayed, which would allow a few years for people then to go through and vet them
and, once they were established, then say “You had your chance”. He proposed an amendment
to add a date effective from 1 January 2015. [The amendment was seconded.]
Turland suggested 2016. [Laughter.]
Redhead reiterated that this would just build in a chance for people to try and correct
what was there and motivate them.
McNeill commented that there would presumably need to be some mandate for some person
or persons to carry out the verification. If there was simply a date and if nobody
did any checking then it would automatically come into effect on that date.
Barrie pointed out that the list was looked at by the Editorial Committee each time
the Code was published, but not a thorough, monthslong inspection of each and every
entry. He invited people to send corrections in to the Editorial Committee. He felt
that the list was reasonably clean, probably not flawless, but not riddled with errors.
McNeill thought that one of the things that probably concerned people other than vascular
plant taxonomists was that, whereas the whole list of conserved names going back to
1905 was very thoroughly reviewed by Rickett and Stafleu in the ’60s and ’70s, no
correspondingly asthorough coverage was carried out for some of the other groups.
He thought that Isoviita had done quite a lot for the bryophyte lists at different
times and, at the time of the changes to starting-point date, the fungal names were
reviewed as well. He agreed that it was something that was continually ongoing, and
suggested that the Editorial Committee be charged to take account of any information
provided.
Applequist wondered how any corrections made after the Melbourne Code was published
would be inserted into the Appendices before this provision took effect, since the
next Congress was not until 2017. She asked whether publication of a list of errors
in Taxon would suffice.
McNeill thought it would depend very much on how the next few proposals were dealt
with, as the next two proposals suggested electronic publication of the Appendices.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Prop. F was rejected.
Reveal requested a point of clarification: inasmuch as the proposal deleted all references
to family, he wanted to know if that still applied to Prop. D.
Knapp explained that Prop. D had passed.
McNeill had thought that Reveal was about to raise the issue that Prop. D include
the reference to Art. 14.12.
Prop. G (59: 43: 5: 0).
McNeill moved on to Art. 14 Prop. G–I, which were seeking a mandate from the Congress
to, if necessary, terminate hardcopy publication of App. II–V. He was not sure to
what extent the proposer was seeking to preclude inclusion [of these Appendices in
the Code] or merely to permit it to be done electronically.
Redhead did not have much of an agenda regarding the proposal but had just noticed
that in carrying this around… [he brandished his copy of the Code—Laughter.]
Knapp warned him that he was going to break it.
Redhead pointed out that the part he was holding in the middle were all the Appendices,
and the rest of it was the Code itself and the indexes. He could only envisage it
getting larger and larger and larger, and particularly with molecular taxonomy research
that the Appendices could be cumbersome. He did not know how much it cost for the
IAPT to publish the Code, but it seemed ridiculous to him in this day and age to be
publishing such an immense thing. He was really putting forward this proposal so that
everyone could just decide whether they wished to continue spending money or whether
it was possible to facilitate it electronically. He did not actually wish to run it—someone
else would have to do it—so the idea was just out there to try and save money and
make things more efficient.
McNeill requested clarification of the phrase “Periodic publication of comprehensive
hardcopy of the Appendices may be made”, as he felt that would presumably mean that
some Code might want to include them, whereas later on the implication seemed to be
that the Appendices may not be included with the Code.
Redhead had been trying to build in flexibility for whatever the Congress decided,
but he just wanted to have the opportunity to try and prevent downing of more trees.
Stuessy suggested having a two-volume Code, the first with all the rules and so on,
and the second would be the Appendices, and you could buy one or the other if you
wish.
Prud’homme van Reine was in favour of a single book with the full Code, as he felt
that many people would not have access if it were only electronic. He found it better
to have a nice book at least once every six years and it did not matter if it was
thick or thin, you could have the book on your shelf and you could use it.
Annette Wilson spoke to the business of trees by saying that she thought requiring
it to be published in Taxon would equate to more trees. She did not think that hard
copy publication of the amendments and additions was going to actually solve anything.
Speaking as an editor, she suggested that making changes to the typefaces and layout
would probably cut the Appendix sizes in half. She was not in favour of taking the
Appendices out of the Code, although she did not see any problem with having it online
as well, but she certainly supported editorial manipulation to make them shorter.
McNeill assured her that this was already in mind for the next Code and had been discussed.
Greuter was in favour of the proposal, but there was something in it that was completely
inappropriate and unacceptable in his mind, and he hoped it could be taken care of
by the Editorial Committee if the Rapporteurs approved. Because the Code had authority
over names but no authority over either the editorial policy of Taxon or of the IAPT,
he felt it was inappropriate in the Code to put rules on what was published in Taxon
and supported by IAPT and suggested that this aspect should be neutralized.
McNeill thanked Greuter and summarized that he was supporting the principle of separate
publication electronically without necessarily endorsing the precise wording of the
proposal being made.
Demoulin loved the solution that Stuessy had mentioned and he would certainly buy
the two copies because it was very useful to be able in some circumstances, like at
the Congress, to just to have the rules, but at home he absolutely wanted to have
the printed copy of the Appendices. Those who preferred to work on the computer screen
could already do it, so he supported continuing to have nice books for important things
like this.
Van Rijckevorsel thought that there were two separate issues: firstly, how the Code
should look and secondly if there should be a provision in the Code on that. There
had never been anything in the Code that prescribed how it looked, there was no requirement
for hard copy and up until 1983 the Code was produced in three languages, although
there was no provision for that. Before that, there was a discussion to publish only
a supplement to the Code, and even before that there was a Code that existed only
as a supplement. He felt that the issue was whether there should be a provision in
the Code, and he thought not. Secondly, a suggestion that had not been made was to
put in the Code only the changes to the Appendices, which would slim it down a lot,
and a hard print book would still be available. He opposed the proposal but not the
thought.
McNeill felt that it sounded from the debate that there was a lot of support for two
things. First of all, making it clear that the Appendices were indeed part of the
Code by some inclusion in the Preamble, and that would come in other proposals before
the Section. But more importantly, that the concept of electronic publication of the
Appendices, as being a component separate from the main work that should be updated
on a regular basis, also appeared to have some support, whereas the actual wording
of enshrining this in the Code had had some negative comments, which he found justifiable.
He suggested taking a vote on the principle behind this, separate from the wording,
and then perhaps the proposer could redraft it as he had said he was not too concerned
about the exact wording, just the principle.
Redhead was basically interested in the principle and was happy to leave it completely
in the hands of the Editorial…
McNeill interrupted that he thought there were two elements to the principle: the
one element was that there should not be hard copy except periodically, whereas the
other principle was that there should be electronic copy but the hard copy would continue
with each issue, but perhaps in a separate volume. He asked if Redhead was seeking
to limit the hard copy production.
Redhead said that he was because he felt that it would impede people carrying it [the
Code] around if it was all bound together, and he also anticipated that there would
be an awful lot more conservation proposals in the future to deal with the results
of molecular taxonomy and phylogenies, and the Appendices would swell. His proposal
was basically a sort of philosophical idea, but the exact wording could be altered:
Taxon and IAPT could be taken out if it was inappropriate. Essentially it was just
an idea that he had thrown out to the Congress to give it an opportunity.
McNeill reiterated that there were two issues and suggested that the precise wording
was not up for debate. What was being debated was the proposal of Redhead, the principle
that the Appendices should not normally be included as hard copy with the Code, so
the proposal was that in future the Appendices would normally be published electronically
and the Editorial Committee was charged to make appropriate reference to this in the
Code.
Herendeen felt that occasionally publishing hard copy of the Appendices, not specifically
mentioning Taxon, was a good thing; he supported occasional publication where necessary.
He believed that it would be very useful to move to electronic publication of the
Appendices, remove them from the Code itself and if there was a groundswell of support
for publishing the Appendices from time to time, then so be it, but as a separate
publication.
Knapp thought that that was essentially the proposal that McNeill had made, pulling
all three proposals together. She pointed out that Prop. I was to basically let the
Editorial Committee decide what the wording should be. She interpreted what people
had said to mean that what needed to be decided on was whether the Appendices should
be largely electronic and occasionally published in hard copy or whether they would
always be hard copy and published at the same time as the Code every six years. She
also mentioned the possibility of publishing the Appendices as a separate volume,
but highlighted that this was not really something for a Section to decide.
McNeill felt that was what was needed was the authority not to publish it with the
hard copy of the Code.
Stuessy suggested that the discussion was off track a little. He emphasized the desire
to have the Code published in whatever form possible to ensure as full a dissemination
of the Code as possible. He supported publishing the Code (with Appendices) in both
hard copy and electronic versions.
Kirk felt that Redhead’s point about greening the Code and not chopping down trees
missed the point of the cost of shipping those bits of trees around the planet. He
suggested that the way to solve that problem was an electronic version with the ability
to download a PDF in page format to print locally, which should be very simple from
an IT point of view. This would mean that every six years when it was updated people
who could not afford the book and did not want to increase CO2 in the atmosphere by
shipping a book around the planet could print it locally at local costs, which would
appeal to people in developing countries.
Sennikov added that those who argued for the nice book and the availability of that
book maybe did not realize that the cost of the nice book was still high enough that
many people hesitated to buy it. He also felt that the market of the Code was such
that it was sold from few places, not in many countries, and often had to be purchased
from abroad, which was not very convenient for many people actually in the Third World,
Speaking for Russian taxonomists, he knew that very few taxonomists in Russia had
an original copy of the Code. He maintained that the major availability of the Code
was exclusively because it was available on the Internet. He argued that it must be
available electronically, and deciding to save paper resulting in trees being not
chopped was a nice thing but most importantly that electronic availability of the
Code was a really great thing that helped people.
Gandhi had a minor comment regarding the term “periodic publication”, as he felt it
may require a definition. Periodic, in the sense of what? Once in 10 years, once in…
Knapp refocused the discussion on the principle rather than the wording.
Glen as somebody working in a developing country had not used a paper copy of the
Code in the last six years plus. His unit did not even own a copy of the Vienna Code
on paper, they only used the electronic copy, which was wonderful particularly because
it was searchable, which meant he could find what he was looking for. [Laughter.]
Glen requested that whatever was decided, it should be published electronically. He
felt that if somebody was really that addicted to ink on paper they could always print
it out at a printondemand place and get it bound. He supported this proposal and added
that the lists could be updated every five minutes if desired; there was no need to
wait for six years for the new one.
Miller thought having the Code and its Appendices available electronically was a wonderful
goal, but there was no need to amend the Code to do that. He interpreted the proposal
as addressing the question of whether to separate the Appendices from the printed
copy or not, and he did not want that done.
McNeill agreed that was a very good point. He emphasized that what this proposal was
permitting the Editorial Committee to do was to cease to publish the Appendices with
the Code. All the other things mentioned could already be done and some had been done
in the past, as had been pointed out.
Knapp exercised her Chair’s prerogative to suggest moving to a vote on this proposal.
She reiterated that voting “yes” for this proposal would allow the Editorial Committee
to decide to not print the Appendices as part of the Code and to have them as solely
electronic copy while voting “no” would mean that the printed Appendices were always
part of the printed Code.
McNeill added that voting “yes” did not mean it would not be possible to have a separate
printed volume of the Appendices. He explained that, as it had been rephrased it was
a procedural motion as it no longer amended the Code, so the vote required only 50%.
[The motion was approved.]
Fourth session
Tuesday, 19th July 2011, 13:30–18:00
Article 14 (continued)
Knapp decided to exercise her Chair’s prerogative [again] to revisit something that
had happened before lunch. She thought that there was a bit of ambiguity about a vote,
and perhaps a perception that there might be ambiguity about what type of majority
was needed to do it. What she thought had been voted on—and the vote would be taken
again—was that the Editorial Committee had the option to produce the Appendices in
only electronic form.
Nic Lughadha had understood that the Editorial Committee had the option to publish
a hard copy of the Code, without the Appendices being included.
Knapp thought that sounded like the same thing, that the Appendices would be electronic
and only the Code would be in hard copy. She pointed out that there was no specification
in the Code that the Code be hard copy. The proposal was from Redhead and he had said
he was happy for anybody to do whatever they wanted really, which made things a bit
complicated. As the proposal did not involve an amendment to the wording of the Code,
it was felt that a 50% simple majority was the correct majority for the vote. It could
be so interpreted that this would cause a change in the physical manifestation of
the Code and therefore a supermajority would be required. She asked the Section to
choose between the two options of simple majority or a supermajority for voting on
the issue. The vote itself would be a 50% majority vote one way or the other, because
it was a choice between two options. Then the Section would move to a card vote, as
was suggested by several people around the room, on “The Editorial Committee has the
option to produce Appendices in only electronic form”.
Funk was under the impression that the Section was empowering the Editorial Committee
to decide how they wanted to deal with the Appendices, and one option was that they
were published electronically, but this did not prohibit the option that it could
be hard copy.
Knapp agreed that this was what the word “option” meant.
Funk objected to the use of “only”.
Knapp suggested deletion of the word “only”, so the proposal would become “The Editorial
Committee has the option to produce the Appendices in electronic form”. She moved
to the first vote, a simple majority vote as to whether 50%, a simple majority was
needed for this, or a supermajority. [A 50% simple majority was accepted.] She moved
on to the card vote.
Annette Wilson wanted to know if the Section was still voting on Prop. G or not.
Knapp clarified that it was not a vote on Prop. G. She outlined what the Section would
be voting on. “The Editorial Committee has the option to produce the Appendices to
the Code in electronic form”. The vote was a simple majority vote card vote. A “yes”
vote meant that the Editorial Committee would have the option to produce the Appendices
to the Code…
Ulloa still did not understand what was being voted on, she wished to know if an amendment
to Prop. G had been proposed from the floor.
Knapp explained that because of the way Prop. G, H, and I were presented and the way
in which they were discussed, when the Section voted before lunch it voted on the
principle that the Editorial Committee would have the option of producing the Appendices
in electronic form—a principle, not something that would go into the wording of the
Code. It was an instruction to the Editorial Committee for how they would perhaps
work on producing the Appendices.
Ulloa wondered if it was legal to vote on a principle that was not written.
Knapp pointed out that the Code was not a legal document but a code of practice.
McNeill clarified that it was a guidance to the Editorial Committee and that was the
reason why it was a simple 50% majority. It was not an amendment of the Code but it
was very cognate to the Code and it was perfectly proper for the Section to give instruction
to the Editorial Committee as to what options they would like the Editorial Committee
to have regarding the form of the Melbourne Code. He highlighted that it was not binding
because if there was some financial crisis in IAPT and it was not possible to publish
the Code, then it would not be published. The vote was a guide, an intent on the will
of this Section as far as the production of the Melbourne Code was concerned. He felt
that this was very valuable to have, and was certainly most relevant to the work of
the Section.
Knapp thought it gave the Editorial Committee guidance to what might be done in the
future.
Redhead was the person who proposed these things, and he had published them as proposals
to change the Code because it added substance and got it out there for debate, but
he completely agreed with what was taking place now and it was just principle, so
the Section was not specifically voting on Prop. H or I or J. It was the principle
that was instilled in that.
Buck wondered what would be added by voting on this because the Appendices as well
as the entire Code were already online electronically.
Knapp understood what he was saying but still felt that there was a certain amount
of misunderstanding about what was being voted on, and what percentage, and perhaps
some disquiet about what percentage should have been used to vote. So she was suggesting
that everything be very, very clear and open. She felt that it did not matter what
it added; what it allowed was some latitude for the Editorial Committee to have the
option to produce the Appendices in electronic form.
Buck reiterated that they already had that option and had done it. He likened it to
closing the barn door after the horse had left.
McNeill added that there was a situation in which since de Candolle’s Lois there had
been a printed copy of the Code, and as soon there became Appendices these were published
with the Code. What this was saying was that the Editorial Committee was free to publish
both in hard copy; there was a clear guidance, if the vote was “yes”, that electronic
version of the Appendices in particular would be what people would like to see become
established, but that there was no longer the requirement that we produce a printed
copy of the Code with the Appendices.
It was quite clear to him that a vote “yes” merely gave the Editorial Committee the
authority to do what had been done before, but given the initial proposal, a vote
“no” would be a much firmer instruction because that would tell us “you’ve got to
do what you’ve always done and you’re not allowed to separate the Appendices from
the body of the Code”. It was to allow the flexibility to move more strongly into
the electronic direction, always recognizing that there had to be a final copy.
There would always have to be a definitive copy, and what type of electronic storage
that would be in, what format, would have to be negotiated in due course. It could
well be that in this instance, for the Melbourne Code, there might be a printed copy
of the Appendices as the archival copy of the main copy, but in the future it would
be a more permanent electronic storage that might be the archival reference copy.
Levin was, quite frankly, getting more and more confused. He requested clarification
on whether voting “no”, would mean that the Editorial Committee does not have the
option of making an electronic version at all, because that was the implication as
it was presented.
Knapp clarified that if the Section voted “no”, it meant that however the Code produced,
the Appendices were also produced in the same way, the Appendices would stay as part
of the Code.
Levin suggested clarifying that instead of giving the Editorial Committee the option
to produce the Appendices electronically, they have the option to publish them separately
as he felt that that was the core of the issue.
Knapp repeated that the option already existed. She summarized again that a “yes”
vote meant that the Editorial Committee would have the option to pursue different
things, like producing two volumes as suggested, a “no” vote meant sticking with what
had been done and not pursuing alternatives. It was a principle, so the words were
not actually that important. “The Editorial Committee has the option to produce the
Appendices in electronic form”.
Thiele suggested clarifying these confusions by saying that we were voting that “The
Editorial Committee has the option to produce the Appendices to the Code in electronic
form only”.
Knapp pointed out that that was what she had initially suggested and it was amended
by someone to take the word “only” out.
Thiele felt that in the conversation that had just occurred that that was where the
confusion lay. Of course the Editorial Committee currently had the option to produce
the Appendices electronically but what was actually being talked about was whether
the Section was empowering the Editorial Committee to have the option to not produce
them in hard-copy form, to have it electronic only.
McNeill thought that was probably the thrust of Redhead’s proposal.
Redhead concurred.
McNeill requested the proposer to comment on whether that encapsulated the principle
that he had in mind. [It did.]
Knapp recapped that the vote was about an option, a “yes” vote meant exploring the
option of producing the Appendices in electronic form only, and a “no” vote meant
not.
Kellermann thought that there were two different points. Firstly, in electronic form
only; secondly, separately from the main part of the Code, so whether the Appendices
were published at the same time or at different times…
Knapp interrupted very politely to say that there already was the option to produce
them separately.
Kellermann added that the option to produce them electronically existed as well.
Knapp disagreed.
Kellermann said it was so.
Knapp clarified—not “only”. She reiterated that the vote was looking for guidance
for the Editorial Committee and would not be written in the Code.
Kellermann still thought that people were talking about the two issues and either
mixing them up or talking about them at the same time.
Knapp agreed.
McNeill suggested going with what had been suggested, provided that that was what
the initial proposer felt represented the principle behind his proposal. He agreed
with comments from the floor that the detail in the original proposals was inappropriate,
but the principle of moving towards greater electronic publication of the Code was
very desirable and in particular the electronic publication of the Appendices. The
Editorial Committee had freedom, but IAPT in particular could not necessarily provide
the funds to do different things, so the Code may be constrained to operate in a particular
way.
However, he felt that it was important to do what the botanical community wanted to
have done, and really that was what the vote was about; to get a feeling from the
Section as to what strategy—if economically and in other ways feasible—should be adopted
for the publication of the Melbourne Code.
Many people felt like Scott did, that the sheer bulk of the Appendices in the Vienna
Code, even if by better editorial production they could be more concise, was still
excessive and would increase. Therefore, to split them off and to perhaps have the
Appendices entirely electronic was a good idea, but many people have said they like
this nice book and they would like to keep it as it always was and thus guidance was
necessary.
There was no way to force the Editorial Committee or IAPT to do something, but a very
strong indication of the way in which the publication of the Melbourne Code should
proceed could be given. He was quite happy with the more general broad principle that
was talked about before lunch and was supported, but if it was deemed important to
get a card vote then some words were needed. He thought that would give the indication
of where the Section stood vis-à-vis electronic publication as an option, or insisting
on hard copy.
Knapp asked the original proposer if he wanted the word “only” in or not.
Redhead suggested that the word “option” meant that either one or the other could
be done and decided that taking out the word “only” offered more flexibility.
[Aside discussion and objections.]
Redhead was also fine with leaving the word “only” in there.
McNeill was of the opinion that it would be meaningless without “only”.
Knapp exercised the Chair’s prerogative again, deciding to leave the word “only” in.
She clearly outlined that a “yes” vote would imply that the Editorial Committee would
have the option to produce the Appendices in electronic form only, and a “no” vote
would mean that they did not. She moved to a card vote on the issue.
[Knapp thanked the tellers for taking all the card votes and, while they counted,
the Section moved on to the next items of business.]
Prop. G was voted on in principle and accepted in a card vote (368: 157; 70% in favour).
Prop. H (60: 35: 9: 0) and I (57: 34: 17: 0) were referred to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp offered reassurance that although the Section had given instructions to the
Editorial Committee to explore the issue, it did not mean there would not be hard
copy of the Appendices of the Melbourne Code.
[The following debate, pertaining to a new proposal by Hawksworth to amend Art. 14,
took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Hawksworth’s proposal
McNeill introduced a proposal from the floor from Hawksworth on Art. 14.1 He explained
that conservation of names was only permissible at the ranks of family, genus, and
species, and this was a proposal to extend it to all ranks. [The proposal was seconded
and supported by three others.]
Gereau felt that the Section was quickly becoming a race of lawyers rather than scientists,
making rules and going through lists, and on every issue micro-legislating all activities,
instead of applying sets of basic principles so that it was possible to just get on
with our work. He wondered how many Appendices there would be. He wanted to know if
there would be an App. VIII on conserved and rejected names of subtribes and an App.
IX on conserved and rejected names of subformae. He felt it was becoming absurd and
would lead to a Code in six volumes in little time if the trend continued. He argued
that it was time to get rid of this once and for all. [Applause.]
Knapp instructed the Section fiercely that there was to be “No clapping!”
Talent had a problem with giving special status to subspecies when variety was the
common rank in many groups.
Funk called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Hawksworth’s proposal was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
[New proposals concerning Art. 14 were included as part of Redhead’s set of proposals
relating to fungi with a pleomorphic life cycle, and that discussion can be found
under the Eighth Session on Thursday afternoon; there was also Lendemer’s proposal
as a consequence of the other changes accepted, and that discussion can be found under
the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Article 15
Prop. A (80: 5: 8: 6).
McNeill introduced the next item of business, which was Art. 15 Prop. A by Demoulin,
adding that sanctioned names had special status similar to that of conserved names,
and the proposal was that the spelling used by a sanctioning author was treated as
conserved except if it was to be corrected or standardized under Art. 60. The proposal
was quite independent of the sanctioned names discussion so did not need to be deferred.
It was to make more explicit what many people assumed was the case.
Demoulin confirmed that the proposal was just to make clear something that had always
been the policy of the Fungal Committee, but also add something that needed to be
spelled out that Luis Pérez had suggested to him: that sanctioned names could be corrected
under Art. 60. The good support in the mail vote made him think that it was not necessary
to elaborate much.
McNeill agreed that both the mail vote and the opinion of the Nomenclature Committee
for
Fungi
were very positive with regard to the proposal.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (38: 23: 28: 8) and C (34: 40: 12: 12) were withdrawn.
Article 16
Prop. A (87: 12: 7: 0).
McNeill moved on to Art. 16 Prop. A, which was also proposed by Redhead although quite
independent. This was to deal with a slight anomaly in the sense that any name above
the rank of family could be treated as a descriptive name, so that even if it was
not based on an included legitimate family name it could still be legitimate, but
then the type was open to question. The proposal offered a mechanism for slightly
broadening the basis of names above the rank of family that were derived from a generic
name in order to make them more frequently legitimate. The Rapporteur had commented
that it would clarify that typification.
Redhead explained that one of the reasons for his making the proposal was that, due
to more modern phylogenetic research, taxonomists were now approaching things from
the opposite end to traditional taxonomy, which used to build things up from species
to genera and then to family and so on. He noted that people were now approaching
it from kingdom on down and were proposing new orders and forgetting the fact that
there were legitimate names of families or other higher levels, and yet they seemed
to be based on generic names, so this was an attempt to standardize the automatic
typification of names that were obviously based on generic names but at a higher level
so they skipped one or two ranks.
McNeill noted that the proposal had good support, 87 to 12 in the preliminary mail
vote.
Greuter favoured the proposal in principle, but was not satisfied with the way it
was presented. On the one hand it had a drawback in that it was ambiguous. He wondered
what would happen if a suprafamilial name that included the type of a legitimate name
of a family was nevertheless called after a genus that was not the type of the family
as this would create an ambiguous situation. He felt that the proposal was just too
complicated.
He suggested a friendly amendment, that the proposal could be reworded and simplified
by just substituting what was now under (a), automatically typified names formed from
the legitimate name of an included genus by adding to the genitive singular inflection
the appropriate termination. The exact wording would then be parallel to what was
in 18.1 for family names. It was rather lengthy but would be taken care of by the
Editorial Committee. He pointed out that the simplification would also have the effect
of making Prop. E, to which the Rapporteurs had rightly objected but which had quite
some merit, acceptable.
[The amendment read: “(a) automatically typified names, formed from the genitive singular
of a name of an included genus by replacing the genitive singular inflection (Latin
ae, i, us, is; transliterated Greek ou, os, es, as, or ous, and its equivalent eos)
with the appropriate termination; or (b)”.]
McNeill summarized that instead of determining legitimacy of a name above the rank
of family on the basis of an included legitimate family name, Greuter was proposing
bypassing that rank and determining the legitimacy of a name above the rank of family
on the name of an included genus.
Greuter had suggested the amendment on the understanding that the effect would be
exactly what Redhead desired, but it would be simpler and would not have ambiguity
included.
McNeill could not immediately remember it, but he had a funny feeling that there was
a further Article that depended on family names as being the basis.
Redhead assessed the amendment as still allowing a bit of flexibility, whereas his
intent was to ensure that those names that were based on generic names were automatically
typified. The way he read the changes, it appeared that such names may be either automatically
typified names or they could still be called descriptive names. He felt it did not
pin it down.
Greuter added that under (b) it said “descriptive names not so formed”, so if they
were formed from a genitive singular of a generic name they were not descriptive names.
Redhead agreed that if that was the way other people read it that would be acceptable
because that was the intent. He took a minute to decide whether the meaning of the
amendment was what he intended and then accepted it as a friendly amendment.
Reveal wondered why anyone would have an ordinal name without an included family.
Redhead responded that he would not but that there was a growing group of people who
were publishing order names in the absence of family names and, possibly, other novel
names because they were using phylogenetic analysis and working the way down from
kingdom, not grouping species or genera together.
Malécot made an editorial comment on the amendment, that, instead of “with the appropriate
termination”, the proposed amendment should be “with the appropriate termination denoting
their rank (preceded by the connecting vowel o- if the termination begins with a consonant)
as specified in Rec. 16A.1–3 and Art. 17.1”.
Reveal encouraged the Section to vote “no” as he felt the proposal was encouraging
bad taxonomic practice and did not see why it would be desirable to put bad taxonomic
practice in the Code. He added that it was long known that you have species within
genera not species floating so wondered why you would have a floating order without
any families, but it may have genera in it.
Redhead began to explain that there were examples, particularly in the fungi, when
people had published orders…
Knapp admonished the microphone runner for supplying Redhead with an unauthorized
microphone!
Redhead continued …and afterwards published families.
McNeill commented that there was a world of difference between the need for a genus
and a generic name for any species and the higher category. It was conventional that
the family had become very important in certain groups of organisms, most notably
the vascular plants, but there was no reason why it was necessary to have entries
in all the other higher categories.
Knapp concluded that there was a clear difference of opinion and moved to a vote.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
Prop. B (30: 4: 71: 0) was withdrawn.
Prop. C (28: 4: 73: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. D (36: 42: 24: 0).
McNeill noted that this proposal was defeated 36 in favour to 42 against in the mail
vote. He added that it was making explicit what was otherwise quite clear in the Code—that
autonyms do not exist above the rank of family. He felt that the proposal may be seen
to be useful, but it was not in necessary because autonyms were defined in the Code
very specifically in terms of the ranks in which they occur and they were not present
above the rank of genus.
Prop. D was rejected.
Prop. E (15: 87: 6: 0).
McNeill mentioned that Prop. E had more than 75% “no” votes, but that there was some
suggestion that someone might want to raise discussion on it.
Greuter had foreshadowed the issue when speaking on Prop. A, and felt that the “no”
votes were completely justified in view of the also justified negative comments of
the Rapporteurs, which had however become irrelevant because of the changed format
in which Prop. A had been voted on. He therefore proposed that the Section discuss
the proposal. [This was seconded and supported by three others.] He continued that
the merits of the proposal were that names of orders and suborders that were descriptive
names were not only dropping out of use, but that those that were not were a nuisance.
He gave the example of Leguminales, which was not based on a generic name but was
sometimes used and would be outlawed by the new provision, and others, like
Liliiflorae
or
Glumiflorae
, which were heritage of the past from the old Engler system or the Principles of
Linnaeus. He felt that these descriptive names that had been used at those ranks were
no longer in use, so it was no worry to lose them formally, which was why he quite
liked the idea of having the proposal accepted.
McNeill made two points: Greuter had rightly commented that the main opposition that
the Rapporteurs drew to the proposal had been dealt with as a result of the acceptance
of the earlier proposal; however, the second reason against the proposal was still
applicable—why it was thought necessary to rule out the possibility of using these
names when in fact they were already becoming less used. A point he felt was more
important, advised by mycologists to some extent, was whether this would make names
like
Ascomycota
and
Basidiomycota
not validly published.
Greuter pointed out that the proposal dealt with names of orders and suborders, not
all names above the rank of family.
McNeill apologized as he had thought it was all names above the rank of family.
Demoulin had already mentioned that he taught botany to people who were not botanists
and found descriptive names were extremely useful in this context. He used Leguminales
and hoped his successor would keep doing that. He felt that in a number of situations
it was much better to have something descriptive, whatever its rank, because then
“you know what you’re talking about”. He expressed surprise that Greuter was now against
descriptive names because he always remembered what he had told him one day, that
“with a name like
Ascomycetes
you know what you’re talking about but when you’ve got something like
Pezizomycetes
you never know how inclusive it is”.
Prop. E was rejected.
Prop. F (22: 13: *72: 1).
McNeill moved on to Prop. F, which was substantially editorial. He outlined that there
were a number of cases in the Code in which Articles that were mandatory or rules
that had mandatory effect were represented by text that was in Recommendations, and
this was one of them. The suggestion was to move this from a Recommendation into an
Article of the Code, which would not change the application of it. He mentioned that
it was referred strongly to the Editorial Committee in the mail vote.
Wiersema did not think that the proposal was entirely editorial because Brummitt had
dropped the last sentence out of the existing Article, under the premise that his
other proposals on valid publication of suprafamilial names would be accepted. He
also mentioned a housekeeping detail that would delete Rec. 16A.1, 16A.2 and 16A.3,
not just Rec. 16A.1.
McNeill agreed that the first point had been made by the Rapporteurs, that those who
favoured the proposal but recognized that the precise wording was dependent on the
acceptance of subsequent proposals if those were rejected, should vote “ed. c.”. In
other words, that that sentence would not be removed in this situation. He also agreed
that the housekeeping would certainly be editorial.
Unknown speaker wondered if the Section was allowed to vote to the Editorial Committee.
McNeill explained that in the mail vote, in order to allow an expression of the desire
for a principle with some modification, the convention of referring to the Editorial
Committee was established. He went on to say that the Editorial Committee will automatically
look at those components where the proposer had suggested removing some Recommendations
but not all that were needed, but the Section as a group had to vote for the proposal
as now modified by retaining portions that the proposer wished to omit because of
a presumption of crossing something out.
Knapp introduced the vote for Prop. F in the way that McNeill just described, which
she felt she could not possibly repeat.
Prop. F was accepted.
McNeill noted that Prop. G in Art. 16 related to quite an extensive set of proposals,
which were really interesting but unusual. He suggested that, as the core of the proposal
set appeared in Art. 32, it would be better to consider this along with the others
with Art. 32.
Prop. G (30: 62: 13: 0) was ruled rejected as it was a corollary to Art. 32 Prop.
A, which was rejected.
Van Rijckevorsel’s proposal
[The proposal was submitted electronically and read:
“Note n. Given that names above the rank of family are often used by different authors
for taxa with quite different circumscriptions, it often is desirable to indicate
in what sense the name is used.
Ex. n. Differently circumscribed taxa which may be indicated by the same name, and
which may be recognized by citing the author(s) who circumscribed the taxon:
Magnoliidae
sensu Dahlgren, 1980 [= dicotyledons];
Magnoliidae
sensu Cronquist, 1981 [= basal angiosperms];
Magnoliidae
sensu Chase & Reveal, 2009 [= angiosperms];
Magnoliidae
sensu Stuessy, 2010 [= magnoliids].”].
Van Rijckevorsel wished to put forward a new proposal. He quite liked the basic premise
of Brummitt’s piece, which was that names above the rank of family were often very
different in circumscription depending on the author who used them. As circumscriptions
differed very strongly he felt it would be useful to put a Note and an Example to
that effect in Art. 16. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Gereau pointed out that it was already possible to indicate the circumscription in
which the use of the name was understood by saying “sensu some author”. He saw absolutely
no need to write it into the Code as it was already common practice, well understood
and it operated at all ranks. It had nothing to do with being above the rank of family,
so he thought the proposal was trivial and should be rejected.
McNeill noted that it would actually be a Recommendation rather than a Note and that
could be above the rank of family.
Van Rijckevorsel’s proposal was rejected.
Recommendation 16A
Prop. A (83: 17: 7: 4).
McNeill outlined that the proposal was, in addition to having the endings phyta and
mycota, that phycota should be included in Rec. 16A. He reported that the Rapporteurs
thought it desirable and the mail vote was 83 to 17 in favour.
Prop. A was accepted.
Recommendation 16B
Prop. A (47: 55: 8: 0) was ruled rejected as it was a corollary to Art. 32 Prop. A,
which was rejected.
Article 18
Prop. A (10: 89: 9: 0) was ruled rejected.
Prop. B (8: 9: 91: 0).
McNeill noted that Art. 18 Prop. B was substantially editorial, offering a clear and
more structured wording for a rather lengthy Art. 18.1, and could be referred to the
Editorial Committee. He reported that that was generally the feeling of the mail vote,
which was 91 votes in favour of referral to the Editorial Committee. It involved some
wording from Prop. A, which had just been rejected, but he assured the Section that
that would be taken care of by the Editorial Committee.
Prop. B was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (37: 48: 20: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. C paralleled one that had already been rejected, under Art.
16 Prop. D.
Reveal reminded members of the Section that autonyms were not permitted above the
rank of genus.
McNeill agreed that they were not allowed because there was no provision in the Code
to use them, so they did not exist.
Prop. C was rejected.
Prop. D (11: 75: 21: 0).
McNeill noted that the proposal had received quite a substantial “no” vote, 11 for
and 75 against, in the mail vote. It was proposing to move into the body of the Code
material from the introduction to App. IIB and, as the Appendices were indeed part
of the Code, he suggested that it might be unnecessary. The Rapporteurs had suggested
that, if it was deemed desirable to move it, the placement was inappropriate, but
that was an editorial matter and need not affect discussion.
[Aside discussion about memory sticks, file names and there being no need to panic.]
McNeill continued that the issue was that, whereas the family names in IIB were not
conserved against any other particular name, there were situations in which some of
these names competed, and there the process of conservation was essentially the same
as would be the case for other names where they were conserved against a particular
name. Just the method by which this was indicated in App. IIB was slightly different,
in the sense that there was a note under the two names indicating which one was to
be given precedence.
Alvarado felt that, as the Appendices would no longer be together with the Code, at
least in the printed form, it would be a good idea to give some information about
the Appendices within the printed Code.
Prop. D was rejected.
Reveal wondered how the Editorial Committee proposed to handle the situation where
a person might have a small copy of the Code and then an independently published,
or perhaps only electronically published, Appendix with the information only there.
McNeill acknowledged that this was a real issue and thought that the simplest route
given the vote “no” would be to reprint the introduction to the Appendices as an appendix
to the main body. But he noted that this was something that could be looked at and
it was just an off-the-top-of-his-head response.
Reveal felt that the Section had just voted that very idea down.
McNeill disagreed, explaining that what the Section had voted down was the inclusion
in Art. 18 of that particular clause in a particular place. If it were felt that there
was information that would be lost by the Appendices being in a separate work he suggested
one possibility could be to reprint what appeared as the introduction as a small appendix
to the main body.
Knapp welcomed everybody back after afternoon tea with a couple of little announcements.
She reported that Larry Dorr had fortunately finally arrived after a rather epic journey,
and he had brought the nice copy of the in memoriam book, which he and Dan Nicolson
had prepared. She thanked Larry for the much nicer bound copy than the kind of rather
lame printout that she had produced on the first day and let the Section know that
it would be on the registration desk for people to look at and asked that any additions
be sent to the e-mail address in the introduction at the Hunt Botanical Institute.
Prop. E (31: 83: 2: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. E was the core part of a package of three proposals [Art.
18 Prop. E–G]. He reported that they had received rather negative votes in the mail
vote: 72% “no”; 72% “no”; 71% “no”, but as they were less than 75% they were open
to discussion. He summarized that the proposal was essentially a mechanism by which
the names of long standing,
Compositae
,
Gramineae
,
Leguminosae
etc., would no longer be permitted. He highlighted that the mechanism proposed was
quite elegant, in that it retained the priority that rested in names such as
Gramineae
and
Umbelliferae
and conferred this onto
Poaceae
and
Apiaceae
, priority that they would not otherwise have had. So he felt that it was workable.
He explained further that the proposal was to ban the use of the names of long standing,
as opposed to the situation where either was allowed and in which there was in many
parts of the world a great tendency to form names on the basis of the genus that included
the type, therefore
Poaceae
or
Brassicaceae
rather than the names of long standing. The proposal intended to ban those names of
long standing and to stick with the aceae alternatives rather than permit gradual
atrophy or an ability to choose.
Gereau invoked Principle IV of the Code: “Each taxonomic group with a particular circumscription,
position and rank can bear only one correct name, the earliest that is in accordance
with the Rules” and then what he felt was a weak little “except in specified cases”.
He felt that the Section really needed to ask, why specify these cases? He recounted
that every time he taught botany in Africa, students asked him “You told us groups
can only have one name, but why were there two names for this?”. He said “Well, because
these were all traditional names that we keep around because of tradition”. They said
“Why don’t you get rid of them?”. He said “We keep trying”. He argued that it was
desirable to have monophyletic families and wondered why it was not possible to make
them mononomic as well.
Alvarado thought that it was important to keep names like
Gramineae
because there have been more than 200 years of botanical nomenclature in which those
family names have been preserved. He worried that generations in the future would
not understand clearly what was meant when they read the works of the past. He felt
it was important to keep the two variants. He also made the point that the golden
age of alpha-taxonomy happened during the time when the names in question were used
and therefore thought it would be better to retain them.
Demoulin was surprised the proposal had been rejected with such a wide majority but
felt it should still be discussed. He had just observed the beautiful big book named
Compositae
[edited by Funk & al., published by IAPT in 2009] during the tea break, which meant
it was not only the time of the ancient people that used the alternative names.
Funk pointed out that over 70% of the mail vote went against the proposal. She felt
that meant most people who taught liked the names and wanted to keep them and she
did not think it was up to the Section to shove such a change down the throats of
people who did not want it. Personally she also thought it made a great exam question
for taxonomy! She warned that it would be extremely confusing to get rid of at least
two of the names, the
Leguminosae
and the
Compositae
, because they were frequently used. Especially in the legumes because it really was
confusing in that family without a
Leguminosae
to clearly indicate all three of the subfamilies. She used
Compositae
frequently, never using
Asteraceae
, and she felt there were a lot of taxonomists who liked the name
Compositae
as it was descriptive and easier to explain to a student than
Asteraceae
.
Sennikov added his opinion as someone who had worked with
Asteraceae
for 25 years and never used
Compositae
instead. He did not see any harm for the two variants to be legally allowed and made
a plea to leave people to choose between them. He understood that it was highly convenient,
for example, for databasing to have a single variant and to have standardized endings.
He suggested allowing that practice make the choice.
Lewis thanked Funk and fully supported
Compositae
as well. He continued in a “beancentric” vein for a minute, outlining that it had
always been argued that
Leguminosae
was a preferable name to the alternative
Fabaceae
for the reason that
Fabaceae
was very ambiguous. He explained that when people referred to the legumes, there were
three families—
Papilionaceae
was one of them, but the alternative was
Fabaceae
. When they refer to those three units together, an alternative of
Leguminosae
is again
Fabaceae
. So
Fabaceae
was ambiguous and
Leguminosae
was not. Until everybody started writing their floras with one family only, he contended
that
Leguminosae
was a better term.
Prop. E was rejected.
Funk exclaimed “ Hot damn!” [Laughter.]
McNeill noted that the next two proposals were essentially automatically defeated,
in the sense that they were totally dependent on the Section having passed Prop. E.
Prop. F (30: 84: 2: 0) and G (31: 83: 3: 0) were ruled rejected as they were corollaries
to Art. 18 Prop. E, which was rejected.
[A new proposal concerning Art. 18 was included as part of Wiersema’s set of proposals
relating to illegitimate family names, and the discussion can be found under the Tenth
Session on Friday afternoon.]
Article 19
Prop. A (70: 27: 5: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. A as dealing with the issue that, as the Code was currently
structured, it was possible for the correct name of a subdivision of a family to be
based on different generic names depending on its rank, e.g. that of subfamily or
tribe, according to priority. The proposal was a mechanism to try to minimize, if
not totally abolish, the issue utilizing the list of conserved names. He noted that
it was helpful for spermatophytes if the name of a subdivision of a family that included
the type of a name listed in App. IIB was conserved against all unlisted names. In
other words, that meant that, as in the Example [of Prop. B], in
Rosaceae
the name of the subfamily that included
Malus
would be
Maloideae
because
Malaceae
was the conserved name, even though
Pyroideae
was an earlier name than
Maloideae
. He summarized that it would mean that also the tribal name would be based on the
same generic name. He concluded that it seemed to be quite a sensible proposal and
added that proposals B and C were Examples.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (51: 28: 22: 0) and C (52: 29: 23: 0) were ruled referred to the Editorial
Committee.
Talent made the suggestion that the Editorial Committee could consider adding
Spiraeoideae
to the Example in Prop. B, as the fact that
Maloideae
had been subsumed into
Spiraeoideae
was more of an issue than
Pyroideae
.
McNeill thought that would be very helpful and requested that she send a note about
the addition by e-mail.
Prop. D (38: 66: 3: 1).
McNeill moved on to Prop. D, which he described as a close corollary to what had just
been defeated with regard to abandoning names like
Compositae
and
Leguminosae
. The proposal would just preclude the use of
Papilionoideae
as a subfamily name, so technically it could be considered. He pointed out that as
the Section had defeated the other proposal it would be a little anomalous to support
this one.
Demoulin reminisced that it was this point that, at the Sydney Congress, prompted
Meikle to say that it was one of the small peculiarities that made the Code interesting
and enjoyable.
Knapp felt that was a very helpful comment.
Prop. D was rejected.
Prop. E (21: 62: 25: 0) was ruled rejected as it was a corollary to Art. 18 Prop.
E and Art. 19 Prop. D, which had been rejected.
[A new proposal concerning Art. 19 was included as part of Wiersema’s set of proposals
relating to illegitimate family names, and the discussion can be found under the Tenth
Session on Friday afternoon.]
Article 20
Prop. A (8: 87: 17: 1) was ruled rejected.
Prop. B (7: 82: 23: 1) was ruled rejected as it was an Example relevant to Art. 20
Prop. A, which was rejected.
Article 22
Prop. A (18: 89: 3: 1) was ruled rejected.
Prop. B (25: 10: 74: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 23
Prop. A (32: 56: 17: 0).
McNeill moved to Art. 23 Prop. A, which was the matter of which epithets were declinable
and which were not. He did not think that the proposer was present. He explained that
the Code, very wisely he felt, had a number of examples of names such as those ending
in cola, which people might think you should decline but were in fact nouns in apposition.
The proposal was trying to expand this and make clear those that were adjectival and
those that were substantive.
Gereau felt that the proposal suffered from being both overly prescriptive and partly
wrong. He continued that in all botanical tradition cola was always treated as a noun
in apposition. To his knowledge fuga had always been declined as an adjective as in
febrifugum. He did not know for sure about gena but there were a number of linguistic
errors included and he strongly felt that the excessive prescriptiveness of it was
really not desirable.
Challis agreed and added, regarding the epithets ending in gena, that they had been
used as nouns but had also been used often as adjectives.
Harley also agreed and did not want to descend to dog Latin, preferring to stick by
what already existed. He advocated forgetting the proposal.
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (14: 16: 79: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Turland questioned whether Prop. B was entirely an Example and supposed that it was
up to the Editorial Committee to decide whether the proposal was correct in its assertion
that these were nouns.
McNeill pointed out that that was what the Editorial Committee did—look at Examples
and check their suitability. First it was checked to make sure they did in fact reflect
the rules of the Code. Secondly, whether they were helpful or whether there were already
half a dozen Examples dealing with the same topic was assessed. If an Example did
not follow the Code, then it would not be included, and there was some suggestion
here that the proposal may be in that category.
Prop. C (6: 47: 57: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. C, which arose from what the Rapporteurs thought was an over-literal
interpretation of one of the inclusions in the Vienna Code of the requirement that
the letters of the Latin alphabet be used for scientific names. The recommendation
of the Rapporteurs was that it could be referred to the Editorial Committee for action,
depending on the outcome of another proposal relating to Art. 32.1. He reported that
the mail vote tended to support the idea that it go to the Editorial Committee: six
in favour, 47 against and 57 recommending that it be referred to the Editorial Committee.
Van Rijckevorsel agreed that the two proposals were linked as they were both on Roman
numerals but given the mail vote, he decided to withdraw both of them. He commented
that reading Roman numerals as letters did not make any sense to him. He gave the
example that if you have a clock with Roman numerals, you do not say “It’s I o’clock”
or “It’s half past XI”. He felt that a numeral was a numeral, no matter what anybody
else said.
Prop. C was withdrawn.
Article 28
Prop. A (15: 12: 84: 0), B (13: 9: 87: 0), C (15: 8: 86: 0) and D (16: 8: 85: 0).
McNeill felt that Art. 28 Prop. A was a very useful editorial modification because
the more recent edition of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants
provided for not just cultivars, but other terms, the “group” for example. This was
a proposal that the botanical Code take account of those changes. He reported that
the series of proposals: A, B, C and D had had strong support to be referred to the
Editorial Committee.
Knapp suggested, in the absence of comments, that the Section vote to send the series
of four proposals to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. A, B, C and D were referred to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp reported that the Section could discuss the issues associated with Art. 29,
which was electronic publication, for half an hour at the end of the day’s session
starting at 17:00, and put off the vote on those proposals until the following morning
after people had had time to think about it and discuss it together.
McNeill clarified that this would apply to all proposals from Art. 29 through to Art.
31, apart from those that had already been defeated by more than 75% of the mail vote.
[The following general discussion about electronic publication took place at the end
of the Fourth Session on Tuesday afternoon.]
Electronic publication discussion
Knapp introduced a half-hour or 40-minute discussion like that on the first day on
Acacia
, not on the particularities of the voting, but a more general discussion about electronic
publication. She called on someone who was on the Special Committee on Electronic
Publication to start the discussion.
Karen Wilson began by saying that this was the third time that she had stood before
a Nomenclature Section talking about electronic publication. This time she thought
that the technology had matured so much more and people were getting much more used
to publishing in electronic journals in particular, and she thought the Special Committee
had come up with some very good recommendations, which she hoped everyone had read.
Her feeling was that a lot of the issues that people felt strongly about, including
the members of the Committee, had been addressed, not only in the actual set of recommendations,
but in the report of the Committee.
She described it as a broad Committee of 25 members drawn not just from botanists,
but from people who specialized particularly in electronic communication, from the
library and archiving world, and there had been wide consultation with other people
in those sorts of areas. She reported that the result was a unanimous vote on the
proposals to be made, one person had disagreed with a couple of the proposals, but
he actually abstained rather than voting against.
She conveyed a very strong feeling in the Committee that now was timely and that if
care was not taken, if a way was not found to accommodate electronic publication in
the Code, then it could lead to trouble because people would do it anyway. She reported
that at her institution in Sydney, the library was already starting to receive copies
of papers from people who said “Here’s one of my 10 copies that I’m depositing in
the library because I’ve published it electronically” she referred to Knapp, who had
already published some new species electronically and deposited copies into libraries.
She noted that librarians were going to hate taxonomists for this because they really
loathe having mini-publications to have to deal with.
[Break for end of recording.]
Karen Wilson resumed, addressing the issue of where people should be able to publish.
Some people in the group felt that ISBN was acceptable as well as ISSN, but most of
the Committee felt quite strongly that it should be restricted to the more mainstream
publications like journals, so there was more chance of the nomenclatural novelties
being found.
She noted that as the Committee had looked at a whole lot of the issues, they had
raised questions about durability, longevity, immutability—such as how to make sure
people did not change an electronic publication. She outlined that for other issues
like the format, they had looked at what the Zoological Code had done in terms of
going for a portable medium and said “no way, that’s not really feasible these days,
we should go online, and that’s where things will get archived as well”.
Some people had questioned the date of publication, but she thought it was easier
to assign a date of publication for an electronic journal than for a hard copy.
Regarding the immutability and the format, she stated that the Committee was particularly
exercised as to how to talk about format and how to avoid talking about particular
pieces of software, but they had found that there was an ISO standard for archiving—a
form of PDF called PDF/A. She highlighted that the benefit of PDF was that even though
it was developed by Adobe, they had made it freely available because they wanted the
world to use it and there were many programs, pieces of software, that allowed creation
of a PDF or could read a PDF. An added bonus was that within a PDF the fonts were
embedded and digital signatures could be included so that it was possible to check
whether anyone had tried to fiddle with what was written and change it. She acknowledged
that it was impossible to stop someone who was really determined from changing things,
but it would be apparent in a PDF whether someone had done that. She mentioned that
since 2005 PDF had been an ISO standard.
The technology in the field of archiving was improving all the time, she asserted,
continuing that there were a lot of international archives and national archives,
whether associated with groups such as the National Library of Australia or any other
country, or private groups for that matter, or industry areas.
In answer to the people who were saying “What about peer review?” she argued that
electronic journals, if publication was just restricted to them, would presumably
still have the same standards that they had in hard copy.
The date of effective publication, as she had already mentioned, should be quite clearly
recognizable from when an article was put up on the web. She admitted that the distinction
between preliminary and final versions was an issue, but some journals were already
making it very clear: preliminary versions of papers put on the web often very clearly
say “This is preliminary”, with the later version saying “This is the final version”.
She felt that if that was included as a Recommendation the journals should identify
which was the final version and that would become the norm, if it was not, in fact,
already.
Another issue was pagination, in terms of how to deal with knowing what page something
was published on. She noted that in general PDFs, particularly from journals, included
pagination, and the Committee did not see it as an issue because the Code did not
actually specify that you had to have pagination. She suggested that that was probably
thanks to Miller and some of the early dictionaries, which did not have any pagination.
She highlighted that the benefit with PDFs was that they could be easily searched,
so how to find things was no longer an issue, as it might have been in the past.
She outlined that the Committee had come up with 11 proposals, which would not be
gone through as the discussion was intended to be generally about the issues involved.
The Committee felt that the main proposal would be to limit the effective publication
to publication in PDF in an online journal with an ISSN. She explained that the Committee
had subsidiary proposals that would aim to forbid alterations and to discount preliminary
versions, plus recommendations on best practice in archiving, immutability and clear
designation of which was the final version.
She pointed out that half of the Committee was actually in the audience, and some
of them were more informed than her in some of the aspects of what they had come up
with. She thought it was a very good report, which was drafted by Arthur Chapman and
Mark Newman and Nicholas Turland, who she felt had done an excellent job in setting
out all their quite extensive discussions.
Lendemer introduced himself as the editor of Opuscula Philolichenum, a journal that
published new taxa in lichenized fungi and lichenicolous fungi and explained that
the journal had been publishing primarily electronically, with a limited print distribution
of 50 copies or fewer, for the last nine years, a longer period than most people,
apparently. He thought that the proposals should be voted down, and enumerated three
main reasons why, adding that he was a little passionate about this issue.
First of all, he thought it was really important to point out that, even though this
Committee was composed of any number of people, as far as he was aware no editors
of journals that were actually doing electronic publication were involved. He pointed
out that his journal was cited in the report of the Committee but he had never been
contacted. He had contacted the editors of other journals that were cited in the report
and they were also not contacted. He thought that while they were cited as examples
of what was happening, they actually had considerably more nuanced opinions and could
have offered some interesting and unique viewpoints that might have potentially influenced
the outcome of what was written in the report.
Second, he really felt that the argument for electronic publication came down to a
feeling that the current requirement for a print copy or a printed distribution was
really imposing a burden on people and the entire system and that it was preventing
taxonomists from publishing new names. In reality, he did not feel like this imposed
a burden and gave the example that limited print distribution had been being dealt
with for more than two centuries and he did not see why it was a problem now.
Third, he thought electronic publication was already being done. He argued that the
vast majority of journals were read online, or at least a lot of journals have gone
online and were probably read more frequently online as PDFs or some other electronic
format, more so than a paper copy.
Janarthanam was also involved with running a journal on behalf of the Indian Association
for Angiosperm Taxonomy. He agreed with the previous speaker, who he felt had raised
pertinent points. He felt that it was one thing to go for hard copy and put soft copy
online, but shifting completely to soft copy was a different thing.
He did not know how difficult it was to get an ISSN but did not think it was that
difficult, potentially allowing a lot of spurious publications. He was worried about
good reviewing procedures and his feeling was that it would open up Pandora’s box.
His second point was that if the Section chose to support electronic publication completely,
IAPT should probably come out with some actual policy on its own. He did not feel
that the community could compete with the private agencies who were publishing.
Herendeen was strongly in favour of the set of proposals and he thought it made great
sense. He believed that many of the flaws that were evident in the previous attempts
at this had been solved successfully in the set of proposals this time, and he thought
it was really important that this move ahead. He believed that the requirements that
were suggested were more restrictive than the requirements that were currently in
place for paper publication. In fact, the requirements that were in the set of proposals
did not make it any easier to get names into circulation than the current requirements
for names published on paper, and he did not think that was a valid concern.
In terms of the community’s access to these electronic publications, he thought in
general it would be easier. He pointed out that for institutions that could not afford
very expensive journals—and there were many very expensive journals that published
taxonomic names that many taxonomists did not have easy access to because the libraries
could not afford them—in many cases access to these electronic publications would
be easier and more affordable than comparable paper publications published by some
of the extortionist journals.
There was one thing to which he was anticipating hearing an objection and that was
the PDF requirement. PDF was here today, but who knew if PDF was going to be the preferred
format in 50 years. He suggested one way to accommodate this would be if the Section
could propose an amendment to the proposal that said something like “or successor
format”, to cover whatever the community standard was that replaced PDF at some point
in the future.
Ladiges wanted to make a comment from the point of view of publishers and journals
as she played a role in CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science’s stable of journals.
At various meetings of the board this kind of issue had been discussed because of
the great push to have more frequent issues of journals published electronically and
then only produce hard copies a couple of times per year. She reported that from a
very practical point of view of speed and saving trees and not having lots of different
issues published as hard copy, the general principle that had been enunciated for
this proposal would be really well-supported by the Australian stable of journals.
Alvarado thought that the Section needed to think ahead, say 350 years, because taxonomy
had been established for a long time and he felt it was important to think about what
would happen if all the current media did not work in the future. He thought it was
fine to have electronic publications but, at the same time, an institution should
be responsible for keeping a paper record of what was being published electronically.
He thought it would be especially good in some places, for example, to have a bunker-like
facility such as the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum in London, because
that would prevent all that information from being lost. He suggested that even if
there was a collapse in civilization, all that information would be there ready for
future generations.
Knapp made a Chair’s comment that she thought we [i.e. the Section] would probably
collapse first.
Glen had had the privilege of being part of the Committee, and confirmed that they
did actually discuss what the previous speaker had to say. A fact that they took into
consideration was that they knew of at least three national state archive organizations
that were archiving electronic data for reading in the future, for example in 350
years. This was happening daily in Australia, the Netherlands, and Sweden that he
knew of personally. It was all going into the PDF/A format, which the Committee had
said it wished to adopt, and the archiving organizations—the national archives of
the countries mentioned—had undertaken to maintain the documents in readable format
into the indefinite future. He really did not see this as a problem.
Thiele noted that, of the objections that had been raised, he personally found that
most of them did not sway him, except that he asked the Committee to respond to the
one objection that was made that this would lead to a proliferation of essentially
junk electronic journals.
Kirk had been involved in processes that included abstracting the literature, so had
some experience of peer review, and his comment was always “Peer review is a myth”.
He argued that the floodgates would not open if the Section chose to go down the path
that the proposals suggested. He added an example that in the last three years he
knew of four new journals that had started in India publishing nomenclatural novelties
in fungi that were not peer reviewed outside India and unfortunately, in his humble
opinion with no offence intended, some of the taxonomic judgments had been somewhat
lacking, such that peer review was not working in that instance. He did not see how
it was different between ink on paper and PDF/A and concluded that the floodgates
would open if they wished to open.
Dorr had made the original proposal for electronic publication 18 years ago and also
served as a member of the Committee. He had voted for everything although he did not
agree with all of the proposals, but he wanted them to be discussed on the floor.
Since then, two things had concerned him: one was the reliance on ISSN, which he felt
was fine for establishing whether something was validly published or not, but for
the enduser who was trying to determine whether or not a name was valid and it was
available for that person to use, it could be extremely difficult to establish whether
or not an article had an ISSN. He had noticed that in a number of papers that were
published in PDF, in non-electronic journals, with ISSNs, the ISSN was not always
printed on the reprint making it very difficult for the enduser. He noted that it
was easy to solve the problem for the criteria for valid publication but for the person
that had to decide whether or not something had been validly published, he felt this
could be a problem without the resources that he commanded.
The second thing echoed something mentioned earlier: given that it had taken 18 years
to get to this point, given that the Nomenclature Section only meets once every six
years, if a format was chosen that failed or proved difficult, some sort of stopgap
measure would be needed that allowed the problem to be corrected in the interim. He
thought that if the wrong choice was made and Pandora’s box was opened up it could
lead to a lot of difficulty in five or six years, but if there was some mechanism
for trying to put the lid back on he thought it would be better.
Norvell was also editor-in-chief of Mycotaxon, which published four volumes annually,
comprising around 20 to 100 pages and covering about 250 manuscripts. This year in
January, she reported that they had converted, with the expectation that these proposals
would go in the Congress, to an online journal. They were still submitting their bound
volumes to selected libraries.
She described a number of things that they had encountered and really liked: one was
that on each and every article the ISSN was used and they had also specified use of
a DOI [digital object identifier] number, which meant that the publication or PDF
file would always be freely obtainable by typing in the DOI, securing that the PDF
file could be found independently of a disappearing website, which was one of the
concerns.
She gave economics as the reason that the journal that was founded in 1973 by Richard
Korf had moved from a strictly hard print copy. She added that she was a bibliophile
who loved hard print and, as a bribe, Dick [Korf] was giving her her own bound volume,
which still landed on her desk with a solid thump, which was what she wanted. Returning
to her main point, she noted that libraries were discontinuing subscriptions and the
journal had a rather small readership making it much cheaper to publish online, in
the order of several thousand dollars difference. The journal could not afford the
postal charges, because they keep rising and they were losing subscribers. Since the
change she added that unfortunately the submissions were going up, not down as they
had anticipated. In conclusion she was very much in favour of the proposals.
Gams noted that there were quite a few journals that published their papers online
before the printed hard copy and, according to the proposals, the date of the online
publication would now count, contrary to the previous situation, which had been from
the moment where the hard copy was available.
He felt that pagination was certainly not superfluous, especially when citing a basionym
for a new combination where it was crucial to have pagination. He wondered if this
would now require having a DOI number, printing it on paper and manually counting
to see that the species was published on page 17.
Sennikov wanted to analyse the situation from the pragmatic point of view, because
in his opinion there was only one question that was really practical: either having
electronic publication with paper deposits or having regulated electronic publication
without paper deposits. He added that what would be decided was those deposits would
be made and put in public libraries or not. He felt that this was the plain fact that
was the consequence of the practice that was already established. In his opinion this
would make the paper deposits the most obscure type of paper publications that had
ever appeared, because they appeared in minimal number of copies and he questioned
the accessibility of the paper deposits, should you believe that they gave proof of
valid publication of the name and that the text was unchanged.
Recently he had asked the editor of the exclusively electronic periodical Forum Geobotanicum
about effective publication. The journal was published in Germany, not India, and
a number of nomenclatural novelties had been published. The answer he had received
was, yes, you make paper deposits. He then sent a request to receive one of their
official publisher’s paper deposits but received no answer.
He returned to the question of junk electronic journals, but felt that there were
already plenty of junk paper journals. He felt that it may happen that grey publishing
would be produced by electronic publishing but, at the same time, currently he felt
it was an easy possibility to publish whatever, wherever, and whoever can do that.
He noted that Constantine Rafinesque had had difficulty in publishing his books 108
years ago because he needed to invest a lot of money to produce thousands of his novelties.
He gave the example of needing just €100 to publish a book nowadays by any internet
publisher like Google, and it would be deposited in 10 copies somewhere, so it would
be possible to publish a good deal of junk in this way and it would be all validly
published.
He thought it was really a pragmatic matter and that nothing would change for the
worse should the Section approve legality of electronic publication. He added that
there would just be benefits and could not see that anything could get worse.
Kellermann noted that anybody could get an ISSN so he thought that putting an ISSN
or ISBN into the Code did not guarantee quality. He gave the example that he could
go to the National Library, fill out a form and then have an ISSN to publish Jürgen’s
Journal of New Names.
Reveal had been out of university administrations for 12 years and wanted to know
how many of those present had, within their university, policies for promotion and
tenure provisions that allowed electronic publications. He noted that at Cornell it
was not permitted, while at Maryland it was permitted. So he thought that young people
needed to look very carefully at where they published or put a requirement in that
all electronic publications have hard copies mandated.
Paton told his children that he was coming to a conference to talk about plant names,
so he suggested that they already thought he was an old, irrelevant git. He admitted
to having difficulty relating to them, and went on to say that it was going to be
six years before the Section would get to talk about this subject again. His argument
was that, given there was a high demand for information on the internet, if the taxonomic
community did not provide a mechanism for others to publish information on the internet,
it would look old and irrelevant.
Penev from PhytoKeys, also a publisher, wished to stress three points.
First, today’s print version was not the print version from 10 years ago. Anyone could
print one or two perfect-looking copies of a print version. He felt that this was
not a proof of good distribution, nor a proof that a print version was sustainable,
but it was just a proof to satisfy the Code. He argued that existence of the print
version was not a bad thing, but it should not be a criterion for effective publication
anymore.
The second thing he wished to point out was that when electronic publications were
referred to, it was really important to set very strong criteria for that. He agreed
that anyone could get an ISSN, but anyone could also get an ISSN and make a print
journal in copies so that was not a change. He felt that a DOI number—especially a
CrossRef DOI number—on each article was really essential to have, and also a very
strong archival policy for electronic journals, for example to recommend archival
in at least one ISO- (International Standards Organization) certified repository,
because there were also institutional repositories, say of smaller universities, which
probably would not exist in some years.
He strongly supported allowance of electronic publications, and the question was really
pragmatic, whether all electronic publication should be allowed, and should the date
of electronic publication be the date of availability of the taxon, He felt that this
was really important because it made the system more efficient.
Cantrill noted that one of the things that was being faced at the moment in this realm
and in this country [Australia] was that the Government was very focused on accessibility
for people with disabilities. There was legislation in place that would mean things
like PDFs were not compliant, and so it was illegal to put those up without having
all the other disability access to those sorts of articles. He reported that it was
a real issue also happening in other countries around the world. He suggested that
part of the solution meant dealing with some of those issues. He gave the example
of the BHL [Biodiversity Heritage Library] Australian node site, where all the articles
were available in three or four different formats to comply with disability accessibility
provisions covered under legislation.
Gandhi had a very minor comment about lack of page numbers that were required in the
citation of basionyms. As Karen Wilson had already mentioned, the basionyms that came
from Miller’s 1754 work or 1768 work or even Rees’s Cyclopaedia had no page numbers
but were still basionyms of valid names, as long as the full bibliography was given.
Barkworth responded to Reveal’s comment that the question that came up at her institute
was what was the importance value in one of those indexes as a measure of importance
of a journal, rather than how it was published. So she did not think that one [that
the publication was electronic rather than printed] was of particular concern to the
young people coming up.
Knapp asked for other comments and was excited that it was a young person! [Laughter.]
She suggested from then on to choose speakers based on age.
Flann felt that electronic publication was basically an inevitable direction that
the Section would have to deal with. She argued that journals were simply going electronic
for economic reasons. She thought it was admirable that those in the room with journals
deposited their print copies, but did not feel that the Section could assume that
all of the other journals, especially the larger ones, which were not entirely nomenclaturally
based, were going to do that over the next six years.
The other issue she brought up was that the Code was a living thing and there would
probably be issues that would come up and they would need to be ironed out, but the
Section did not have to wait 350 years to solve any issues that arose. She supported
the proposals.
Crane wanted to make a comment about institutional subscriptions to e-journals. He
reported that in the heyday of the University of Illinois, it purchased 39,000 hard
copies of journals, and gradually they were whittled down and whittled down until
they were now buying electronic journals in packages, which meant that a journal that
you use or might need would not be available to you. It was obvious to him that everyone
could not subscribe to all of these e-journals personally and would have to depend
on institutions. He wondered how to get around this problem. He gave the example of
the Canadian Journal of Botany and his institution cancelling the e-journal. Would
the institute hold the back issues of the electronic journals or would they lose everything?
This was not clear to him. He added that for some e-journals, only abstracts were
available because of copyright. These were problems that he felt needed to be solved.
Marhold returned to the argument that journals could print copies and send them to
libraries. He agreed that this may be true when it concerned taxonomic journals or
journals that published taxonomic novelties in each paper. But he made the point that
there were a lot of journals in which taxonomic novelties would appear only from time
to time, and they would not be willing to publish whole volumes and send them to libraries.
He concluded that the result was that the individual author should take just his own
paper and send it to libraries. As many people had stressed, he agreed that the libraries
were very unhappy with that. He added that the likelihood of being able to trace these
papers, even in the reputable libraries, was low. He agreed with the fact that the
requirement for a few copies of often individual papers sent to several libraries
was useless because these libraries would have no capacity—even if they had the goodwill—to
catalogue all the minor items that would come every day.
May strongly supported the proposal, and agreed with Flann that there may be some
working out, and it would form a foundation for further progress.
In terms of access to descriptions he acknowledged that at the moment if you did not
have an electronic subscription you could not get access, but argued that was the
same if your institution did not have a print subscription in the past: some people
had access, some people did not. He suggested the direction to move in the future,
and gave the example of what mycology was starting to do: the deposition of the protologue
in an online repository, which was easier if the versions were already electronic,
and that was something to think about next time. He added that as more and more protologues
became electronic, it became easier to automatically lodge them in an open-access
repository, and suggested that would mean not having to worry about the subscription.
He saw the proposals as a step along the way, and agreed with Flann that some of the
details could be worked out.
[The following discussion took place in the Fifth Session on Wednesday morning.]
Before starting the discussion on the proposals made by the Special Committee on Electronic
Publication, Knapp clarified that the opportunity for discussion of the principles
of electronic publication had already been given to the Section and she was very clear
that the following discussion should be confined to the actual proposals that had
been put forward to change Art. 29. She warned that she would be quite fierce and
cut people off if the discussion digressed to general principles.
Article 29
Prop. A (92: 29: 0: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 29 Prop. A from the Special Committee on Electronic Publication.
This was the Article that dealt with what constituted effective publication and the
proposal was to add the provision that “Publication was also effected by electronic
distribution of material in Portable Document Form (PDF; see also…” including references
to Recommendations still to be discussed “in an online serial publication, with an
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)”. At the end of the Article detailing
how publication was not effected, the proposal added that a name was not effected
by distribution electronically other than described above.
Herendeen offered a friendly amendment to add the phrase “or its successor format”
after PDF was mentioned, so that in the future, when the standard moved from PDF to
something else, the Code would accommodate that.
Karen Wilson, as the Chair of the Committee, was quite happy with that, but altered
the wording to “successor standard format”, because she thought it was important to
make it clear that this was an international ISO standard and that anything in future
followed the same format.
Dorr suggested that since there were some 20-odd members of the Committee, it be agreed
that if an amendment was going to be ruled friendly or not Karen Wilson was the person
who decided, rather than soliciting all 20 involved.
Soreng proposed a friendly amendment to the amendment to add “accepted” successor,
so it was not just any successor that came up and the Section would have to vote on
it somehow. He suggested the wording “Or its accepted successor standard format by
this body” or whatever wording seemed suitable to the Editorial Committee He clarified
that by “this body” he meant IAPT.
McNeill thought that was actually the very reverse of what was proposed: that if there
was a successor in between Congresses that was an international standard the article
would still be effective, even if there was not an International Botanical Congress
to change it. He suggested that this was actually quite unnecessary, because if in
fact it was accepted by the Congress then it would be changed anyway meaning there
was no need to put that in. He added that talking about accepted meaning “accepted
by the publishing community generally”, was one thing, but if the intended meaning
was “accepted by a Botanical Congress”, then there was no need to include it in the
Code at the moment, because it would then be included when that new Code was produced.
Soreng saw perceived problems developing when the new standard came up and people
started using it, but it was not widely used.
Karen Wilson suggested that when she said “standard” she was thinking of the international
standard as set by ISO and an alternative would be to put “the standard ISO format”,
but she was not even sure whether it would be appropriate to put “international standard
format”. She continued that the ISO was a body that had been around forever and a
day, but wondered what the meeting thought about it.
McNeill suggested that the word “international” be put in at that point. [This was
considered a friendly amendment.] He added that it still had to be dealt with whether
“accepted” was being proposed as an amendment or not.
Herendeen replied that he had been going to suggest “industry” standard, but thought
“international standard” did the job just as well and his opinion was that the word
“accepted” was not necessary. He thought that an international standard would do the
job and acceptance by this body or IAPT could be less informed than where the industry
was going.
Knapp, as mentioned on various previous occasions, reiterated that she did not want
the Section to attempt to wordsmith proposals from the floor and felt it was quite
important to establish that precedent from the outset, because it was already starting
to occur to a certain extent.
McNeill asked the proposer of the word “accepted” if he still wished to insert it.
Soreng accepted the removal of “accepted”. [Laughter.]
Knapp summarized that the proposer of the word “accepted” accepted that “accepted”
could be deleted so all was very acceptable now.
Lendemer proposed an amendment to Art. 29 Prop. A.
Knapp read out that the amendment was “provided that the minimal requirements for
the distribution of printed matter outlined above are met”.
Lendemer noted that it also included adding “see Article”—and “see Rec. 30A.2”. [The
amendment was seconded.]
Barrie wondered how the amendment was different from the current wording.
McNeill agreed.
Greuter felt that it was such a fundamental amendment that it should have four seconders,
but as he also felt that they would be obtained he did not press that point.
He thought the amendment would make the thing not unworkable but very problematic,
because it dealt with conditions of effective publication that were basic for valid
publication. He argued that if the amendment was accepted it suggested that the condition
for electronic publication to be valid was that, simultaneously or later on, printed
matter was distributed, making effective publication dependant on a future event.
He felt this would cause many problems, some foreseeable, some perhaps unforeseeable,
for instance he wondered what would happen if, due to a mishap, the distribution did
not take place, although it had been announced. He added that it also raised the point,
not discussed here and not easily implemented, about the date of effective and valid
publication. He strongly advised against accepting the amendment.
Lendemer did not see it that way at all. He thought that it made pretty clear this
would essentially continue the process that already existed, basically acknowledging
that electronic publication was allowed under the Code, provided that the minimal
requirements for print distribution that were already set up and had been used for
the past 100 years—he corrected himself to say since Vienna—would continue to apply.
He did not see a conflict and added that any such conflict could be perceived as editorial,
at least with any of the future proposals that come up.
Stevens spoke on behalf of the librarians he had talked to about this and reported
that they were literally living in fear of having a few copies of journals or articles
sent to them as they basically did not know what to do with them. He felt that the
idea of a few printed copies being produced was a really bad compromise.
Dorr agreed with Greuter that too many contingencies meant that inevitably one of
the contingencies would not be met, leading to a lot of names that were debatable
as to whether or not they were valid, because somebody could only track nine copies
having been deposited. He asked, who was going to be able to ensure that the publisher
did distribute the 10 copies? What if they distributed nine? What if one of the libraries
did not accept them? He argued that it became unworkable as presented in the amendment
and it defeated the purpose of having electronic publication.
Buck contended what Stevens said. He admitted that there were certainly always going
to be lazy and crabby librarians. He noted, however, that in the last six years since
Vienna, articles had been distributed in this way, including Sandy [Knapp]’s articles.
At the New York Botanical Garden the library had accepted that this was the way libraries
were going. He suggested that if they were going to drag their feet, they were not
going to be a good library and they would have to accept that dealing with these electronic
and small-copy things was the future of libraries. He knew that his institution’s
library just put them in an archival folder, gave them a catalogue number and put
them on the shelf and there had been no problem with that whatsoever.
Marhold did not think this was current practice before the Vienna Congress. He noted
that if a journal was published traditionally there was at least some assurance that
it would be distributed to libraries, but he felt it would be silly to ask for any
requirements on distributing paper copies. He suggested it would be wise to enumerate
the libraries to which copies were sent as he argued that if this was not published
anywhere, in 20 years there would be no chance of finding whether the copies really
were distributed and whether it was effective and valid publication. He added that
maybe some libraries would regularly put sent articles on the shelf, if they had enough
staff and enough money, but he thought this issue was more relevant to local authors
sending copies to local libraries that were understaffed rather than the big libraries.
Kellermann agreed with the former speaker as he knew of lots of libraries that discarded
reprint collections, either because it was now on the Biodiversity Heritage Library
or available online elsewhere. He argued that an article might be lodged now, but
in 10 years there was no guarantee that the reprint would still be in the library
unless he suggested that “keep forever” was printed in red letters on them.
Magill wanted to say that this was no different to what had been done forever as the
Code already said that information had to be put into libraries. He wondered how in
the old days when they published a few copies, it was possible to know that those
were still there. He did not see any difference between what had been done in the
past and the amendment.
Redhead called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a 60% majority against so the amendment was rejected.]
Knapp returned the discussion to the proposal.
Hawksworth proposed an amendment to add “Or successor approved by the General Committee”.
Knapp reiterated the urge to avoid wordsmithing proposals. [The amendment was seconded.]
May felt that the decision about what an international standard format was should
be left to the appropriate bodies, not the General Committee. He also thought that
this raised the question of the time between the Congresses. He considered six years
a long time, as things were moving very fast in lots of areas. He supposed the General
Committee could meet in between.
Glen noted that this had been discussed in the Special Committee and the conclusion
was reached that PDF archival was an ISO standard and any future standard would include
the current standard. He personally believed that it was up to the ISO rather than
the General Committee to determine any modification to the standard.
McNeill explained why he seconded the proposal. It was to remove uncertainty on the
part of users as to whether in fact a particular standard would be that of valid publication.
He clarified that the General Committee did not meet, except electronically, and added
that it would make a decision once the standard had been approved in a matter of a
week or two. He felt that this was simply a matter of providing a clear indication
to the botanical community that an international standard had been accepted and had
replaced what was currently in Art. 29.
Funk requested an explanation of the difference between the General Committee and
the Bureau.
McNeill explained that the General Committee for Botanical Nomenclature, which would
be elected on the final day of the meeting, was the body that handled botanical nomenclature
between Congresses. It had nothing to do with the Bureau of Nomenclature of the Section.
Each Bureau was appointed by the International Botanical Congress that it served.
He elaborated that it was the organizers of the Melbourne Congress that appointed
the people here with the exception of the Rapporteur-général, who was appointed by
the Vienna Congress. In the same way the next Congress, wherever it be held, would
have a Rapporteur-général appointed by this Congress.
The General Committee was an ongoing body that was active throughout the sixyear period
from one Congress to another, if anything arose of importance to botanical nomenclature
between Congresses, it was the body that could handle it speedily. He added that that
was the reason for his supporting the suggestion of Professor Hawksworth. It would
be able to respond to a situation like this and advise the botanical community that
there was a new standard that was adopted by the International Standards Organization
and endorsed by botanical nomenclature.
Soreng wondered what would happen to PDFs if the successor or international standard
became accepted by the international community and the General Committee. Would they
remain acceptable, or would a move to the new format be necessary?
McNeill noted that most standards were backwardly compatible.
Glen explained that part of the definition of PDF/A was that it was backward compatible
and if there was a new standard, it would include being able to read the previous
standard or previous standards, plural. He did not see this as a problem.
Thiele understood John’s point exactly, that given that this was such an essential
issue for effective publication absolute clarity was needed as to whether a particular
standard was effective or not. He also agreed with the point that the General Committee
may not be the best body and expected that the General Committee would be a little
more than a rubberstamp of the ISO. He wondered whether, taking up Karen’s point,
the issue could be effectively devolved to the ISO by putting perhaps a footnote or
referring to the ISO standard within the Code so that there was entire clarity. He
argued that then whatever the ISO decided and as soon as the ISO decided on a successor
standard, that was by necessity the standard in the Code.
Hawksworth pointed out that it was conceivable that there would be more than one format
produced that met an ISO standard. He did not think it was reasonable to assume that
only one would actually exist, because that was not what happened in some other areas
of the ISO operation.
Barrie felt that the point of having the General Committee look at it was not that
the General Committee was going to evaluate as to whether or not it was a standard—he
was sure that the General Committee would look at the ISO standard and accept that—the
point was that the General Committee would look at it and approve it and communicate
it to the botanical community. He suggested that the crux of the issue would be an
announcement that said that the General Committee noted that there was a new standard
and it was the one to be followed, rather than critiquing it, unless the Committee
was a lot more qualified than he thought it was.
Paton wondered if it be better to change “approved” to “communicated”.
Hawksworth thought that it needed to be “approved”, because it was not possible to
know what ISO’s successors were going to be and he did not think it was possible to
assume there would only be one, because the ISO would have a minimal requirement for
a particular format, or there may be 10 different companies that put out things that
meet that one, all of which we may not feel were appropriate for systematic work.
He suggested it was limiting it too much by saying “the successor” and it should just
be left to the ISO.
Nic Lughadha suggested the friendly amendment to change “its” to “a”, and “approved”
to “communicated by” so it would read “Portable Document Format or a successor international
standard format communicated by the General Committee”. She felt that would leave
the General Committee open to approve and therefore communicate any number that it
considered acceptable of the potential successor formats. [The friendly amendment
was accepted by the proposer.]
Herendeen apologized for being thick, but did not understand why the “communicated
by the General Committee” needed to be added.
McNeill thought he had tried to explain why: that it should be clear to the botanical
community which formats were acceptable for publication when there was a successor,
and then it was simply a method of communicating that, and that was now enshrined
in this Article.
Herendeen supposed he did not see any harm in it.
Knapp summarized that the amendment was to have the General Committee involved. [The
amendment was accepted.] She returned discussion to the original proposal as so amended.
Redhead pointed out that the way it was phrased “or a successor”, opened up the possibility
that in the future PDFs may not be considered effective publication. He suggested
it was not desirable to de-validate names that were already validated, so he was going
to suggest “and any successor”.
McNeill thought it was a very good point, and it should be considered in looking at
whether the wording needed to be improved.
Knapp agreed that was a very good point that the Editorial Committee should take into
account.
Soreng was not sure where registration might play into this, but he felt that registration
should be a requirement for electronic publication, because there was going to be
a proliferation of journals.
Knapp asked if he was proposing an amendment to the proposal.
Soreng asked if it was the appropriate place to bring up registration. [Several mutters
of “no”.]
Knapp noted that yesterday in the discussion might have been an appropriate place
to bring it up. [Laughter.]
Soreng had wanted to bring it up yesterday, but had not been called on. He proposed
adding “for electronic publication to be effective, the individual names proposed
must be registered”. [The amendment was seconded.]
Karen Wilson noted that in the course of the Committee discussions, whether registration
should be considered as part of electronic publication had certainly been looked at.
She reported that the feeling was that it was a separate matter that should affect
all names, not just electronic names so it was not part of the remit of the Committee.
She added that it had been addressed in the report that went into Taxon. She personally
thought that some tracking device would be needed, but highlighted the existence of
IPNI for the vascular plants and noted that the mycologists had a proposal coming
up to deal with registration in a form, which was basically sending the information
to an indexing centre a bit like GenBank. She reiterated that there was no way that
the Committee felt as a group that it should be a requirement for electronic publication,
they did not think names should have to be registered first. She noted that it was
a matter of making sure that everyone knew where to find the names afterwards. She
added that she would be very unhappy to see it added, because she thought that it
was an inappropriate place and premature to put something like that in when there
was no process to actually deal with it fully. She listed a number of questions that
would be needed to consider: What would you do with fossil names? What would you do
with algal names? She pointed out that they did not have the same indexing centres
that the vascular plants and the mycologists are lucky enough to have.
Marhold was very much in favour of registration and thought it held not only for electronic
publishing, but also for various minor publications. He did not think that this was
the place for it in the Code nor that this was the Article where it should be discussed.
He added that there would be an Article about registration of fungal names and that
would be the appropriate place to discuss the registration of all names.
Janarthanam thought the intentions of the amendment were good, but wondered at what
stage they were supposed to register. Was it while sending for publication or after,
accepting publication or after?
Barrie was hoping the “R” word wouldn’t come up so fast, but it was a very complicated
issue and he did not think it was something that could be handled right here. He proposed
a Special Committee on Registration to look into the issue and all the ramifications
of it to report to the next Congress.
Knapp noted that would be done at the end of the Section.
Orchard agreed that it might not be the best place to put this amendment, but on the
other hand, given that this was the key Article that was going to regulate whether
or not we have electronic publication, he wished to know whether registration was
part of the deal or not before voting on it. He added that if it was not going to
be here, then some provision was needed to make sure that it was discussed as an initial
part of this process at a later date.
Karen Wilson referred to Rec. 29A, which would be considered shortly, and which was
a very strong recommendation that all effectively published electronic material be
archived, that it be placed in multiple online digital repositories, and preferably
in different places around the world. That was the implication because the Committee
was very conscious that people needed to be able to find the electronic names. She
added that with Google these days it would be a lot easier.
Barkworth noted that somebody had said earlier that registration would have to apply
to everything, not just electronically published names. She reiterated that this Article
was talking about electronic publication of names, and urged the Section not to muddle
the registration issue with this one at this time
Knapp moved to a vote on the amendment. [The amendment was rejected.]
Greuter missed one thing in the discussion. If the Section voted on this, he saw quite
a danger that names that were not so far effectively published would retroactively
become effectively published or publications would become effective. He thought in
fairness there should a startingpoint date inserted, which could be 1 August 2011,
after the Congress had ratified the Section decisions. He suggested that it was no
offence to anyone if it started then before the Code was published, but certainly
not before that date. His proposed amendment was “On and after 1 August 2011, publication
was also effected…”.
Turland pointed out that there actually was a starting date. Article 30 Prop. A proposed
to add a new Article to Art. 30: “Publication by distribution of electronic material
does not constitute effective publication before 1 January 2013”.
McNeill suggested that when that was discussed it could be considered whether the
date should be changed to an earlier one.
Greuter preferred it if it would be voted upon together.
[It was decided to discuss and vote on Art. 30 Prop. A before voting on Art. 29 Prop.
A. The proposal was accepted with an amended starting date of 1 January 2012. The
discussion is noted under Art. 30.]
Knapp returned the discussion to Art. 29 Prop. A, to re-word Art. 29.1.
Davidse suggested that the intent of the proposal was to limit electronic publication
to serial publications in contrast to books or one-off publications. However, he pointed
out that there was a whole genre of publications that was in between the two extremes.
He questioned whether the International Standard Serial Number was sufficient to differentiate
the in-between situations and wondered if that had been addressed.
Karen Wilson confirmed that the Committee did think hard about it and the feeling
was that they should put some restrictions on publication of electronic names to make
them more easily findable. She explained that that was the reason for saying ISSN
and added that there was a subsequent proposal to extend that to ISBN as well. She
continued that getting into other literature that did not have an ISSN or an ISBN
or the electronic equivalent probably meant they were publications that were not widely
distributed and not widely accessible to the taxonomic community. They were trying
to make sure that anything electronic was widely available to everyone. She reported
that the Committee had put the restriction on, because they did not think it would
be acceptable to taxonomists in general to have it open and just publish anywhere
for electronic publication. She suggested that there may be a much better system in
the future, but to start with they thought it was better to be cautious and to restrict
it, because the journals in particular did have a stake in making sure that they did
the right thing.
Janarthanam supported what Karen Wilson was expressing and proposed one more amendment:
adding the word “peer-reviewed” because he saw a problem in a lot of ISSN journals
that were not peer reviewed. [The amendment was seconded.]
Buck noted that they had intentionally discussed this in the Committee, but decided
because it was not required for hard copy journals it should not be required for electronic
journals.
McNeill agreed.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Whitbread felt that there was a very big difference between a portable document format
and archival portable document format and proposed that “archival” be added before
“portable document format” and “PDF/A” in the parentheses.
Karen Wilson responded that the Committee did consider that very seriously and added
that Rec. 29A Prop. A specifically said that there was a new Recommendation that “Publication
electronically in Portable Document Format should comply with the PDF/A archival standard
(ISO…” and the number of the standard. They thought that at this stage it was perhaps
best to leave it as a Recommendation, but make it very clear that they thought this
was what should be used.
Whitbread proposed the change as a formal amendment to add the words “archival” and
then to add “PDF/A”. His reasoning was because an ordinary PDF document allowed many
things such as encryption, inclusion of sound files and reference to external documents
and was therefore not integral to itself and could contain links to other things elsewhere
on the internet making it potentially dangerous. [The amendment was seconded.]
Kirk offered what he hoped would be a friendly amendment to the amendment—to capitalize
the letter “A” so that it was clear that it was the Archival Portable Document Format,
not an archival…
Barrie had a question for the Special Committee on Electronic Publication as to what
the disadvantages were of doing it this way.
Turland was on the Committee as well but had been keeping quiet because he wanted
to be impartial. He explained that when the Committee considered this one of the reasons
they included it as a strong Recommendation, rather than enshrining it in the rule,
was because it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for users of the Code to
discern whether a PDF was archival or not, and effective publication would, with this
amendment, depend on an archival quality of the PDF and not just a PDF. He elaborated
that recognizing a PDF was straightforward, but recognizing an archival PDF required
a certain amount of computer geekiness, for want of a better term.
Hollowell reported that the two journals, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden
and Novon, had tried to implement this a year ago, to change their reprints to PDF/A,
and it was just a matter of communicating how they wanted to embed the metadata. She
noted that it had worked just fine and simply required software with the latest update
with a menu option. They did not want security restrictions or patented compression
or JavaScript enabled and she offered a list if anybody wanted to see it. She concluded
that it was certainly feasible and had been done with both BioOne and Allen Press
successfully although those with an old version of Adobe PDF would have to upgrade.
She supported the more general PDF for now, with the PDF/A to be considered by the
Section.
Nic Lughadha felt that the issue was not whether it was possible to make them [PDF/A
files]; the issue was whether it was possible to spot them. She could spot a PDF but
would not know whether it was a PDF/A or not. She suggested the Section needed to
be able to decide whether something was effective and therefore valid in a straightforward
manner, without all becoming computer geeks.
Miller much preferred this as a Recommendation as he thought it was somewhat discriminatory
against people who did not have the most current software and were not able to do
this. He thought putting it in this place and making it a requirement would limit
the number of people that were able to do it effectively.
Bayly agreed that there was a difficulty with a user spotting the differences in the
types of PDF, but also knowing ahead of time what journals used as their standard
format for publishing was something that it would also be necessary to be aware of
and whether all journals would necessarily use the PDF/A format. He pointed out that
this involved imposing another restriction by making it part of this particular Article.
He supported this as being part of a Recommendation rather than this Article.
Thiele supported the amendment. He certainly took the view that it was difficult to
determine whether a document was archival or not, but felt that the archivability
of these documents was so important that right from the beginning of electronic publication
it should be mandated. He felt that it would lead to strife in the future with non-archival
publications if it was not mandated from the start.
Peter Wilson agreed with Bayly and wondered if the Section was in the position to
mandate that Springer, for example, would adopt this as they would have to adopt it
for their entire journal stable and he did not think the Section had the power to
force Springer to use PDF/A for their entire stable of journals.
Nelson queried whether, if this passed, it meant a name published not in the “A” format
[PDF/A] was not valid.
McNeill confirmed this was correct.
Knapp clarified that it would not be effectively published.
Nelson felt that that was a very severe restriction, which would not be transparent
to most people. He questioned how it was possible to have an invalid name that could
not be perceived to be invalid by the majority of botanists throughout the world and
concluded that it was not a good situation.
Whitbread argued that if you were going to say Portable Document Format, you might
as well say Word file or HTML file, because there was no guarantee that PDF file made
today would be readable even one year from now. PDF is not an international standard
format; only PDF/A is.
Karen Wilson was looking very hard here at the report, because the Committee certainly
did look into this. She was not sure that she agreed with Greg [Whitbread], but she
acknowledged that he knew the electronic area very well. Certainly the PDF/A was the
current international standard for long-term archiving, but she could not see that
in a year’s time, ordinary PDF was going to be unreadable. She thought they would
always be backward-compatible because it was such an important format for everyone
and she did not think it would be a practical problem, particularly if there was a
move towards getting acceptance by the journals of the PDF/A as the standard to be
used as a taxonomic community.
Ladiges called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting
on the amendment.]
Knapp clarified that what was being voted on was amendment of the addition of the
words “Archival” and “/A”.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Prud’homme van Reine asked for clarification as to what would happen with Prop. B
if Prop. A was accepted.
McNeill answered that it would be discussed after coffee. [Laughter.]
Challis clarified the point on whether PDF was an international standard. She noted
that on page 1856 in the Report of the Special Committee on Electronic Publication,
the bottom right-hand column, carrying on to page 1857 made it clear that PDF was
an international standard, because the amended wording of Prop. 203 now said “its
successor international standard format”. So PDF was an international standard format.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
Knapp freed everyone to go and have tea and a biscuit to get the sugar levels up again.
[Applause.]
Prop. B (77: 38: 3: 3).
McNeill introduced Art. 29 Prop. B, which was also from the Special Committee on Electronic
Publication. He explained that it was quite short, and the preliminary words were
to extend in Art. 29.1 what had already been accepted for serial publications to works
that were identified by an International Standard Book Number.
Head supported the idea in principle, because it made things more inclusive, but from
a practical perspective he was just a little bit concerned about how a book could
be represented by a single PDF when in reality most books were electronically produced
as a series of PDFs, typically one PDF per chapter. He wondered from a technical point
of view how that problem could be resolved.
McNeill asked where there was a suggestion that there was one PDF involved.
Head felt that a name published in a work of literature would typically be represented
by a single PDF if it were in a journal whereas in a book it might be represented
by a series of PDFs, he just wondered if that issue had cropped up.
Kirk did not really see a problem. He felt that it was either a small PDF or a big
PDF.
Greuter could see a potential difficulty that he hoped would not happen, in terms
of reference if someone had the bad idea of producing an electronic publication in
PDF without pagination. He would like to have the words “with pagination” or “paginated”
somewhere associated with the PDF file.
McNeill clarified that would be solely in the case of books otherwise it was not really
something that was open to discussion.
Greuter did not know whether any serials or periodicals without pagination existed
but did not think it would do any harm to make it general. He proposed an amendment
to put the word “paginated” before the word “publication”. [The amendment was seconded.]
Kirk requested clarification as to whether “paginated” meant in its entirety for every
page or partially paginated, because some current journals, ink-on-paper journals,
were partially paginated and putting something in the Code that was ambiguous was
undesirable.
Greuter supposed that if there were unpaginated portions these would not be effectively
published but paginated would, and he hoped that new names would appear in the paginated
portion because he wanted to be able to cite them.
Kirk claimed that this would invalidate some fungal names…
Knapp highlighted that she had not recognized him and admonished him: “Paul Kirk,
don’t you dare speak until I recognize you”. [Laughter.] She then relented and allowed
him to speak.
Kirk continued by saying that if that was the intention then some names of fungi published
in the last few years would be invalid, because the page on which the name appeared
did not carry a pagination because it was a trendy way of publishing now, to not have
a page number on the first page.
Wiersema gave a reason for having the pagination requirement: Art. 33.4, where if
a name was based on one of the electronically published names it was necessary to
give a full and direct reference with page or fig reference, and he wondered how to
cite the page if there was no pagination.
Kellermann noted that there was no requirement for pagination for printed publications
and gave the example of many basionyms in Rees’s Cyclopaedia, which did not have any
page numbers and was still accepted. He also made the point that sometimes PDFs had
a discrepancy in pagination where the electronic document was paginated from 1 to
20 but the actual page numbers of the journal might be from 250 to 260 [sic].
May agreed that if the condition was not imposed on paper it should not be imposed
on the electronic version. He added that there were plenty of fungal names published
recently in an effectively published publication called Fungal Planet that was not
paginated and if it were necessary to refer to that, it was simple to put square brackets
around the inferred page number and there was no doubt as to which was the first page
and the second page and so on. He felt that there already was a mechanism of dealing
with that and there was no need for conditions for electronic publication that were
different to the rest.
Lendemer thought that the spirit of electronic publication was that of moving forward
and progress and he felt that it would be moving forward and progressive to actually
be able to cite the place of publication with a page number, so he was in favour of
the amendment.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Knapp returned the discussion to Prop. B as it was originally worded, to replace “serial
publication with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)” with “publication
with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or an International Standard Book
Number (ISBN)”.
Malécot suggested that everyone open their Code and look on the first page. There
was an ISSN in the Code and there was also an ISBN. His point was that it was possible
to have both on the same volume, in this case there was an ISSN because it belonged
to Regnum Vegetabile and there was an ISBN. He felt that it was a good recommendation
and was in favour.
Buck added a point of clarification that in the past the people who issued the ISSNs
or ISBNs would allow both, but now a monographic series was only allowed one—an ISBN—if
each issue of the journal was a freestanding, one-article entity. He noted that it
was no longer possible to have both; it was just that the Code was old—six years old.
Knapp added “ancient”.
Prud’homme van Reine noted that in his synopsis Prop. B also included other things—“If
it were thought necessary” and so on—that were not on the board. He wondered what
had happened to that part.
Dorr explained that that was a note clarifying the text because in Taxon Prop. 204
did not contain that text.
Turland added that the paragraph in question that was printed in the synopsis was
lifted straight from the proposals by the Special Committee on Electronic Publication
and was not actually part of the proposed wording of the new rule. He clarified that
he was referring to “If it were thought necessary, footnotes could be added to ISSN
and ISBN noting that the prefix ‘e’ or ‘e-‘ (e.g. eISSN, e-ISSN) is sometimes used
for electronic publications but that such designations represent the same standards”.
He reiterated that this was not proposed as part of the wording of the Code but was
a note made by the Special Committee in their proposal.
Greuter suggested that if this proposal was accepted it implied the empowerment of
the Editorial Committee to add those notes if, as it said, it was thought necessary
or desirable.
Cafferty asked somebody from the Special Committee to explain why the proposal did
not receive the unanimous support that Prop. A and C did.
Karen Wilson thought that the Committee was fairly strongly in support of it, but
not unanimously, simply because they wanted to keep the scope for electronic publication
narrow to start with. Personally she was one that was against it. She reported that
they had felt that if the next Congress wanted to broaden it then that was up to the
next Congress, when there would have been six years to see how it was working, while
other people on the Committee felt that ISBN should be allowed immediately.
Glen wondered if there was a certain amount of unease about the idea that the articles
in an ISSN journal were always peer-reviewed but books might not be.
Soreng thought that a date to which this went back needed to be included, otherwise
it could validate everything that was not published.
McNeill noted that that had already been dealt with in Art. 30 Prop. A, which had
already been passed and it was going to be 1 January 2012.
Penev felt that the question was simple. If new names were allowed to be published
in printed books, this should also be allowed for electronic books. He argued that
publishing in journals should only be in ISSN journals, either printed or electronic.
Herendeen was thinking of Systematic Botany Monographs, which was an occasional series
and there were other occasional series like that. He had checked with Warren [Wagner],
who said that it currently had both an ISSN and an ISBN but, given the comments of
a few minutes ago, that may end and it may only be ISBN as it was an occasional series.
He thought it was important that those occasional series that were regarded as books
or monographs should also be covered, so he was in favour of the proposal.
Knapp moved to a vote on Prop. B to replace in the Article just accepted “serial publication
with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)” with the words “publication with
an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or an International Standard Book Number
(ISBN)”.
Prop. B was accepted.
Prop. C (92: 28: 1: 0).
McNeill moved on to Prop. C, which was establishing that it must be the final version
by adding to Art. 29.3: “The content of a particular electronic publication must not
be altered after it was first issued. Any such alterations are not themselves effectively
published. Corrections or revisions must be issued separately to be effectively published.”
Reveal admired the Committee for putting something into the Code that he felt if it
was only electronic no one could prove. He asked, how could one prove that a document
had not been altered unless there was a paper copy? He was not certain whether it
should be a formal Recommendation and therefore considered later, but his notion was
that the indexing centres should make a paper copy kept at their archives, so that
if there was ever a question of whether or not a document was altered it could be
demonstrated that it was or was not.
Janarthanam continued on from Reveal’s comments adding that maybe it was a good idea
if the date of publication was printed on the first page of each article. He felt
that then it would be easy to check based on the property of the PDF file whether
it was created later or not.
Prud’homme van Reine felt that the question was, how do you know that it was changed?
He had heard from two colleagues in Utrecht who spoke about a paper, and they had
the paper on their laps, but then they found out that the PDFs that were sent out
by the author were different and it was impossible to know which one was the first.
Karen Wilson reported that the Committee had gone into immutability, as they headed
the section in their report, quite extensively because they were very concerned about
the matter. She added that that was one reason for using PDF because it included metadata,
just as a camera image included metadata with digital images, like date of creation
of the file and date of modification.
She suggested that anyone could rightclick on that kind of file and check what had
been done to it and it was possible to include digital signatures that were like a
paperbased signature in PDFs, including the PDF/A that was being recommended. At the
same time, she admitted that there was no way to stop someone who was really determined
to alter something; all you could try and do was make sure that the metadata was there
so that it was possible to check whether someone had done the wrong thing.
She noted that the Committee was also specifying that the earlier, preliminary versions
of journals that were put on the web should be clearly marked as such so that they
were not taken as effectively published and, as she had already mentioned, some journals
were already doing that—noting whether it was a preliminary or final version, which
she felt was great.
She added that it was possible that Jim Reveal might like to suggest as a Recommendation
that the indexing centres print a paper copy and keep it—she did not know what the
indexing centres would think of that, but that was one way that would provide something
on paper for checking if people were really worried about it.
Gandhi reported that as part of the International Plant Name Index project he encountered
quite interesting instances and gave an example from the beginning of the previous
year when he came across a situation where an orchid hybrid species was published.
He had immediately brought to the notice of the author that the published epithet
was orthographically incorrect and the Latin diagnosis only stated that the new species
was intermediate between two existing species. Immediately the author put up another
PDF file on the web, correcting the orthography and adding a somewhat grammatically
errored [sic], Latin diagnosis that was nevertheless sufficient for validation. He
had then provided a correct version of the Latin diagnosis and there was a third version
of the PDF file. In this case, he noted that because of the personal interaction he
knew that there were three different PDF versions on three different dates, but people
who did not know the history of what went behind would have not known at all, so he
totally supported the proposal.
Lendemer asked for a point of clarification from the Special Committee as to whether
this meant that there was absolutely no way to falsify all the metadata associated
with a PDF.
Knapp reiterated that the Section had already passed a proposal that had said we would
allow electronic publication in PDF. She highlighted that this proposal was to add
to the Code a restriction that anything that was altered was not effectively published.
Lendemer was asking how you would determine if it was altered.
McNeill felt that the answer had been given that in a large number of cases, he had
the impression the vast majority of cases, that it was indeed possible. He added that
there may be some situations where it was not, but felt that would not invalidate
the importance of the Article.
Sennikov was afraid this was a general concern because as far as he understood the
situation it was easy to modify whatever, either on paper or electronically. He argued
that it was nearly impossible to be totally sure that the content was not amended
or to know when it was amended if it was amended. He noted that it was technically
possible to amend PDF and that it could be done either by a publisher or some skilful
authors and the day of creation of PDF might be also modified or the file could be
created and used somehow.
He added that it was also possible to falsify paper publications and to amend things
should someone wish to—a part of paper sets could be reprinted and nobody would know
when it had happened and it could be distributed along with original copies or instead
of original copies.
So he felt that it was a general concern that was valid for any kind of publication,
not only for electronic publications but also for paper publications. He concluded
that it was either necessary to trust those who publish, publishers and authors, or
to try to control them as much as possible. He thought that the proposal looked rather
like a Recommendation.
Barrie called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. C was accepted.
Recommendation 29A
Prop. A (87: 26: 4: 0).
McNeill moved on to Rec. 29A Prop. A, which had already been alluded to quite a few
times as the Recommendation that electronic publication in PDF should comply with
the PDF/A standard.
Karen Wilson wished to amend the proposal slightly because Malécot and others had
pointed out that all that was needed to specify the PDF/A standard was the first part
of the set of numbers, “ISO 19005”, and it would be better to delete the rest of it
because it was a reference to the first version of PDF/A. This was to keep it general
because there was already a second version, PDF/A-2.
Prop. A was accepted as amended by the proposer.
Prop. B (90: 22: 6: 0).
McNeill explained that the next proposal, Prop. B, was really necessary as a result
of what had just been accepted because it was extending the recommendations in Rec.
29A, which currently went into some detail, on electronic publication and made it
compatible with what had just passed.
Norvell wondered if this was an appropriate spot to raise the issue or spectre of
the DOI number, which was a way of archiving and ensuring that the published PDF file,
for instance, was always there. She reported using CrossRef and the DOI number.
Penev felt that the DOI was a good thing, but it did not have any relation to a repository;
it could only link to a repository, but CrossRef was not a repository by itself. He
added that the Recommendation was very good but very vague, so he thought some recommendation
for repositories to respond to some criteria to be used for deposition, like ISO certification,
was necessary. The term “trusted” had a meaning in the world of repositories according
to him, so it was important to define more clearly what kind of repositories were
strongly recommended to be used by the Code. He proposed an amendment to add the word
“trusted” in front of “online digital repositories”. [The amendment was seconded.]
McNeill felt that using a word that was so general as “trusted” meant it was necessary
to define what measure you have for trust and thought that if there was indeed a measure
of trustedness that the ISO recognized then that should be given to help define the
word.
Penev responded by saying that it was a very dynamic field and there was a special
organization that dealt with elaboration of criteria for repositories, but he suggested
a strict definition should say “ISO-certified repository”, which was very clear, but
very few were ISO-certified now but it was likely to be more in the future.
McNeill suggested “for example an ISO-certified repository”.
Penev continued that PubMed Central, which was the largest repository, may not be
ISO-certified, he was not sure as the process was just starting and as it was a Recommendation
he did not see why not. He clarified that “trusted” had a meaning in the jargon of
this world—“Trusted repository” meant a good repository according to some criteria.
Demoulin wondered if the partisans of electronic publication were so satisfied with
the permanence of electronic media that they did not feel it would be wise to recommend
deposition of some printed version.
Knapp pointed out that that was a different matter and what was currently being discussed
was the amendment to trusted online digital repositories.
Sennikov suggested “recognized” instead of “trusted”.
McNeill noted that it had been said that “trusted” had a technical meaning.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Flann wanted to check if the new 29A.1 would entirely replace the previous Rec. 29A.1
meaning that the previous (a), “The printed and electronic versions are identical
in content and pagination”, would be nowhere to be found in the Code anymore; also
(c), “The electronic version is publicly available…”. She wondered if these issues
were covered somewhere else by the other proposals for electronic publication or if
it no longer mattered, because she actually quite liked those two points.
McNeill thought that it no longer mattered because if there was no hard copy version,
the electronic version would be effectively published, so whichever was published
first was effectively published and of course they should be the same. He thought
that it ceased to be essential, as it was before in the Recommendation.
Greuter was always a bit uneasy when he saw matter in the Code that addressed people
who would not normally read it. He elaborated that authors of botanical names and
botanical papers would read the Code but publishers usually would not. He proposed
an amendment to say that authors should preferably publish in publications that were
archived, satisfying the … etc. He suggested the wording would be editorial. [The
amendment was seconded.]
Alvarado thought that there were a lot of publishers, especially museums and universities,
who published monographs and certain journals that were already dedicated to taxonomic
or systematic work and in those cases he thought it would be good to say both “publishers
or authors”, because some publishers were specialized in nomenclatural things.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Challis responded to Flann’s earlier concern, that in the proposal to amend Art. 29.1
there was an Art. 29.2, which defined online as “accessible electronically via the
World Wide Web”.
Demoulin elaborated his point by saying that he still had several drawers of punch
cards that if he wanted to read he had to go to a museum. He gave the example that
the same data had been transferred to magnetic tapes and now his computing centre
had withdrawn the lectors [i.e. readers] of magnetic tapes, it went on with floppy
disks… He argued that the computer world was run by people that did not care about
the past, as taxonomists were obliged to do, so he maintained that it was probably
wise to also add that “The deposition of printed copies in libraries was also advisable”
and proposed such an amendment.
Knapp clarified that this would add a number (c), which would say “Deposition of printed
copies in libraries was also advisable”. [The amendment was seconded.]
Dixon questioned whether the Section had just voted against that before tea.
Knapp explained that this was a Recommendation, not a requirement of the Code.
McNeill added that the Section had voted against it as a rule.
Dixon thanked them for the clarification.
Herendeen agreed that the Section had voted against it as part of the rule and now
thought that the Section should vote against it as a Recommendation.
Penev was a strong advocate for electronic publishing but he strongly supported the
Recommendation. He did not think it was wrong if publishers wanted to deposit their
copies in libraries, it was not an obligation but it was a very clear recommendation.
In his opinion there was nothing wrong with that.
Prado pointed out that the word “publishers” had been deleted, which meant it was
strongly recommended for the authors to deposit the printed copy.
McNeill thought that Prado’s point was that it would be publishers who would have
to do the depositing and the reference to publishers had been removed.
Demoulin had no problem with taking out publishers as it was a recommendation to the
author to make sure some printed copies existed, as it was part of the old registration
proposals. He suggested that an author could even send them in PDF if he was sure
that somebody would print them at the library. He though it was just a matter of the
author trying to make sure that there were some printed copies somewhere that may
survive any new crash in the internet and any new big virus.
Lendemer did not really see a problem with having this in because it would just parallel
the Recommendations currently in Rec. 30A for ephemeral printed matter, which already
basically said the same thing: a minimal number of printed copies should be put in
libraries. He thought the Section should vote for it.
Veldkamp suggested that (c) be made to conform with (b), saying “in more than one
area of the world and preferably on different continents”.
[This was considered a friendly amendment.]
Herendeen felt that we were back to imposing on libraries to deal with…
Demoulin interpolated that it was not imposing, exclaiming “My God!”
Herendeen continued that libraries would be receiving individual articles from authors
and he argued that it was a major imposition on libraries to deal with them, while
some of them may be well-staffed to deal with it, many others were not.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Gereau called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. B was accepted as amended.
Article 30
[The following discussion took place during the Fifth Session on Wednesday morning.]
Prop. A (91: 22: 4: 0).
McNeill explained that Art. 30 Prop. A was to add a new Article to Art. 30: “30.n.
Publication by distribution of electronic material does not constitute effective publication
before 1 January 2013.” He suggested that the Committee would accept an amendment
for an earlier date, as it was not going to have any negative effects if it were earlier.
He added that normally when there was a date in the implementation or a change to
the Code, it was usual to make it a date after the publication of the Code that had
recently been published about a year after the Congress, so 1 January of the following
year, which in this case would be 1 January 2013. He clarified that if the Section
decided on this date, changed the date and then defeated Art. 29 Prop. A, the matter
would just disappear.
Alvarado wanted to know when the Code was printed and when it was effective generally,
because he thought that the best possible date would be at the same time when the
general Code becomes effective and not to have a different time.
McNeill clarified that the Code became effective on the date stated in the Code. In
other words, the Code was retroactive, so anything that was passed today that did
not have a limiting date went back to 1753. In other words, the Code was retroactive
in its application except where expressly limited. He went on that in the cases of
new requirements in the Code, these were normally expressly limited to 1 January following
publication of the Code. He repeated that 1 January 2013 would be the normal date
for implementation of an Article that would have a negative effect, would require
something new to be accomplished in order to, for example, validly publish a name.
He explained that one had to give notice to people beforehand, where in this case
it was not putting up a new hurdle, it was actually removing a hurdle, then the requirement
for a later date was not so essential.
May supported the proposal to put a date in and thought it did make a difference as
at the moment many journals that published taxonomic novelties were deliberately not
issuing the electronic version prior to the print version because they were aware
of the ramifications. He felt that it would allow time for people to digest the changes
and perhaps adjust their publication methods.
Ladiges agreed with the sentiment of May, but quite honestly felt that those who were
waiting to have electronic publication, assuming that that was passed, would find
1 January 2013 a very odd delay and she supported the previous suggestion of a much
earlier date. She made a motion and amendment to change the date of 1 January 2013
to 1 August 2011. [The amendment was seconded.]
Demoulin was ready to vote for the Art. 29 proposal, which for him was the first time
he would vote for electronic publication after having voted against it repeatedly
every time it came up. It took him at least 12 years to be convinced that it was acceptable
and he did not see why one and a half years more would be such an important matter.
He supported Art. 30 Prop. A as it stood, because he did not see any reason to make
special ruling here and certainly would oppose the amendment to move it back to August.
He added that if the change was to 1 January 2012 that would be okay, but 1 August
meant admitting publication by people who had disregarded the Code, because if there
were things that have been electronically published next August, it was almost certain
it would have been done by people who disregarded the Code. He opposed the amendment.
Paton proposed a friendly amendment to the amendment to change the date to 1 January
2012. [The friendly amendment was accepted by the proposer.]
Stevens called the question.
Knapp explained that the Section needed to vote whether to vote or not. She asked
for all those in favour of voting on Prop. A of Art. 30…
Stevens corrected her that the vote was on the amendments.
Knapp apologized, saying that there were too many amendments and she was getting confused.
She added that eventually the Section would drive her mad, unless people already thought
she was mad… She clarified that the vote was on the proposal to amend the date to
1 January 2012 from 1 January 2013. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of
voting and the amendment was accepted.] She reopened the floor for discussion on the
proposal to amend Art. 30 as amended with the date of 1 January 2012.
Sennikov questioned the whole thing, if the starting date was needed here at all,
despite the Section having just successfully moved the starting date. He noted that
electronic publication was quite a new thing and everything was happening so fast
nowadays he thought there were two questions. First, what would happen if the starting
date was accepted? He argued that accepting the starting date meant that up to that
day, everyone who was going to publish entirely electronically had to produce paper
deposits somewhere, and the issue of those so-called reprints, which were to be somehow
archived, and the future of these reprints, as was stressed several times already,
was highly in doubt. The next question would remain—and the transitional period between
when there were no electronic publications at all and when electronic publications
were started to be allowed was very, very short. He wondered if the paper reprints
needed to exist at all and suggested it would be a simpler and more pragmatic solution
to get rid of those reprints, simply by removing the starting date of this provision,
such names would be effectively published if there was no starting date in this particular
case.
Lendemer argued that a starting date was essential, because there were so many publications
and hundreds of names that would be effectively published if there was no starting
date. He gave the example of Mycologia alone, which published new species in every
issue and already posted its papers online specifically stating that they were intended
to be published on the date, two months at least before they were printed in printed
matter. Without a new date, all of those things would be valid. He gave other examples:
North American
Fungi
and the Lichenologist, which came out months in advance online before they were printed.
He was for keeping it the way it was.
Dressler strongly supported Greuter’s view and wanted to know why the Article was
needed if it could be entered into Art. 29.
McNeill felt that was an editorial matter and noted that it was proposed in this way
because of the way the Code was currently structured. He added that it may well be
that when the Editorial Committee looked at it, it may be better to arrange it differently.
Van Rijckevorsel made a minor technical point that voting on this Article should be
made contingent upon the other proposal passing, because if the other proposal was
defeated and this was accepted, it would lead to a very odd situation.
Turland and McNeill both felt that would be purely editorial.
Turland added that if this passed and then Art. 29 Prop. A failed, then the wording
just about to be voted on would become irrelevant and it would not be included in
the Code.
Knapp thought that the Section had to trust the Editorial Committee to have brains.
[Laughter.]
Prado noted that this would be putting in practice a new rule before the publication
of the Code and wondered how it would be communicated to everybody that the Code accepted
a new rule before its publication.
McNeill pointed out that communication would not be difficult because the report of
the Congress would almost certainly appear in the October 2011 issue of Taxon, three
months beforehand.
Prado wondered if Taxon had priority over the Code.
McNeill clarified that communication could be in any medium. The fact that this Congress
agreed on this could be communicated on the Web; it could be communicated in any way.
Prado meant the application of the rule before the publication of the Code; he thought
the Code was valid [only] after publication.
McNeill felt there may be a misunderstanding about when decisions made by the Congress
became effective: a decision made by the Congress was effective immediately it was
made. As Greuter rightly pointed out, 1 August was the first date it could possibly
be, because this would not be approved until the final plenary session; at that point
everything became effective.
Knapp clarified that the Section was voting on Prop. A to Art. 30 to add a new Article
saying “Publication by distribution of electronic material does not constitute effective
publication before 1 January 2012”.
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
Bill Barker wanted to add another Recommendation in relation to point (a) of Rec.
29A Prop. B because he was concerned about printed and electronic versions being produced
on the same day and the consistency of those publications. He wished to add an additional
Recommendation that effectively paralleled the previous (a) in relation to printed
and electronic versions being produced on the same day. For him there would be no
worry about choosing between versions as long as they were identical in content and
pagination. He suggested producing another Recommendation or an amendment to this
one, which may be not possible.
Turland drew attention to Art. 31 Prop. A and wondered if that covered what Bill Barker
was suggesting: “In the absence of proof establishing some other date, the one appearing
in the printed or electronic matter…”.
McNeill thought it was different but resolved the situation.
Bill Barker thought it could probably be sorted out with an amendment to Art. 31 Prop.
B.
Prop. B (92: 23: 3: 0).
McNeill moved on to Art. 30 Prop. B, which was that “An electronic publication is
not effectively published if there is evidence it is merely a preliminary version
that was, or is to be, replaced by a version that the publisher considers final, in
which case only that final version is effectively published”.
Knapp pointed out that the discussion was now back to rules and not Recommendations.
Reveal had a slight question in trivia: with the provision going into effect on 1
January 2012, he suggested it was possible the situation might occur where a journal
had a pre-publication issue of a taxonomic paper without a clear indication because
the publisher did not know what had been decided by the Section. He wondered if by
“intent” it should be assumed that even though nothing was said, that paper was available
electronically but was not a valid place of publication.
Knapp summarized in her own words what she thought Reveal had just said giving him
the option to tell her if that was wrong. She thought he was suggesting that if there
was an electronic publication that came out prior to 1 January 2012 that it would
not be effectively published in the electronic version.
Reveal disagreed, and elaborated that he meant that if a paper was electronically
available prior to 1 January 2012 without a clear statement or indication by the publisher
that it was intended to be a final version in a printed journal, because the publisher
just did not know what had been decided by the Section. His question was whether on
1 January that pre-publication issue would become a valid place of publication.
McNeill suggested one would apply the wording of the Article, which he felt was pretty
clear: “if there was evidence that it was merely a preliminary version”. He gave the
example that Taxon pre-published its articles but these were preliminary in the sense
that it was possible for there to be wording changes when the final volume was put
together. He argued that there was a clear practice even if it did not say “preliminary”
on it that there was evidence that that was not—that these were facttracked to provide
information but were not the final version.
Reveal concurred with the assessment of Taxon and numerous other journals but was
just a bit concerned that some publications that were in electronic format before
the first of the year may be considered valid before they were actually published.
He reformulated his question as to how the word “intent” should be interpreted.
McNeill replied that nothing was validly published before 1 January [2012].
Nic Lughadha proposed what she hoped might be considered a friendly amendment to put
something in to make clear that the evidence needed to be internal evidence, otherwise
it could be separately in an e-mail. She suggested somebody could tell her that it
was only a preliminary version and that was evidence but it was not generally available
and not available at the point when the decision needed to be made. She suggested
the intent would be to say that when looking at the paper it was possible to see the
evidence rather than having to look at other sources.
McNeill suggested something like “evidence within the versions”.
Nic Lughadha agreed and added “within the publication”.
Karen Wilson thought it was reasonable as long as it was discussed so the Committee
could hear if there were any problems.
McNeill did not think that the word “internal” would work as it had to be evidence
from the versions.
Turland was worried about the idea.
McNeill appreciated the proposal but had some concerns about it, because he felt that
in a printed work there was a beginning and end and the use of “internal evidence”
was quite standard in the Code for judging those, but if a publisher for example had
a policy that was publicly announced that only at a particular date the final version
would be put together in volume form, this may not appear on any of the actual electronic
versions and he wondered if that could create problems.
Kirk thought that the Section was trying to incorporate in the Code every possible
minute detail of electronic publication and cover it before it happened. He asked
whether the Code did not currently provide mechanisms for dealing with this eventuality.
He was making a general comment, not just about internal versus external.
McNeill thought that Kirk was arguing against including internal evidence.
Kirk agreed.
Knapp concluded that it was no longer a friendly amendment. She started discussion
on the amendment to include “internal” or “evidence within the publication itself”
as part of the effective publication process. [The amendment was seconded.]
May pointed out that it included considering evidence within the publication, so it
may be better to change the word “versions” to “the publication”.
Lendemer wondered if the reference was to internal evidence within an electronic publication,
would this only apply to PDFs or would it apply to the website of the journal. He
thought there was a relevant thing that he could use to illustrate the problems associated
with what was being dealt with. He noted that it was unfortunate to always have to
use mycological examples, and gave an example from the website of Mycologia. “Articles
available in press at Mycologia are posted online as PDFs as they become available,
usually four to eight weeks prior to the release of the final versions in print or
online format. “In press” versions of papers have undergone peer review and copyediting.
Although minor changes may be made to these papers before the final versions were
printed or posted online, they were considered formally published, were searchable
in PubMed, and may be cited using the unique DOI as the example cited below” and they
cite an example. He wanted to know how that would be dealt with.
Penev supported inclusion of the word “internal”, because usually preprints either
in HTML or PDF were marked or should be marked as preprints.
Turland, just in case the Section was not reading ahead, pointed out that Rec. 30A
Prop. A from the Committee recommended that “Preliminary and final versions of the
same electronic publication should be clearly indicated as such when they were first
issued”.
Nic Lughadha had read ahead on this occasion and felt that that Recommendation did
not quite do it for her. Regarding the question about whether a general statement
on the website explaining a policy on preliminary versions would be adequate, she
suggested it would be possible to say that there was evidence with or within the publication.
She thought it was a potential issue that it should be published evidence that the
publication was preliminary.
McNeill pointed out that, because this was an Article, it was quite important.
Nic Lughadha realized that.
McNeill requested clarification: was Nic Lughadha saying that there must be published
evidence that a publication was merely a preliminary? He noted that such evidence
could be published anywhere.
Nic Lughadha was floating that idea, but she preferred evidence and to address the
particular question about the evidence on the website, she suggested evidence “with
or within” or an editorial equivalent, so the “with” would cover the fact that the
website on which the PDF was released explained the policy.
McNeill thought that “associated with or within” was fine.
Malécot referred to the discussion about internal evidence within the publication,
and wondered about fast track articles, where there may not be page numbers, such
as a Taxon fast track article with no page numbers. He wanted to know if this could
be considered as internal evidence or was there a way to add this into that article.
Herendeen thought that would be clear evidence that it was a preliminary publication
rather than a final version.
Reveal urged the Editorial Committee to add that as an Example for this Recommendation,
that page numbers lacking in a pre-publication were evidence that it was not intended
to be the final publication. He felt that an Example like that would solve an enormous
number of problems.
Knapp made a note that the Editorial Committee should take that comment into consideration.
Gandhi strongly supported the amendment. As part of an indexing centre, he frequently
got questions about validity of a particular name and as long as it was possible to
see what kind of version it was, whether preliminary or final, it would be possible
to help the IPNI users, so he felt it would be a tremendously useful amendment.
Knapp moved to a vote on the amendment to include something along the lines of “associated
with or within the publication” to Prop. B to add a new Article to Art. 30. [The amendment
was accepted.]
Price requested clarification, as she believed that it had been voted in Art. 29 that
the content of an electronic article could not change, so in the first published version
the content could not change, and one would assume that meant the mechanical content
could not change, but one could also consider that the content was the actual document
itself. She wondered, if a preliminary version was published and the content was changed
in the second version, was it then invalidated?
Karen Wilson thought that McNeill and Turland could answer that. [Laughter.]
McNeill thought that if there was change, it was the final version that was accepted.
Turland added that the preliminary version would not be effectively published anyway,
because it was preliminary.
Price read from Art. 29 Prop. C: “The content of a particular electronic publication
must not be altered after it is first issued” and had interpreted that that was the
preliminary version. She felt that one could interpret the content as being “you cannot
change it electronically after it had been issued” but one could also interpret the
content as being the actual written words, so you could not then change it, improve
it, or make any additional editorial changes—content had two meanings.
McNeill took the point that it would have to be made clear that it was the content
of an intended-to-be-final electronic publication.
Turland added that the content of an effectively published electronic publication,
once it was effectively published, could not then be changed; before it was effectively
published, it could.
McNeill though it was a very good point and would need to be dealt with editorially,
and thanked Price for pointing it out.
Prop. B was accepted as amended.
Prop. C (12: 105: 2: 0) was ruled rejected.
Zijlstra’s proposal
Knapp introduced another proposal from the floor to add an Article to the Code.
McNeill added that it was a new proposal for a clause in Art. 30 in relation to electronic
publication and read it out:. “Publication by distribution of electronic material
does not constitute effective publication if it concerns a non-scientific online publication.
A scientific (online) publication has a distinguished editorial board with extensive
academic qualifications and a reviewing system for consideration of manuscripts that
are submitted”. He noted that there was an Example given of Dolomythos. [The proposal
was seconded and supported by four others because the proposer Gea Zijlstra was not
present. The audience groaned.]
Alvarado thought that particular sentence that said a distinguished editorial board
was a bit difficult to assess. He wondered how it would be possible to know who was
distinguished and who was not and felt that was really a problem. [Applause.]
Zijlstra’s proposal was rejected.
Recommendation 30A
Prop. A (84: 30: 5: 0).
McNeill addressed Rec. 30A Prop. A, still in the same series. He reported that the
Rapporteurs made the comment that although it was certainly desirable, the implementation
would not normally be within the control of authors of nomenclatural novelties. He
noted that one of the points that was raised in some other earlier discussions was
that the preliminary and final versions of the same electronic publication should
be clearly indicated as such when they were first issued.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (89: 20: 11: 0).
McNeill noted that Rec. 30A Prop. B contained necessary changes to the existing Recommendation
to take account of electronic publication.
Applequist believed that earlier a Recommendation had been approved, that publications
that were published electronically should be deposited in at least 10 libraries throughout
the world. She suggested these should be combined.
McNeill accepted that as an editorial suggestion.
Prop. B was accepted.
Prop. C (11: 106: 2: 0) was ruled rejected.
Article 31
Prop. A (95: 21: 3: 0).
McNeill noted that the discussion had come to Art. 31, the last of the electronic
publication proposals, and he introduced Prop. A, which was a modification necessary
on the acceptance of Art. 29 Prop. A. He added that it was pretty well almost editorial.
Penev asked, if the dates of the electronic and printed publications were different,
which was the date of the effective publication?
McNeill answered that it was the first.
Annette Wilson thought that if anybody was in any way uncertain about it, it could
be amended by adding “printed or electronic, whichever was first” or words to that
effect.
McNeill thought that was a suggestion for the Editorial Committee, because this Article
was not actually about electronic publication per se, it was about publication in
general, and there was no reason under this Article for there ever to be any printed
or any electronic [version], as the case may be; it was just making sure that they
were both covered by the same rule.
Annette Wilson felt that was fair enough.
Malécot thought it might be worth adding information to say this was not the date
when the electronic media was downloaded, because that date may be printed or located
on the file; an editorial comment to say it was not the date of download but was really
the date of the article itself.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (92: 23: 5: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. B, again from the Special Committee on Electronic Publication,
as a new proposal that seemed to be desirable, having accepted electronic publication.
He explained that the proposal was really pointing out that if there was no evidence
for different dates of publication of parallel electronic and printed versions they
should be treated as published on the same date.
Bill Barker thought this was where it was suggested that the desirability, or perhaps
insistence, that pagination and content be the same be placed. He thought it was a
different subject, though, and needed some advice on that. He suggested he would propose
an amendment and then a decision could be made as to whether this was the correct
place for it or not.
Knapp agreed that that was exactly the way to do it.
Bill Barker proposed an amendment that an extra sentence should be added that “The
electronic and printed versions should have identical content and pagination”. [The
amendment was seconded.]
McNeill pointed out that, as worded, it was a Recommendation and perhaps it should
be looked at under Rec. 31A in a moment, unless it was just poorly worded and had
been meant as a rule.
Bill Barker thought it should be an insistence, a rule, and changed “should”, to “must”.
McNeill reiterated that the amendment would be “In order to be effectively published
the electronic and printed versions must be identical in content and pagination.”
McNeill suggested that the proposal should be taken up as a new proposal later.
Turland agreed that it did seem to be a slightly different thing, defining parallel
electronic publications.
McNeill added that he thought it was quite a different thing, actually.
Knapp clarified that the proposal was not amended.
Greuter wondered whether this would be the place to make life easier for botanists.
He suggested that it was not a rare event that no precedence in time was specified
between electronic and printed versions and even that they were purposely issued on
the same date. He continued that if it was always necessary to cite two places of
publication because novelties appeared simultaneously in the electronic and printed
version, even if paginated identically, it would involve two different citations.
He thought it would be wise, or at least convenient, to minimize this by declaring
that in such cases, for nomenclatural purposes, one of the two—his preference went
to the printed one, as a traditionalist—would take precedence. He proposed to amend
the proposal by adding “but when simultaneously published, for nomenclatural purposes,
the printed version is treated as taking precedence”. [The amendment was seconded.]
McNeill reassured the Section that the Editorial Committee would make it clear.
Gereau wondered why, if there was an electronic and printed version of the same article
in the same journal with the same pagination, identical in every respect including
the same date, they should be considered separate publications. He argued that they
were the same publication and there seemed no point in differentiating between them
and saying that the printed version had some status separate from that of the electronic
version as it was the same material. He saw no point to the amendment and felt it
should be disregarded.
McNeill imagined that the wording to describe it being electronic and the wording
to describe it as printed would be slightly different. He assumed there would at least
be the word electronic or something or other appearing or an HTTP or some sort or
reference as he could not imagine citing the electronic version identically to the
other, but then added that maybe that would be the case.
Gandhi supported the amendment. He explained that for bibliographical purposes, whenever
there were two different publications available for citation, he preferred to cite
one and added that this had been the procedure whether it was the International [Plant
Name] Index or even Flora of North America. If the amendment was accepted then he
agreed that the printed version would be the one to be cited.
Dorr did not support Greuter’s proposed amendment. He gave the classical literature
example of Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth for South America, who published simultaneously
a major work in folio and quarto; the species and the text were the same, the volumes
were the same, but the paging was different. He continued that there was no way in
traditional taxonomy—before electronic taxonomy—to distinguish which one of those
two had priority but there had been no problem with people citing the paging for the
quarto edition and the folio edition simultaneously and it did not encumber the literature
all that much. He also mentioned that people had developed concordances so it was
possible to figure out what the pagination was for the other depending upon which
one you had accessible. He did not think that there would be a huge proliferation
of people trying to cite both paper and electronic things at the same time.
Applequist thought that the real problem would come not from people over-citing the
PDFs but if in some case the PDF was actually different from the print version. She
suggested that maybe in these days of computerization that would never happen, but
wondered what would happen if the protologue turned out to be a little different in
one than in the other.
Sennikov was afraid that the recommendation may introduce a demand that someone had
to look for a printed version of a certain periodical, which may be distributed nearly
entirely electronically, so the printed versions may be properly printed, archived
and so on but still be nearly inaccessible to the general public. He was afraid that
this would be a dangerous demand.
Penev saw a possible confusion, related to that example: printed and electronic versions
with the same content but different dates. Usually the electronic version had earlier
dates, so which one should have precedence according to this amendment?
McNeill explained that this had no bearing on the precedence of a date; if it came
out first—this would only apply to works that were published simultaneously—the earlier
publication always had precedence.
Lendemer did not really see the problem here, and wondered why, if there were parallel
electronic and printed versions that were identical and appeared on the same date,
they would be cited differently. It seemed totally superfluous to him. He suggested
that if they were cited differently then they would not be parallel in some manner
and then this would not apply.
Harley suggested that to clarify the meaning, it would be better to put “published
for nomenclatural purposes” after “precedence”.
McNeill thought that was editorial and that the substance should be considered.
Harley felt that it actually did mean something slightly different, the way it was.
Redhead was a little bit concerned that if one was given precedence over the other
and then it was cited as a basionym, and the wrong one was cited, would that make
the name [based on the basionym] invalid?
Barkworth suggested that if—and she really did not like it—precedence was given to
one over the other, surely she felt that precedence should be given to the electronic
version, which was more widely available. She added that if it was necessary to go
and dig out the few printed versions, it was going to be a pain in… many places. [Laughter.]
Knapp noted that “ We Westerners always speak our minds, don’t we Mary?”
Gandhi responded to what Dorr had said about Humboldt by noting that even though the
two parallel editions existed, it had been traditional to cite the quarto edition
over the folio edition, except in Volume 4 for
Asteraceae
, where the folio edition was effectively published in 1818, although the title page
showed 1820. His other minor comment was that when both electronic and printed versions
were available, even if one were to cite the electronic version, it did not matter
as no new combination would be invalidated because anything could be corrected as
a bibliographic error. He felt that there would not be any question of invalidating
any new combination just because one cited the secondary version.
Janarthanam agreed with an earlier speaker that it was redundant because, for example,
if an article was published in Taxon it was the same journal, the pagination was the
same, it did not matter which was cited. In his mind it was not required and he opposed
it.
Cafferty was not sure if he had misunderstood but he thought precedence was a red
herring. He thought Greuter was really trying to just make life easier so it was not
necessary to cite two places of publication. He suggested to add, after “nomenclatural
purposes”, “citation of one or another was acceptable”. [This was considered a friendly
amendment.]
Kellermann did not think that citation was really a problem but just in the rare case
that the PDF was for some reason different to the printed edition, he felt that that
was what Bill Barker had wanted to deal with. He thought that Greuter’s first amendment
would cover this issue as well—because one would have precedence, so if one of them
was different then it would always be possible to know which one was the right one.
Turland noted that it would not be parallel then.
Kellermann clarified that he meant if they were published at the same date, same pagination,
but for some printer reason the PDF had a line left out or the PDF looked different
to the printed version.
Dhabe noted that most electronic journals did not go for a printed version, one could
print as many copies and it was readily available free of cost. He argued that precedence
should not be given to the printed version, but to the electronic one.
May thought that because they had been said to be parallel meant that they were the
same. He wondered what was going on if the possibility was introduced of citing them
differently. He argued that if something was in Mycotaxon Issue 111, page 113, it
was undesirable to have to put after that “printed version”, “electronic version”,
URL this and that: it was published in Mycotaxon 111: 113 and that was it. He felt
that if two different ways of citing the versions were indicated here, that would
open up the way to unnecessary complications.
Saarela agreed with the previous speaker, wanting to know what the difference was
between “issued in parallel” and “simultaneously published”, in this context. To him,
they meant the same thing.
McNeill agreed that it was an unnecessary addition.
Lendemer wondered, if the fact that the discussion was about nomenclature was ignored
for a second, how this differed from citing electronic and printed versions of journals.
He argued that they were not cited different ways if they were identical and appeared
on the same date, so he just did not see how it differed.
Barrie called the question. [Applause.]
Knapp moved to a vote on whether to vote on the amendment. [There was a sufficient
majority in favour of voting.]
[The amendment was rejected.]
Knapp returned the discussion to Prop. B in its original state.
Van Rijckevorsel questioned if the entire proposal was necessary. It looked to him
that something was effectively published only once and whatever version was published
first was the one that was effectively published and if they were published together
they were still only the same thing. He did not think it made sense to have a provision
that gave such details, so if it was left out then just the date of publication was
enough, as in the Prop. A.
Marhold thought it was useful because if the provision was not there somebody could
say “Well, there was no evidence, so we can put in doubt whether it was published
on the same date or not”. With this provision he argued that if there was no evidence
it had to be taken as published on the same day and any doubt would be erased.
Soreng commented that it seemed like when it came out as electronic first and then
as hard copy there was no way of knowing whether the two were different until somebody
scrutinized the whole thing in comparison and if there was a slight difference, it
may be hard to find.
McNeill clarified that did not apply to this particular clause, because it referred
to things issued in parallel.
Prop. B was accepted.
Bill Barker’s proposal
Bill Barker was not sure whether his proposal should be a rule or a Recommendation.
He put it up as a rule first but was prepared to have a friendly amendment to change
it to a Recommendation, if that was the way the discussion went. He proposed a new
Article: “For effective publication electronic and printed versions published on the
same date must have identical content and pagination”. [The proposal was supported
by five seconders.]
McNeill asked whether that meant that if it was published on the same date and the
versions were not identical, they were not effectively published, whereas if it was
the next day, the second one would be effectively published.
Bill Barker clarified that the precedence issue was to do with the date, if they were
not the same day then there was no issue.
Knapp asked if this would be a new Article in Art. 31.
Turland thought that was open to discussion and wished to clarify something before
the discussion started. He wanted to know if the intention of the proposer was that
if electronic and printed versions were published on the same date and they did not
have identical content and pagination, then neither was effectively published.
Bill Barker was going to say that there would have to be a necessary rider to this,
which he did not have prepared, but it fitted with what Greuter was saying, that there
probably needed to be a choice of one over the other. He suggested proposing something
so it could be discussed.
McNeill agreed that something would have to have to be added, because at the moment
neither of the versions would be effectively published.
[Discussion between the Rapporteurs and proposer to arrive at the right concept, agreeing
that the wording would be solved editorially.]
They suggested “Electronic and printed versions published on the same date must have
identical content. In the event that they differ in either content or pagination,
the electronic version has precedence.” [This new version of the new Article was supported
by four seconders.]
Kirk wondered what would happen if the content was the same but the pagination was
different.
Bill Barker suggested a choice would still need to be made because it was undesirable
to have confusion over pagination, so he thought it would be desirable to still have
the precedence.
Saarela asked, if the electronic version did not have pagination, would it not be
considered a copy that was not final, and thus it could not be effectively published?
Paton thought it seemed very messy. He felt it created doubt, as people would have
to try comparing paper and electronic versions. He thought it was fine as a Recommendation
but would oppose it being an Article.
Harley thought it was quite wrong as an Article and seemed much better as a Recommendation.
He noted that it meant that if you left out one full stop in one version then that
would create the problem.
Briggs thought it would result in sending people on a search to cross-check a printed
version with the electronic one in a way that was not helpful.
Lendemer did not understand why if a printed version and an electronic version were
being produced on the same date, they would be keyed in differently such that they
would be different. He wondered if there really was a problem if both printed and
electronic versions were issued on the same date and they were not identical in content
and pagination; would there really be a problem with both of them not being effectively
published? He queried whether that was the same thing as saying if you screw up publication
now you have to try again later.
Nic Lughadha responded by saying that she did not think it was the same thing, because
you would be saying I have to look and check if they were both the same and compare
them in order to be sure. She felt this was adding work to the botanist or indexer.
Miller asked if you ignored differences in pagination, if two things come out and
there were significant differences in content, why they were not both effectively
published and it would be up to the choice of future authors who wanted to cite and
refer to them which one they chose. He did not see that this accomplished anything
and wondered if the issue related to little differences about the way type was set
or pages were numbered.
Greuter was under the impression that there had been some confusion because two completely
different versions had been displayed. The first one was indeed completely unacceptable
to him, whereas he felt that the second one had quite some merit. He suggested that
it should be simplified to read: “In the event that two simultaneously published electronic
and printed versions differ, the electronic version takes precedence”. As he understood
it, it reflected the intent of the proposer. He explained if you have two different
versions and they were simultaneous, you want to know which one counts, so that we
do not have to cite two different pages, or in the case of severe discrepancies to
resort to the first amender’s rule or something like that—say if new names were spelled
differently in the electronic and in the printed version published simultaneously.
McNeill confirmed that the first sentence disappeared.
[The proposer accepted that as a friendly amendment.]
Buck recognized that it was an editorial thing but was really unhappy with the word
“simultaneously” rather than “on the same date”. He pointed out that in the past it
was not necessary to worry about what hour something came out but with electronic
versions, it was possible to know to the second when something came out, but not possible
to know the hour somebody dropped it in the mail at the post office. He thought that
by using “the same date” it would avoid somebody trying to do hourly effective publication,
one over the other. [Laughter.]
[The proposer also accepted that as a friendly amendment.]
Potgieter made the comment that often printed things were in black and white and electronic
things were in colour. She wondered if that made it different content and if so, then
she thought that the electronic one really should take precedence.
Whitbread noted that if there was an electronic and hard copy published simultaneously
they would have different IS[B/S]N numbers, so would effectively be different publications.
He thought it was necessary to differentiate between the hard copy publication distributed
electronically and electronic.
Knapp asked whether he was speaking for or against the Article.
Whitbread clarified he was for the removal of the first part.
Sennikov queried the practical applicability of the rule depending on what the difference
was. If it was a single word, he argued that it looked cumbersome. He added that the
rule again urged looking for minor differences in order to downshift the value of
one of the versions when maybe the difference was not at all significant.
Stevens called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Knapp clarified that the vote was on a new Article as part of Art. 31—a rule and not
a Recommendation: “In the event that the electronic and printed versions were published
on the same date and differ in either content or pagination, the electronic version
had precedence”.
Unknown speaker queried whether a 60% majority was needed for it to be adopted.
McNeill agreed that was definitely the case.
Turland called for a card vote.
Knapp had counted 70 to 45, which was not a 60% majority, so it went to a card vote.
She added that a vote “yes” was to include this as an Article of the Code and a vote
“no” was to not include this as an Article of the Code. [Time passed.] She reported
the results of the card vote: the “yes” votes were 257 and the “no” votes were 250.
Because this was an addition of an Article to the Code and required amendment to the
Code, a 60% majority was needed so the proposal failed.
Bill Barker’s proposal was rejected on a card vote (257:250; 50.7%).
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Recommendation 31A
Prop. A (11: 39: *66: 0).
McNeill reported that the mail vote on Rec. 31A was quite heavily towards the Editorial
Committee because of the comments of the Rapporteurs that it might be improved by
deleting the text following the first occurrence of the word “publication”. He added
that the Recommendation simply advised prompt distribution of published material rather
than going into the detail of what would happen if it was not possible to publish
promptly.
Greuter questioned whether this was a recommendation to the users of the Code or to
the editors or publishers. He felt it was absolutely pointless to put into the Code
Recommendations that did not concern the taxonomic community.
Prop. A was rejected.
Article 32
Prop. A (29: 64: 14: 1).
Prop. A was, McNeill felt, quite an important or interesting proposal. He read what
the Rapporteurs had said, that it “would make a fundamental change to the Code by
removing the concept of valid publication above the rank of family”. He added that
it created all sorts of questions because then you were trying to regulate names above
the rank of family, which the Code did not really consider to be names. The Rapporteurs
had made comments as to how that might be dealt with. He explained that it also meant
that the rules on the formation of names above the rank of family would be governing
names that were not validly published. He suggested that that could be overcome by
simply changing the requirement for valid publication of names above the rank of family,
so that they were not subject to the regular provisions of Art. 32, but were simply
restricted by the provisions governing the form that they took. The argument for this
from the proposer [Brummitt], who was regrettably not present, was that the principle
of priority did not apply above the rank of family. This would mean that one could
choose whichever name one liked, so why then require that such names met all the other
requirements of the Code? The Rapporteurs did not make a specific suggestion as to
how the proposal might be modified in a way that it would retain valid publication
of names above the rank of family, while still excluding them from the requirements
of Latin diagnosis and so forth as contained in Art. 32 and subsequent Articles. He
reported that the mail vote was quite substantially negative: 29 for, 64 against.
Demoulin often agreed with his friend Brummitt, but in this case he did not see the
logic in saying that because there was no priority it was possible to choose any name
you want, for example without having them published with the descriptions. He wondered
how to choose if there were no elements on which to base your choice.
McNeill explained that apart from descriptive names, most names above the rank of
the family were automatically typified.
Greuter asked whether the Rapporteur’s suggestion was an amendment to the proposal.
McNeill clarified that they had not proposed an amendment but were drawing the attention
of the Section to the fact that if people wished to pursue the proposal, there would
be a need for an amendment that made sense. He highlighted that should be done at
this point in the proceedings. [No-one did so.]
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (36: 39: 35: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. B was an attempt to clarify what was meant by the requirement
that scientific names be in the letters of the Latin alphabet. It was a change to
what was agreed in Vienna in an attempt to clarify what the letters of the Latin alphabet
actually are.
Karen Wilson had missed the discussion about the earlier part, but suggested that
the definition of the alphabet would be better in the Glossary. [Laughter.]
McNeill felt that it would not fit in the Glossary as it was originally defined as
the intention was to try to keep the Glossary as integral with the rest of the Code
as possible. As an aside he outlined that there had been a time when the Code had
a number of Appendices that discussed things like typification, but what tended to
happen was the guide to the determination of types diverged from what was actually
in the Code about types. He explained that nothing had been included in the Glossary
that was not virtually the words of the Code, except specifically where the word was
not defined in the Code but where the dictionary meanings were quite diverse or quite
different, when the dictionary meaning that was relevant to the Code was inserted.
These entries were also indicated in the Glossary. He therefore felt that it would
be a little different to put something as nominal as the alphabet in the Glossary.
However, he suggested it could go in as a Note or probably a footnote.
Demoulin had never had a real problem with this issue, but, as he was often consulted
on orthographic matters and involved in discussion about it, he was sometimes surprised
to discover that people may have very strange ideas about orthography. He felt it
was better to have things stated clearly and fully spelled out in the Code and thought
the proposal did no harm.
Magill wondered what effect the proposal would have on the use of diaeresis and hyphens
and names.
McNeill explained that they were covered elsewhere and would not change.
Greuter felt that the proposal in itself would be harmless if the Article was harmless
because it would add precision. But he argued that the Article itself was so blatantly
unacceptable that he would never apply it, and opposed making it even more precise
in its awkwardness. The reason he gave was that this would confirm that neither a
hyphen nor a period was a letter of the Latin alphabet. He pointed out that many new
combinations were validly published with the generic name abbreviated—there was a
period in it—but under this Article, if taken as literally as proposed and made even
more precise, those names would not be validly published. Similarly, he noted that
many of Linnaeus’s names were published with epithets abbreviated, with a period at
the end, and according to the Article those Linnaean names that were universally expanded
would not be validly published. He encouraged the Section to vote the proposal down
because otherwise he felt the Section would really document taking the Article seriously.
McNeill added that the comment that Greuter had just made was reflected in proposals
that were still to be discussed, mostly from Paul van Rijckevorsel, referring to just
those points about periods. He thought that these were matters that could be addressed
quite simply by indicating that abbreviations and so forth were not excluded. He noted
that the proposal initially was accepted in Vienna because the concern was that there
was nothing in the Code to preclude the use of a Cyrillic alphabet, for example.
Prop. B was rejected.
Prop. C (27: 69: 15: 0) was withdrawn.
Prop. D (48: 42: 14: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. D, which was dealing with situations that were quite acceptable,
indicating that just because the letters of the Latin alphabet were being used for
names did not exclude situations of this sort [as described in the proposal]. He reported
that it had very marginal support in the mail vote: 48 to 42.
Greuter agreed that the proposal certainly mended some of the shortcomings of the
Vienna wording but he wondered if this proposal or anything else in the Code permitted
expanding of abbreviation as was customarily done.
Van Rijckevorsel answered that as far as he knew, there was only one provision, namely
Art. 33.1. He felt that was rather skimpy so had made a few additional proposals,
which were defeated.
Greuter asked if the proposer would accept a friendly amendment to add the phrase
“abbreviations were to be expanded” at the end of the proposed text. [It was not accepted
as a friendly amendment so was proposed as a formal amendment and seconded.]
Gereau felt that the amendment seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the rest
of the proposal, which was talking about typographic signs in the arrangement of taxa.
He assumed by “abbreviations” it meant things like Linnaean signs that could be expanded
to capillus-veneris etc. He reiterated that there was no relationship between the
amendment and the rest of the proposal and the amendment should not be included.
Govaerts wondered if it would also mean that epithets like st-johnii, where the “Saint”
was abbreviated, would also have to be expanded.
Knapp thought that the proposer of the amendment was saying that that would be true.
Govaerts added that that was not normal practice and estimated that there were perhaps
more than 100 names like that.
Challis agreed with Gereau that the amendment did not seem to fit the original proposal,
which was to do with rank-denoting terms.
Barrie noted that the Editorial Committee would be within its power to split it into
two notes if it seemed they did not make sense together. He expanded that it was possible
to have both together for the vote, but it was not necessarily how it would appear
in the Code, if it made more sense he suggested it could be included as Note 1 and
Note 2.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Prop. D was accepted.
Prop. E (79: 16: 11: 0).
[The following comment, pertaining to Art. 32 Prop. E was made during the Sixth Session
on Wednesday afternoon with discussion on Art. 33 Prop. C.]
Turland noted that the proposal was almost editorial. “Almost” because it was something
that was implicit in the way the Code was applied, so he did not think the proposal
really changed the meaning at all, but when something that was implicit was being
made explicit he felt it would be nice to have the endorsement of the Section, just
to make it obvious.
Prop. E was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. F (26: 29: 48: 0).
McNeill moved on to Art. 32 Prop. F, which was a reference. The comments of the Rapporteurs
were that this was a helpful reference, although it would be unnecessary if Art. 41
Prop. A was accepted, which of course had not yet been dealt with. He reported that
the vote was 26 for, 29 against and 48 to refer it to the Editorial Committee.
Reveal [one of the proposers] suggested that the matter could be referred directly
to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. F was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. G (59: 27: 22: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. G was linked to Art. 7 Prop. C, which had been accepted the
day before, and the proposal would make clear what most had understood to be the case,
that a previous effective description or diagnosis was only relevant when no descriptive
material was provided in the protologue. He reported that it had received fairly good
support: 59 for and 27 against.
Sennikov thought that the change may be potentially harmful in such cases when there
was no extant original material connected with a major description provided by the
author who published the name. He suggested that it may happen that the material associated
with descriptions referred to in the protologue may be extant and may be highly useful
and even convenient to be designated as types and it was possible that the emendation
would eliminate this useful possibility.
McNeill commented that it would be quite an extraordinary interpretation of the vision
of validation by a previously effectively published description. He thought it had
been assumed that where there was a description in the validating publication, that
was the validating description and that typification by an earlier description was
only a choice when there had not been descriptive materials [in the validating publication].
He agreed that it was not spelled out, but his experience was that it had not been
interpreted differently.
Greuter thought the question that a type could be a description had been voted out
of the Code in perhaps even St Petersburg, then Leningrad. The proposal linked to
that concept, which was long gone from the Code.
Prop. G was accepted.
Prop. H (40: 55: 11: 0) and Prop. I (23: 71: 10: 0) were alternatives.
[The following discussion, pertaining to Art. 32 Prop. H and I, took place during
the Ninth Session on Friday morning with Art. 46.]
McNeill introduced the two proposals: Art. 32 Prop. H and Prop. I, which were essentially
alternatives. He read out what the Rapporteurs had written: “Prop. H would establish
what many have assumed the Code implied and upon which Art. 46 Ex. 10 is predicated,
namely that when, in the protologue, part of the descriptive material is ascribed
to the publishing author and part to the author to whom the name is ascribed, then
both the name and the validating description are to be attributed to the author to
whom the name is ascribed, with consequent implications for typification. Article
46 Prop. I is essentially the same proposal, but refers only to the attribution of
the name, whereas… Art. 32 Prop. I is an alternative that leaves the validating description
open to choice even when both the name and some descriptive material is ascribed to
someone other than the publishing author”. This had, as they had noted, “the advantage
of greater flexibility in lectotypification at the expense of a less consistent approach”.
He noted that there were associated proposals in Art. 46, which, if adopted, would
ensure that there would be no change to the current practice on authorship. He summarized
that this was essentially the type of situation in which a name was ascribed to an
author other than the publishing author and there was also a description ascribed
to that author, but the publishing author added some comments or descriptive material
of his or her own.
Knapp requested clarification as to whether the Rapporteur-général was suggesting
that the two proposals be treated as alternatives, giving the Section the option to
decide which was preferable and then move to accept.
McNeill felt it might be useful to do it that way or simply discuss Prop. H first,
whichever was preferred.
Funk wondered why both proposals had received so many “no” votes in the mail vote.
McNeill explained what the votes were: 40 “yes” for H, 55 against; 23 “yes” for I,
71 against, and he agreed that they were both predominantly negative votes.
Knapp opened the floor for discussion and comment on Prop. H.
Greuter suggested that both proposals be discussed jointly, since they were alternatives.
Knapp agreed that her suggestion was that they be treated as alternatives. She reminded
the Section that if there were two alternatives, the vote would be a simple majority
as to which one was chosen and then the vote to amend the Code was a 60% majority.
Greuter voiced a clear preference for anything that allowed for flexibility in type
choice. He felt this was very important and it would be destabilizing not to allow
that, because the change would be retroactive and it might overthrow past lectotypifications
done in very good faith.
His second point was that this needed to be kept separate from the question of author
citation. This concerned the possibility to typify from a given context. Author citations
were a technicality to allow establishment of where the name came from. Author citation
need not imply that types came from the cited author; it implied that they came from
a cited publication.
In his opinion, these two things were unrelated and it was important to retain flexibility.
He added that if mechanical decisions were made that the author to be cited is the
author of the validating description or validating descriptive matter, this may lead
to very awkward situations. For instance, a name taken up from a herbarium label validated
by a later author with a clear description, a formal description, and the type is
cited from the original label, on which there is a mention of “flowers yellow”. He
asked if it is impossible in such a case that the name is ascribed to the collecting
author, who coined it on the label.
McNeill interrupted that he thought the discussion was moving to Art. 46.
Greuter apologized. [Laughter.]
Knapp lamented the slippage in Articles.
Gandhi had come across situations like this, especially in the treatment on Flora
of North America by John Torrey and Asa Gray. He had discussed several examples with
McNeill, Nicolson, and Greuter wherein Nuttall provided the name and description and
in several cases John Torrey and Asa Gray had added their comments. Then it became
a question whether to typify the name only with Nuttall’s collection or whatever was
cited within that protologue. At that time the decision was taken that whatever was
cited within the protologue should be considered towards typification. He preferred
proposal H.
Knapp moved to a vote between Prop. H and Prop. I to choose between the two with a
simple majority, and the Section would move on to discuss whichever one had been chosen
as a proposal to amend the Code. [Prop. I was chosen over H.]
Knapp opened the floor for comment or discussion of Prop. I.
Sennikov proposed the amendment to remove “not all by the same author or authors”,
because authorship was no longer relevant. [This was not accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Barrie preferred the original proposal and did not favour the amendment.
[The amendment was rejected.]
Gandhi was somewhat concerned that if the proposal was accepted, if any section of
the descriptive material was adequate for validation, then who would be the author,
the publishing author or the ascribed author?
McNeill noted that the proposers had addressed that under Art. 46.
Gereau felt that ambiguity in all nomenclatural matters should be avoided and the
proposal introduced tremendous uncertainty as to the validation of the species name
and should really be voted down.
McNeill requested an explanation from Gereau as to why it would make a name not validly
published, as he felt there was no suggestion that there was no description there.
Gereau was not indicating that it would not be validly published, but the ambiguity
in the nature of its validation was which descriptive statement, and being able to
choose among a number of them, was highly undesirable, as he felt this should be more
restricted.
Perry suggested that, in that case, he should have voted for Prop. H, not I.
McNeill thought he probably did.
Gereau agreed absolutely.
Prop. I was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. J (8: 27: 72: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. K (6: 80: 22: 1) was withdrawn.
Prud’homme van Reine had been asked to bring two small proposals from the floor, additions
to Art. 32.
McNeill thought that proposals from the floor, which immediately and naturally followed
something already discussed and addressing similar issues to those that had been immediately
dealt with, should be taken in the sequence. He added that other more general ones
would be better taken together under other business on the last day. He pointed out
that it was much better when new material was prepared and people had it in writing
or it could be displayed on the board beforehand.
Woelkerling’s proposal
Prud’homme van Reine introduced the first proposal dealing with the definition in
Art. 32.2: “A diagnosis of a taxon was a statement…” He had been asked to propose
that at the end of the sentence “of the same rank” be added. The proposal came from
Bill Woelkerling, who worked with coralline algae, where it often happened that the
differences to other taxa were given to quite other subgenera or genera and not to
species when he was speaking about species.
Sennikov was not sure what the consequence of this would be if taken literally. He
mentioned that recently a few new taxa were described from Turkey and the authors
distinguished their new species from subspecies of the other species. This was not
the only case that he had seen of this kind where in principle the taxa were compared
at different ranks, but at the same time it was still a different species. He felt
that the situation was awkward and confusing, but currently it was acceptable and
would probably not be acceptable with the emendation.
McNeill summarized to make sure he had understood correctly: there was a description,
the diagnosis distinguished it from another species but referred specifically to a
subspecies of that other species.
Sennikov confirmed that it was referenced to the subspecies of the other species.
So a new species was different from the subspecies of the other species.
McNeill thought that implied from the other species as a whole.
Buck pointed out that the proposal had not been seconded.
Knapp apologized for the oversight. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three
others.]
Turland added to Sennikov’s comment that it was very common to have a diagnosis saying,
for example, a new variety or subspecies was similar to the type, presumably meaning
either that of an autonymic taxon or that of the species. He thought that this could
theoretically cause problems.
Govaerts had the same comment as he had yesterday: again, as the proposal was retroactive,
any taxon that had been described in the past, which compared to taxa at all the ranks,
the name would be invalid. He estimated that it could affect tens of thousands of
species.
McNeill thought that was an exaggeration, but agreed that the fact remained as correct.
He thought that the situations that people had described did exist and could be destructive
although he noted that they were still the exception, not the rule.
Cameron felt that the proposal was unnecessarily prescriptive, as a taxon may often
need to be distinguished from taxa that may in the course of revisionary work be recognized
at a rank relevant to the proposed taxon. He understood Bill Woelkerling’s concern,
but it seemed to him that there may be varieties that in future may be seen as subspecies.
In these situations he felt it was quite appropriate to make reference to how the
new taxon was going to be distinguished from things that eventually may prove to be
of an appropriate rank for making the comparison. Despite appreciating the reasons
why Bill Woelkerling had made the proposal he was actually not in favour of it.
Woelkerling’s proposal was rejected.
Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal
Prud’homme van Reine introduced another proposal from the floor about the binding
decisions that were given about whether a description or a diagnosis satisfied the
requirements of Art. 32.1(d). He argued that if the binding decisions were not listed
then they had no use and proposed having them listed in an Appendix. He proposed adding
this to Art. 32. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Barrie thought the proposal made a lot of sense as it was necessary to have the decisions
somewhere where people could see them and he felt this was the most logical place.
He noted that the General Committee was working on these. He had assumed that they
would not go into an Appendix, but agreed that it really was necessary to have something
in the Code that allowed placing them in an Appendix.
Marhold also found it useful and pointed out that as the Section had voted that the
Appendices might be electronic only, this would not involve any extension of the Code
or do harm and it would certainly be useful.
Gandhi also wanted to support this proposal because many people contacted him wondering
where to submit their problem, to which committee, which address? He agreed that having
them listed in an Appendix would be very useful.
Wiersema wondered if it was it convenient to also deal with the situation under Art.
53.5, confusingly similar names, which were binding decisions that were not listed
anywhere.
Redhead wondered how many of these there were—aside from the recent one that he had
submitted, which was on
Ascomycota
—and whether the previously ruled ones would be put into an Appendix, if the proposal
was accepted.
McNeill explained that this was a new provision that appeared in the Code in Vienna,
so by definition there were very few. The General Committee had been quite exercised
with regard to some of the proposals, particularly some proposals from the Nomenclature
Committee for Vascular Plants, where there were questions as to what extent that Committee
had actually applied the criterion of description or diagnosis, so there were a small
number. He presumed that there would be many more, as had happened before—for six
years there was only one rejected name and then all of a sudden it became a substantial
Appendix. He agreed that it was good to start at the beginning.
Knapp summarized that the proposal was to amend Art. 32.4 to provide that these binding
decisions would be put into an Appendix. She assured the Section that the Editorial
Committee would make the wording sensible.
Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal was accepted.
[The following discussion, pertaining to a new proposal by Cameron & Prud’homme van
Reine concerning Art. 32, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Cameron & Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal
[Amend Art. 32.2 as follows:
“A diagnosis of a taxon is a statement of that which in the opinion of its author
distinguishes the taxon from allied taxa of the same rank or which, in the opinion
of the author, can be reasonably interpreted to be of equivalent rank.”
i.e. replace “other” with “allied” and add “of the same rank or which, in the opinion
of the author, can be reasonably interpreted to be of equivalent rank”.]
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Cameron noted that the proposal might look suspiciously similar to a proposal that
was put from the floor by Prud’homme van Reine on Tuesday [Woelkerling’s proposal],
with which he had had a problem of interpretation. He had misinterpreted the key issue
and considered it overly prescriptive, and he thought that the body of opinion agreed.
The suggestion then was to simply add the words “of the same taxon”. In the meantime
he reported that he had spoken to Woelkerling, who had had a lot of experience with
the diagnoses, particularly with the coralline algae. Cameron explained that, when
he had voted against the initial proposal, he had in the back of his mind that the
overly prescriptive nature of actually enshrining in the Code itself the necessity
that the taxon be distinguished from another taxon of the same rank was not taking
account of the fact that many different interpretations of rank had varied over the
years, and that in the course of revisionary work people were often comparing something
with an entity that did not yet have the formal rank that would be equivalent to the
new taxon.
Having discussed the original considerations from Woelkerling, Cameron had realized
that there was a second, quite additional element that it was sound taxonomic practice,
and actually implicit within the Code and in practice regarding diagnoses, that a
diagnosis was only useful as a diagnosis if the taxon was compared with closely allied
taxa as well as taxa of the same rank or taxa that could reasonably be interpreted
to be of equivalent rank.
The proposal had been carefully reworded and Woelkerling thoroughly supported the
new version.
Gereau thought that the new version was no improvement, and was still overly prescriptive,
unenforceable and undesirable. He felt that if he found a new species that could best
be compared to a superficially similar subspecies of another species, with which it
could easily be confused but by more taxonomically important characters constituted
a new species, then in his opinion it was not of equivalent rank and it should be
compared, and he should have the right to do so.
Veldkamp had a problem with the word “allied” because it suggested that phylogenetic
research was necessary to be able to write a diagnosis, and he felt that could not
be true.
Briggs disagreed with the proposal but if she were to consider it, she would want
to say “from one or more allied taxa”. She thought that it sounded as if describing
a species within a genus you might have to separate it from various species, where
often the comparison would be made with the most similar one.
Barrie pointed out that this was going to have consequences for Art. 32.4 and trying
to decide whether or not a species had an adequate description or diagnosis. He felt
that it would make it a lot more difficult to tell whether a diagnosis was adequate
and lead to a lot more problems deciding whether or not names were validly published
based upon them. He was not in favour of the proposal and preferred the original wording
that was in the Code.
Cameron & Prud’homme van Reine’s proposal was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Recommendation 32Bbis (new)
Prop. A (30: 74: 5: 0) and Prop. B (30: 71: 8: 0).
McNeill noted that the proposal had received a substantial “no” vote: 30 for, 74 against,
and the Rapporteurs were also not enthused. It intended to restore a provision in
the St Louis Code, and he called on the proposer to explain why the Rapporteurs were
wrong in their criticism.
Van Rijckevorsel had thought that this was a fairly basic proposal, a basic Recommendation,
even a classic Recommendation. He elaborated that it had been in the Code for a long
time, even if it was not particularly suitably worded. He was always hearing from
big database people who were having to deal with not validly published names and the
problems they caused, so he felt that it was a useful addition, and wished to hear
what the objection was.
McNeill thought that the comment was on the previous wording.
Redhead commented on both proposals because, when he just read Prop. A, he thought
“Well this is rather trivial and we know this and why put it in the Recommendation?”.
But, upon reading the Example, he said “This is very germane and really illustrates
some of the horrible tangles we can get into when we delay publishing names”. So he
strongly supported both Prop. A and Prop. B.
McNeill agreed that the two proposals belonged together and Prop. B would definitely
fall if Prop. A was not accepted.
Janarthanam thought the proposal should be supported because he had seen people coming
to conferences with a new name that got published in abstract books, which made it
not a valid publication, but a nomen nudum.
Rico also supported the proposal. She agreed with the colleague from India because
she had names that were provisionally listed in agronomical journals, then eventually
people had been using them frequently. During assessment and cleaning up of some conservation
assessments for the IUCN and the Red List, these names came along and they had not
ever been published. She highlighted that because they were circulated and the mistake
was transferred through years, there were even more complicated problems—like
Acacia
blah, blah, blah. She strongly supported the proposal.
Knapp indicated that the person in the red shirt should receive the microphone.
Kirk noted that it was not a shirt.
Knapp apologized and added that her wardrobe sense was also deteriorating.
Kirk supported the intent of the Recommendation, and felt that within the confines
of the room it may be considered pertinent but in the rest of the world he did not
think this would change anything. Nothing. He thought that people would continue to
publish names in posters that get into abstract publications that may have a diagnosis
and blah, blah, blah. To publish was to make public. People make things public on
the web, from databases, herbarium collections, blah, blah, blah. Always not effectively
published names. He maintained that it would not make any difference. So whilst he
supported it, he felt it was superfluous.
Demoulin did not believe this had a place in the Nomenclature Code as it was not nomenclature
but scientific, taxonomic behaviour. He understood that there were circumstances when
it was recommendable that people hurry in publishing something, but there were also
many more circumstances where people should wait a little bit before publishing. In
his case, as a self-confessed perfectionist, he had delayed the publication of a number
of new species (sometimes 40 years) until retirement in two months. He believed that
it was useless to publish things when not quite certain how to define them in comparison
to other species in a critical group. He maintained that new species should be published
only when you had really mastered the taxonomy of the group. He opposed the proposal.
Glen took the previous speaker’s point and added that unfortunately there were rather
too many folk of similar mind, who delayed publication and then got run over by a
bus or something. He colourfully described how these names often “escaped into the
wild” becoming feral names that became invasive in field guides and the like and it
was impossible to know what was intended. He made a plea for the Recommendation.
Gandhi though it was a useful Recommendation, although he felt it may or may not change
anything in real life. He added that, as many people knew, in major herbaria there
were many specimens annotated by graduate students and postdocs as new taxa, and for
various reasons they left the profession, botanical life, and such annotated specimens
remained for years, causing confusion to later researchers.
Herendeen agreed that the positive reasoning for the proposal was evident to everyone
present, it was best practice and did not belong in the Code.
Redhead brought up the point that, within the Code, the use of the word “name” was
for validly published, and so this latter use of the word “name” would not apply when
it was not valid.
McNeill responded that this was okay because it was talking about publishing it.
Harley considered it an unnecessary proposal to put in at this point, but if it was
to be put in, he suggested adding not only circulating a name, but also annotating
herbarium material before publication.
Demoulin felt that there were two very different issues: there was a Recommendation
not to use unpublished names, and this was the longstanding Recommendation and he
entirely approved of that, but there was a very new thing that he disapproved of—recommending
to hurry in publishing.
Knapp summarized that the Section would be voting on Prop. A to add a new Rec. 32Bbis,
which was about publishing, discovering, recognizing new taxa, recommending to publish
things as quickly as reasonably possible and its associated Example. She explained
that if approved then the Example would go straight to the Editorial Committee, if
rejected then the Example would be rejected as well, so the two proposals would be
voted on together.
Prop. A and B were rejected.
Veldkamp had a question relating to Rec. 32B: he had been asked by several people
for whom he was making Latin diagnoses, whether the word “ally” was allowed. He asked
because in these days of molecular research an ally was not what it used to be 10
years ago. He wondered if this should be something like “several species”.
Knapp noted that if he wanted to change that, he would need to make a new proposal
from the floor before Friday to change the Code.
[The following discussion, pertaining to a new proposal by Veldkamp concerning Rec.
32B, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Veldkamp’s proposal
McNeill read out Rec. 32B and the suggested amendment “The description or diagnosis
of any new taxon should mention the points in which the taxon differs from its allies”,
the proposal was to change “allies” to “similar taxa or allies”—to insert “similar
taxa”.
[The proposal was seconded and supported by four others.]
Demoulin wondered if it would be a friendly amendment to replace this by “taxa with
which it was likely to be confused in the opinion of the author”, so as not to make
any judgment of what was similar or what was an ally. [This was not considered a friendly
amendment and it was not proposed as a formal amendment.]
Veldkamp’s proposal was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
[The general discussion on electronic publication took place at the end of the day
but has been moved to prior to Art. 29 in accordance with a logical order.]
Knapp ended the day by noting that she was sure the Section could keep talking about
electronic publication for quite a long time and did not want anyone to feel that
she had cut the discussion off unnecessarily, but she pointed out that the room did
need to be vacated or everyone would be locked in, and then it would be possible to
talk about electronic publishing all night. She thanked all present for having a nice,
open, calm discussion about something that would be dealt with first thing the next
morning.
Fifth session
Wednesday, 20th July, 2011, 9:00–12:30
Knapp welcomed everyone back and started the day with a couple of announcements, the
first of which was that the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew runs a nomenclatural training
course, which she felt was incredibly useful and very, very good, and she pointed
out that there were some leaflets at the registration desk in case anyone wanted to
participate. She added that it was also possible to talk to Katherine Challis about
it, which lead onto the second announcement: that it was Katherine’s birthday. [Applause.]
She thought that it was probably a slightly mixed blessing to have your birthday during
a Nomenclature Section but wished Katherine a happy birthday.
Karen Wilson added that it was also Gregor Mendel’s birthday and noted that Google
had peas forming the letters of Google.
Knapp thought it was very nice that Gregor Mendel shared his birthday with Katherine.
[All other business conducted during the Fifth Session was relevant to provisions
of the Code dealt with earlier. The proceedings of the corresponding debates can be
found under Art. 29, Rec. 29A and Art. 30 in the normal order under the Fourth Session
on Tuesday afternoon.]
Sixth session
Wednesday, 20th July, 2011, 13:45–17:30
[Some business conducted during the Fifth Session was relevant to provisions of the
Code dealt with earlier or later. The proceedings of the corresponding debates can
be found under Art. 30 (Zijlstra’s proposal), Rec. 30A, Art. 31 (including Bill Barker’s
proposal) and Art. 32 in the normal order in the Fourth Session on Tuesday afternoon
and also under Art. 38 in the Seventh Session on Thursday morning and discussion on
sanctiotypes in the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Article 33
Knapp decided that instead of having to discuss and read all the new proposals from
the Mycological Consortium (as she had chosen to call them) at the same time, discussion
of Art. 33 would take place first in order to allow people time to read the proposals.
Prop. A (17: 87: 6: 0).
McNeill noted that Art. 33 Prop. A, was defeated by more than a 75% vote in the mail
vote and intended to move onto the second item, Prop. B.
Reveal thanked Madam President for allowing him to speak.
Knapp notified him that the term was “Queen of the World”. [Laughter.]
Reveal corrected himself to say Queen of the World, with apologies. [Laughter.]
Knapp apologized [but in a very royal way].
Reveal noted that the reason for Prop. A was to make clear that when an epithet was
not associated with a generic name, as outlined in one of the examples that…
Knapp pointed out that four supporters were needed to speak to it. [The motion was
seconded and supported by three others.]
Reveal continued that in the Code, there was an example of Linnaeus in which he failed
to associate an epithet with a generic name. Reveal and his colleagues had found a
number of instances where that was also true. He asked the question: if the two articles
were published simultaneously, what page was the name validated on? If the two articles
appeared at different times, as was often the case when there was a name in a journal
and an index at the end of the journal that may have been published months or even
years later, the question was: who was the author?
He felt that everyone was well aware that, in journals, the authors of names tended
not to write the index. Therefore he argued that the name would not be valid where
it was not associated with a generic name but would be validated in the index, meaning
that one would have a change of authorship—often some obscure person, although he
conceded that probably many editors did not regard themselves as particularly obscure.
The question here was that in those cases, where the index and the work were published
at the same time, there really was no difficulty, particularly when it was a book.
When it was in the same journal and it was published at the same time, there was a
question: who validated the combination in the index? Was it the editor or not? This
proposal addressed that question by mandating that if a name was published in an index,
that it is not necessary to go to the labour of finding out who was the editor who
might have indexed the work but, rather, simply ascribe it to the name of the authors
who attempted to propose it but failed under our modern rules.
McNeill noted that the Rapporteurs’ comments were, essentially, that they thought
the proposal was unnecessary because it would be provided for quite clearly under
both Art. 45.1 and Art. 46. He elaborated that Art. 45.1 made it clear that it was
the last stage in the valid publication of a name that was the date of valid publication
and if the requirements were met over successive dates then it was the latest one,
so if the index came later it would be in the index. What was more, he added that
Art. 46 addressed the question of the authorship of the name: if it was in the index
without authorship and a page number, it clearly related to the person who wrote the
entry for that taxon on the page number. He argued that there was no suggestion of
raking through finding who might conceivably have been the editor or the person producing
the index. If, on the other hand, an index was ascribed to somebody else, he explained
that again Art. 46 prescribed what the authorship should be, so the perception of
the Rapporteurs was that it was really unnecessary.
Gandhi explained that the reason he proposed this, along with Reveal, was that he
was reviewing a manuscript for the Flora of North America and had come across this
situation. He reported that the manuscript author had vigorously opposed accepting
the validity of the combination listed in the index. According to him, the article
author was not the author of the index. Gandhi had thought it would be quite helpful
if such an Example was given.
McNeill thought that whoever took that view was misreading the Code.
Gandhi reiterated that the argument presented to him was that the author of the article
maintained that he was not responsible for the index, and did not accept it. It seemed
that an Example would be very useful to offer support in explaining it to such an
author.
Challis had understood that the proposals were concerned about the authorship of the
name and suggested that it might be simpler to include an Example somewhere in Art.
46, if that were thought desirable.
Knapp deemed that the proposal should be referred directly to the Editorial Committee
unless there were any objections.
Prop. A was referred to the Editorial Committee. [Note: it was recorded in Taxon 60:
1513. 2011 as rejected by the mail vote.]
Prop. B (59: 23: 10: 7).
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 33 Prop. B, took place during the Seventh
Session on Thursday morning.]
Knapp was just checking to see if there were any other
Microsporidia
emerging from their parasitic holes.
McNeill said yes there was, not on
Microsporidia
, but a proposal that was a corollary to the acceptance of Art. 37bis had not been
dealt with: Art. 33 Prop. B.
Greuter had a question, as he was having difficulty understanding what the proposal
was covering. He read a “new combination or new name” and felt that if by “new name”
a new name as normally understood was meant, then “new combination” was included and
the provision should be under Art. 32. However, if by “new name” a replacement name
was meant, he did not really understand why names of new taxa should be excluded.
Hawksworth thought it was a necessary corollary of what had already been accepted,
and it had attempted to cover replacement names.
McNeill checked that the new combination or replacement name was what was intended.
Hawksworth confirmed that was the intention.
Prop. B was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. C (95: 6: 8: 0).
McNeill introduced a set of proposals by Turland, starting with Art. 33 Prop. C, which
was linked to Art. 32 Prop. E.
[The latter was accepted, and the discussion can be found under Art. 32 in the Fourth
Session on Tuesday afternoon.]
McNeill explained that Art. 32 Prop. E was closely linked to the rest of these proposals,
which included Art. 33 Prop. C, and they aimed to clarify the requirements for valid
publication of names of taxa that were already named. He added that at the moment,
Art. 32 dealt substantially with names of new taxa but the Code had not clearly distinguished
between the rules for valid publication of the name of a new taxon and for valid publication
of the name of an existing taxon, one already named.
Turland explained that the rationale behind the set of proposals was to try and simplify
the wording mostly in Art. 33, some of which had already been dealt with right at
the beginning of the Nomenclature Section, when the term definitions were added to
Art. 6—replacement name and new status and new combination and name of a new taxon,
defining what those meant—thus enabling those terms to be used in a more concise way
later on in the Code, in particular in Art. 33.
He continued that there was a fundamental dichotomy in the Code whereby a name may
be validly published, either as the name of a new taxon or what might informally be
called a renaming. He elaborated that he meant a new combination, a name at a new
rank, a new status, or a replacement name or nomen novum. He referred to the Section’s
earlier decision to use “replacement name” as the preferred term and added that it
was now implicit from Art. 32.1 that these renamings could not entirely fall under
Art. 32.1. The only way that the renaming could be validly published was if it fell
under Art. 33, which he noted was, of course, the case.
That fact that it was implicit in the Code but not explicitly spelled out was his
rationale for the proposal, adding the relevant words at the end of clause (d) of
Art. 32.1. In the actual proposal, he had given the following example. If there was
a new combination, all that was needed was to cite the basionym, the full and direct
reference to the place of valid publication of the basionym. Supposing that basionym
itself was validly published by reference to an earlier description or diagnosis—so
the basionym did not include a description or diagnosis in its protologue but it included
a reference to an earlier one—he said that if this was published today as a new combination,
it could be done validly even on such a basionym.
So that combination was not validly published through Art. 32.1 because there was
no direct reference back to the validating description or diagnosis because the basionym
did not include one. There was an indirect reference via the basionym so the new combination
must be validly published some other way and that came through Art. 33.4. What the
proposal was doing was making explicit what was implicit in the Code.
Wiersema’s proposal
Wiersema had discussed some of the considerations that he had about this group of
proposals with Turland and with Greuter. He noted that it would involve some rearrangement
of Art. 41, Art. 33 and to a lesser extent Art. 32. Regarding Art. 32 he understood
that there was no intent to change any of the application of the current rules of
the Code or the interpretation. It was simply a matter of clarifying, but in the process
it would, as Turland had noted, split out the treatment of new names on the one hand,
which would be dealt with in Art. 32, and new combinations, replacement names, status
novus, in Art. 33.
He felt that there was also another issue about some of the content of Art. 32, in
that it did not all fit together nicely, so he suggested that the Editorial Committee
would benefit from having some latitude in order to restructure parts of Art. 32.
He noted that there were some proposals to move the content of Art. 41 into some of
Art. 32 and 33. He supported all of the suggestions but wished to propose as an addition,
if the changes were accepted, that the Editorial Committee have the latitude to do
some restructuring and tighten up anything that may not have been accounted for in
some of the proposals, with the assurance that there would be no change in the application
of the rules so that the interpretation would stay the same.
McNeill noted that was a stated proposal. He summarized that Wiersema was drawing
attention to the fact that, beyond the normal authority that the Editorial Committee
had to adjust things that were discussed here, because there were a number of proposals
that had the same intent but were somewhat different in actual wording, particularly
concerning how to handle Art. 42, that in this case there would definitely be much
more need by the Editorial Committee to make adjustments of positions of particular
clauses that were not necessarily discussed here. He added that the Editorial Committee
had always had the power to do that, but it was good that the Section should know
that this was an option.
Greuter strongly supported what Wiersema and the Rapporteur had just said. From his
past experience, such a major and most beneficial reshuffling of the form and arrangement
in the section of types—he thought it was after either Berlin or Tokyo—which was an
absolute mess before and no one really knew where to look—had come out in quite a
logical structure afterwards. The result was that there was the first portion dealing
with types in general; then, a second one, dealing with types of names of species
and taxa of lower ranks; then, one of selection of those types; and the fourth one
about generic types—types of supraspecific names, to be correct.
He felt that something similar was obviously needed in Chapter II of the Code from
Art. 32 to 45, because it was one of the most messy sections, with which generations
of botanists, taxonomists and nomenclaturalists had been tampering without any major
attempt to put order into it. He asked the rhetorical questions: Why wasn’t that made?
Why didn’t they do it? He noted that he was collaborating in former Editorial Committees
long enough, and suggested that people may say that he could have done it, but the
thing was so messy that it was impossible to deal with editorially. He felt that the
main stumbling block was Art. 41, in which all categories of other Articles were entangled,
explicitly or mostly implicitly.
He did not know how familiar the Section participants were with Art. 41 and explained
that it was the one forming rank groups within which the descriptions could apply.
He suggested that the one with which people may be familiar was for a species—descriptions
of species or infraspecific taxa, but not of higher taxa, may be used for validation.
This had been assumed to apply also for combinations. That was to say it was not allowed
to [re]combine the name of a series as a species name. These were the same groups
but this was never explicit. He felt that with one of the Turland proposals, the situation
would be clarified and become much clearer. If that was passed, he saw a good chance
for the Editorial Committee to come up with a coherently structured new chapter. He
acknowledged that it would require quite some reshuffling and quite some care not
to inadvertently introduce any change, but he was sure that the Editorial Committee
would be able to do that. He would heavily support that the mandate to do it be given
explicitly so that they did not find themselves too shy and bound by the present text
and order and numbering.
Knapp queried the use of the word ‘shy’.
Greuter confirmed that he felt that the Editorial Committee was usually very shy.
[Laughter.]
McNeill interpreted that as a seconder to Wiersema’s proposal, which could be treated
as though it were an amendment but it was actually a separate proposal, as to how
to deal with the set of proposals being covered, which might better be considered
first.
Knapp proposed that the Section consider it as a proposal. [The proposal was seconded
and supported by three others.]
Turland recommended that it be made clear that the discussion would return to Art.
32 Prop. E once this separate proposal was settled.
McNeill thought it should be discussed, but that it might be better to vote on it
once finished with the whole sequence. He noted that was up to the current Section
to decide.
Knapp clarified that the suggestion was to discuss whether or not, we, as a Section,
would like to give the Editorial Committee the latitude—whilst being quite careful—to
really substantially modify the structure of Chapter II of the Code to make it more
coherent.
Turland added that they were not being given the power to change the intent of any
of the Articles unless expressly agreed by this Section in the proposals that were
coming up.
Van Rijckevorsel pointed out that Art. 32 basically did two things at the moment.
Firstly, it set out the conditions for valid publication and, secondly, it went into
detail on the matter of a description and diagnosis. To him, it would make sense to
take out everything on the description [and] diagnosis and, perhaps, move it into
Art. 36, which was also dealing with descriptions and diagnoses. He felt that was
a basic point, which would clear up much of Art. 32.
Knapp moved to a vote as there were not objections to doing so. She reiterated that
the proposal was to give the Editorial Committee the latitude to reorder Chapter II
of the Code—without changing any of the intent of any of the Articles unless expressly
amended by the Section.
Wiersema’s proposal was accepted.
Knapp thanked the Section and added that she was sure the Editorial Committee would
greatly appreciate that latitude being given.
[A short discussion of Art. 32 Prop. E, to amend clause (d) of Art. 32.1, occurred
here and has been moved to the normal order in the Fourth Session on Tuesday afternoon.]
McNeill returned the discussion to where the action started in Art. 33 Prop. C, which
was adding another clause to Art. 33.1 or after Art. 33.1.
Turland explained that the idea of the proposal was to take the tenets of Art. 41
as they applied to Art. 33, and place them in Art. 33. When a name was validly published
by reference to a previously published description or diagnosis, there were limits
on the rank of the taxon to which that previously published description or diagnosis
applied. He added that this applied when you had the name of a new taxon, which fell
under Art. 32. He pointed out that there was a parallel proposal by Rijckevorsel,
which would come up later under Art. 41 and was essentially taking the wording of
this rank restriction from Art. 41 and placing it in Art. 32, and he fully supported
that proposal.
The current proposal was a parallel one, so that the same principle applied to renamings:
to new combinations, replacement names and names at new rank, which was normal practice
in publishing and really nothing new. It was part of the restructuring. He gave the
following example: if a new combination in the rank of species was published, the
basionym would have to be the name of a species or an infraspecific taxon. It was
not possible to publish a new combination at specific rank based on, for example,
a generic name. Nobody did that and it was because of Art. 41. Previously it was necessary
to jump to Art. 41 to see that this rule was apparent. The idea here was to actually
incorporate it where it was more obvious, in Art. 32 and Art. 33.
Prop. C was accepted.
Prop. D (60: 6: 40: 0).
McNeill introduced the proposal as dealing with taking advantage of the definition
of status novus—new status—and the definitions at the beginning.
Turland felt he should explain how the wording “new generic name with a basionym”
came to be in the Code. It was mostly added editorially during the editing and production
of the Vienna Code and gave the impression that a status novus could not exist above
the rank of genus, although prior to the Vienna Code, there was nothing in the Code
that ruled that. It was really tightening up on what was done editorially in the Vienna
Code and replacing “new generic name with a basionym” with “status novus”, which had
been defined in Art. 6 on Monday.
He noted that there was also a side issue that when the Section voted on the status
definitions in Art. 6—that “status novus” should be “new status”. The Rapporteur had
pointed out to him that, really it should be “name with a new status” because a new
status was not actually a name, it was a rank, which was a different thing to a name.
He suggested that perhaps it would be possible to editorially use a more precise term—“name
with a new status” or, perhaps, “name with a new rank”.
McNeill agreed that it could be treated as editorial as the principle had already
been enunciated and approved.
Knapp reiterated that the Section was voting on Prop. D to replace the phrase “new
generic name with a basionym” with something like “name with a new status” or “name
at a new rank” editorially.
Prop. D was accepted.
Prop. E (64: 0: 39: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. F (6: 5: 93: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. G (86: 5: 17: 0).
Turland read out what was written in the Rapporteurs’ comments. “Prop. G is an attempted
clarification of Art. 33.3, partly through use of the definition of status novus,
in Art. 6 Prop. A, and partly to better reflect the situations to which the Article
applies”. He added that it was an editorial rewording of Art. 33.3 that did not really
change the meaning but, hopefully, made it clearer.
Prop. G was accepted.
Prop. H (69: 6: 31: 0).
McNeill noted that the proposal was also an editorial clarification made possible
by the decisions on Art. 6.
Sennikov proposed an amendment to the wording to insert “volume, issue,” before “page
or fig reference” and insert “(if applicable and required for unequivocal identification
of the protologue)” after “reference”. The reason he gave for the amendment was that
there could be many volumes in the same year, especially in the case of books, and
many periodicals about 100 years ago were published with dozens of issues per volume,
each with separate pagination, so it was literally too difficult to find the protologue
if there was no volume reference or issue reference given. He added that “If applicable
and required” was for the cases when these details were not needed or not applicable
and he felt that even “page and fig reference” should also fall under “if applicable”
because not all publications were paginated. [This was not accepted as a friendly
amendment.]
McNeill drew the attention of the Section to the fact that this would apply retroactively
from 1 January 1953 and invited others to comment on it, such as Challis and Gandhi,
if they wished.
Knapp recognized Paul Kirk.
McNeill added “or Paul Kirk”.
Knapp justified that he had his hand up first.
Kirk thought that McNeill knew what was coming… [He did.] Kirk supported the amendment
extremely strongly [taken as the amendment being seconded] for the simple case that
in many serial publications published in individual numbered parts there was a page
1, so it was not possible to give the concise reference to a basionym by omitting
the issue number. The volume and page was not accurate because there was issue 1,
issue 2, issue 3 in the same year.
McNeill was not questioning the necessity and importance of doing so but was asking
the question as to whether the requirement from 1 January 1953 would result in a number
of names that had been assumed to be validly published no longer being validly published.
Kirk confirmed that it would.
McNeill asked for confirmation as to whether Kirk was supporting the proposal or against
it and concluded that he wanted those names not to be validly published.
Dorr felt that the amendment would be severely destabilizing and was very much opposed
to it, as he thought it would undo an enormous amount of work that was done with people
dealing with combinations published after 1 January 1953.
Wiersema agreed 100% with what Dorr had just stated. The reason for this was in Art.
33.5, where it said “For names published on or after 1 January… errors in the citation
of the basionym or replaced synonym, including incorrect author citations, but not
omissions, do not preclude valid publication”. He argued that this would be taken
as an omission if it was left out, and so it would render names that lack this not
validly published.
Reveal noted that for those who actually published books, there were no volume numbers
and issue numbers; just page numbers, and he thought that it seemed to exclude the
publication of anything in a flora.
McNeill clarified that was not the case because it specified if necessary for the
unequivocal identification of the protologue. This was addressing the situation to
which Kirk was referring and which was extremely common in older works, and the need
for doing this was very important. It seemed to him that the proposer might want to
think about the issue, withdraw this proposal and propose it afresh at an appropriate
time in the discussion, to date from, say, 1 January 2013.
Sennikov added that he had considered Art. 33.5 because these issues—volume and issue
numbers—were indeed omissions, so the cases already fell under Art. 33.5 and the wording
that he wanted to add to Art. 33.4 was just to make it explicit. Otherwise he suggested
that taking the wording of Art. 33.5 literally and deciding that, indeed, in the case
when the volume number was missing and the citation did not allow finding the due
page amongst, say, a dozen volumes published in that year, that they were omissions.
He argued that since the omissions had happened, the reference was incomplete and
so the name was already invalidly published and nothing would be lost in adding his
amendment, but some precision would be gained.
Demoulin gave an example when this would be destabilizing: there were a number of
journals that added one volume with continuous pagination a year, such as Bulletin
de la Société Mycologique de France. It was quite possible for somebody to refer by
the year and not by the volume or issue. In a case like that, somebody who made a
new combination could cite a basionym in Bull. Soc. Mycol. France 1956, page so and
so. Like some others, he considered it a very dangerous amendment.
Herendeen called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a majority against so the amendment was rejected.]
Knapp returned the discussion to Prop. H to reword Art. 33.4.
Prop. H was accepted.
Prop. I (14: 48: 43: 0) was withdrawn.
Prop. J (8: 104: 2: 0), K (8: 97: 3: 0) and L (9: 95: 5: 0) were all ruled rejected.
Prop. M (64: 7: 37: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. N (14: 13: 81: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. O (95: 9: 4: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. O, to delete an Article that was introduced at Vienna, which
was rather disruptive in many people’s view. It was a situation that was quite contrary
to the normal principle of the Code, in which valid publication is determined on the
basis of what actually appears in the protologue rather than what the author says
they are trying to do. [The following are not McNeill’s words, but presumably what
he intended to say.] It had created the situation where a name that was claimed to
be a new combination, but was not validly published as such, yet it met all the requirements
for valid publication as the name of a new taxon, could not be validly published.
He suggested that it would seem much wiser just to delete the Article.
Prop. O was accepted.
Prop. P (16: 25: 64: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Recommendation 33A
Prop. A (83: 2: 23: 0).
McNeill noted that the proposal was substantially editorial in the light of what had
already been approved.
Turland read the Rapporteurs’ comments: “Prop. A corrects what appears to have been
an oversight in the Vienna Code, when the phrase ‘new generic name with a basionym’
was introduced widely in the Code, and which earlier proposals in this set … would
replace by the now defined term status novus”, adding that it had been decided to
call status novus “name with a new rank”.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (12: 82: 14: 1) was ruled rejected.
Article 34
Prop. A (4: 95: 9: 0) was ruled rejected.
Article 35
Prop. A (49: 50: 3: 2).
McNeill introduced the proposal as relating to something that was agreed upon in Berlin
or in Yokohama, establishing a date at which the ending, the termination of the name
of a subdivision of a genus would determine the rank being given (he corrected himself
to a name at a rank above genus). The proposal was to change the date at which this
was implemented.
Reveal had discovered after the fact that there were a large number of cases in Engler
and Prantl’s works—including his journals, of which there were several—in which names
at the rank of subtribe, even though they were given the termination [inae], were
not assigned to a rank. When they were, which was not common, they were assigned the
rank of section. Nonetheless, because the determination was consistently used according
to the independently published recommendations for publishing in Engler and Prantl’s
works, we cannot maintain that the use of inae was covered by his instructions in
the publication per se, because the work in which this information was given was published
independently of the works. In attempting to go through this 1890–1908 literature,
which was interesting, Reveal had tried to find examples where this was not a case
of an Englerian student or associate or colleague or project, and he could not.
He suggested that some of those in the audience may have had some examples, and that
was great, but it seemed to him that all of these subtribe names had always been used
as subtribes, instead of considering them to be validly published as rankless names.
His suggestion was to continue to use them as subtribes; just move the date and be
done with it.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (57: 5: 44: 0) was accepted.
Article 36
Prop. A (20: 98: 0: 0) and B (15: 87: 8: 4) were ruled rejected.
Prop. C (54: 38: 9: 5).
Demoulin introduced a set of proposals he had devised at the time of the Mycological
Congress a year ago. Some of the proposals represented his personal view after the
discussions at the Congress, and the following ones, in Art. 36, were a special kind
because they represented a large majority will of the people who discussed nomenclature
at that Congress., They had asked either Gams or himself to present the proposal in
the name of the people taking part in those discussions at the International Mycological
Congress.
He suggested that the Section may be aware that he would have preferred to keep just
Latin for everything including fungi, but he admitted that there were circumstances
where it was better to have a compromise. Given the hostility of a few persons towards
the use of Latin in the mycological community, he suggested that this could be the
way to live in peace in the future, so he had made the proposals as instructed to
do. He thought they were the things that the mycologists wanted. He referred to the
comments by the Committee for Fossil Plants because the idea was that, since the fossils
had it, it would be possible to take the same situation as they have and use the comments
of the Fossil Committee, which said that they have had a good experience with allowing
both Latin and English.
McNeill suggested that the Section should concentrate on Prop. E because that was
the one that had the substance in it and C and D were really corollaries. Moreover,
he added that the Nomenclature Committee for
Fungi
had voted 11 to 3 in favour of the proposal and that the International Mycological
Congress in Edinburgh last summer, where it arose, had supported it. He reiterated
that the Committee for Fossil Plants had expressed their positive experience of a
similar situation in a report.
Demoulin added that it came up in a discussion about the language to be used, but
noted that the Mycological Congress was very much opposed to Prop. A to use “any language”.
The opposition was very, very strong despite the fact that some people were opposed
very much to Latin. They were also opposed very much to “any language”.
[Prop. E was voted on first and then C and D.]
Prop. C was accepted.
Prop. D (52: 39: 9: 5) was accepted.
Prop. E (65: 34: 4: 5).
Buck referred to Demoulin saying that they were trying to follow the model of fossil
plants and argued that fossil plants required illustration, just like the algae, so
he thought they wanted to eliminate a requirement but not add the requirement that
was there for fossil plants and algae.
McNeill explained that that was in a quite separate Article so there was no suggestion
that this proposal involved that.
Gams strongly supported the proposal, although it was a very delicate matter. He wanted
to make a friendly amendment. If the diagnosis was to be written or published in English,
then it should be preceded by the word “diagnosis”, otherwise it may be confused with
any lengthy English description.
McNeill pointed out that there was no requirement for a diagnosis in the Code. There
was only a requirement for a description or diagnosis. He added that that did not
preclude him making the suggestion, but he thought he should draw attention to that.
[Nothing further was done with the amendment.]
Alvarado saw a point in still using Latin for formal descriptions. He thought one
of the most important things was to make sure that the author wanted to describe a
new taxon because sometimes it had happened, especially with animals, that people
did not want to publish a new name but they wrote down the holotype was in this place
and then a brief description, not in Latin, because they do not have that requirement.
Then it became official but, in fact, they did not want to do that. He thought that
the Latin requirement was, in part, useful because in that way the author was stating
“I want to propose a new taxon”.
Herendeen spoke for the Committee for Fossil Plants, and wanted to provide a bit of
background and support for the proposal. Previously, fossil plants allowed any language
to be used for publishing new names. It was decided 12 years ago that that was too
difficult to deal with, and so the requirement was tightened to either English or
Latin, and it had worked very well for the fossil community over the last 12 years.
As to the last comment, he was not aware of any publication where someone got confused
as to whether a new name was actually being published recently while in English or
prior to that. He did not see that as a real problem in the field. He reported that
the Committee for Fossil Plants was strongly in support of what the mycologists were
trying to do.
Hawksworth had discussed this quite extensively with Chinese, Russian and Latin American
delegates at Edinburgh. They were very strongly of this opinion as well, so he wanted
to stress that it was very much an international meeting that expressed this opinion.
May clarified that both in the Committee for
Fungi
and at the Nomenclature Section at Edinburgh, there was a greater than 60% support
for this proposal, just to be very clear, both in the Committee for
Fungi
and at the IMC.
Peter Wilson wanted to propose an amendment, a radical one really, because he thought
this should be extended to all organisms under the Code. He felt that the time had
come, “with me as an ageing botanist who had facility in Latin…”
Knapp exhibited surprise and exclaimed “Surely not!”
Peter Wilson “…and on whose shoulders the responsibility for other people’s diagnoses
and descriptions falls…” [Laughter.] “…and someone whose proposed date of retirement
is approximately the next Congress, I think the time has come for us to actually consider
this seriously for all organisms.”
McNeill thought that was the substance of a subsequent proposal that was intended,
and suggested he may wish to liaise with Smith from South Africa, and that it may
be better to include it—not as an amendment, but in that separate proposal for other
groups immediately after this had been dealt with.
Peter Wilson accepted the suggestion and added that he was strongly in favour of it
for the mycologists.
Redhead reiterated that there was strong support within the Committee for
Fungi
and at the International Mycological Congress nomenclatural sessions for this and
he certainly supported it. A colleague at his institute had asked that he put forward
an amendment to it to be entertained that it should be changed to Latin, English,
German, French or, he thought, Italian; the original languages that were with the
Code. He had promised that he would put that forward as an amendment. [The amendment
was seconded.]
Knapp thought it was a laudable thing that he was being true to his word.
Redhead thought that the original languages were German, French, English and Spanish.
McNeill explained that there was no Spanish originally.
Norvell did not support the amendment as she felt it was creeping dangerously close
to any language, and she thought that Latin or English was sufficient.
Nelson questioned how you could include French and exclude Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
McNeill added Chinese. [Laughter.]
Peter Wilson opposed the amendment. He believed that English now occupied a place
in scientific communication that Latin occupied in Linnaeus’s day. He referred to
the Rapporteurs’ comments that the people who wanted their work to be taken notice
of would publish in English and he thought that was the way it should stay.
Cafferty called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a majority against so the amendment was rejected.]
Barrie called the question. [Laughter. There was a sufficient majority in favour of
voting.]
Prop. E was accepted.
Smith’s proposal
McNeill noted that this was the point where he had been given notice that people would
like to produce an alternative proposal to the defeated Prop. A and B. He thought
it was better, where something was essentially a new proposal, that the ones that
were already published should have the opportunity to be presented and considered
first, which was why it had been done that way. Now was the time for either Smith
or Peter Wilson to make their proposal. He suggested that it be presented as a proposal
for the intent of what it was desired that the Code would provide for and the nitty-gritty
of 1 January 2013 and so forth could be left to be an editorial matter.
Smith felt that the first proposal as phrased would have introduced the “Babylon Effect”,
as it was commonly known. He found it understandable, listening to the comments, that
it was heavily defeated in the mail vote. In support of what Peter Wilson had said
a few minutes ago, and what the Rapporteur had just stated, he put forward that this
principle that had just been voted on be extended to include all organisms covered
by the Code.
Knapp understood that the principle would be that in order to be validly published,
a name of a new taxon treated by the Code published on or after 1 January 2013 must
be accompanied by a Latin or English description or a diagnosis. [The proposal was
seconded and supported by three others with many raised hands and laughter.]
Alvarado noted that in the year 1953, when it was agreed that there were Latin diagnoses
for plants and all such organisms, Latin was still a living language because the Catholic
Mass was still in Latin. He argued that nowadays, Latin had disappeared pretty much
from everywhere so the only place where Latin was used as a language and not just
as a dead language that was studied by scholars, was botany. He felt that if the Section
said “Let’s remove Latin from botany”, Latin would effectively die as a useful language,
so it would be a great loss for humanity. It was the language of the Roman Empire!
[Laughter.]
Knapp recognized Katherine Challis and noted that she was allowed to comment many
times because it was her birthday.
Challis pointed out that the requirement for Latin was not being removed—it would
be Latin or English, so any traditionalists could still write their descriptions in
Latin.
Sebsebe Demissew thanked Smith for suggesting the proposal as he and his colleagues
had really been struggling to find somebody to write a Latin diagnosis for them over
the years, so it was a relief to at least be able to communicate in English.
Levin did not think that any more discussion was going to change anybody’s mind in
the room so, therefore, he called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in
favour of voting.]
Smith’s proposal was accepted. [Applause.]
Sennikov’s proposal
Sennikov hoped that the audience would excuse him for being so impatient, but he wished
to submit a new proposal from the floor to make a small emendation to what had just
happened to replace the date 1 January 2013 with 1 January 2012. He argued that for
the same reason as had already been discussed, that the account of the Congress decisions
would already be available in Taxon during 2011. In principle he hoped that the community
was as impatient as he was. [Laughter. The proposal was seconded and supported by
three others.]
Sennikov’s proposal was accepted. [Applause.]
Recommendation 36A
Prop. A (14: 95: 3: 1) and B (18: 84: 6: 0) were ruled rejected.
Prop. C (50: 42: 13: 1) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 37
Prop. A (15: 91: 2: 0), B (10: 104: 1: 0) and C (5: 105: 3: 0) were ruled rejected.
Prop. D (6: 7: 93: 0), E (64: 0: 42: 0) and F (79: 1: 31: 0) were ruled referred to
the Editorial Committee.
Recommendation 37A
Prop. A (83: 30: 3: 0).
McNeill introduced Rec. 37A and noted that there were four proposals, relating to
citation of herbarium specimens. Article 37A Prop. A was dealing with recommending
the citation of herbarium serial numbers of type specimens. It had considerable support
in the mail vote: 83 to 30. He highlighted that it was a Recommendation only, so was
not mandatory. If herbaria did not have barcoded or otherwise indicated specimens
it was not an inhibition, but it was a Recommendation to make identification of which
specimen was the type of a name more readily accomplished.
Dorr was troubled by this because he felt it was very easy to transpose numbers. If
a string of seven, eight, nine numbers did not agree with what was on the specimen,
then it had the potential to cast doubt onto whether or not the action had been taken.
He thought it was a foolish proposal.
Rico thought nowadays, everyone who had barcoding in the herbarium, had a barcode
reader, so it was possible the numbers would be the responsibility of the editor more
than the people writing the thing. She thought that was just an excuse.
Magill noted that most barcodes today were gummed to labels that come off, and the
policy that his institute was using was if a barcode was lost a new one was put on;
there was no attempt made to find the old number. The numbers published for these
names would, therefore, be changed over time. He added that they did have accession
numbers that could be used, but that was different.
McNeill noted that actually, the Recommendation was that the herbarium serial number
be used. It was not actually saying that there need be a barcode.
Acevedo reminded the Section that not all herbaria had those numbers assigned to their
collections, so that would preclude people from smaller herbaria.
McNeill pointed out that it was purely a Recommendation with no mandatory element.
Where there was no number, it obviously could not be entered. No problem.
Acevedo accepted that.
Dressler did not see any reason why it should be restricted only to types.
Gandhi believed it was a useful suggestion to cite an accession number following the
type citation. He shared one of his recent interesting experiences. A name was published
with the citation of the collection number, date of collection and the herbarium housing
that collection, a Latin diagnosis was provided and, for all practical purposes, the
name appeared to be validly published, because it met the requirements of every Article
for validation. However, later on, it was discovered that the cited number had three
different specimens housed in the same herbarium.
He reported that they had recorded the name as validly published, but later on it
became apparent that there were three specimens without the holotype being annotated
or indicated. The person who studied it in detail later on had declared that the previously
published name was invalidly published, so had proposed a new species name.
Gandhi had consulted his IPNI colleagues, McNeill and Greuter and they said the relevant
name was validly published because they met the requirement of whatever was needed—like
the citation of the type, the herbarium housing the type and the date of collection;
things like that. His point was, if the accession number was available, to please
use it because it was useful for stability.
Greuter felt that the intent of the Recommendation was good, but he had some difficulty
with some of its wording. He suggested that the amendment could be “The number identifying
the herbarium sheet, if present,” instead of “The herbarium serial number”. The reason
he gave was that there were many complex situations in many herbaria—including those
of the Third World—for instance the presence of more or less herbarium serial numbers
that identify the sheets in herbaria that have been incorporated into larger herbaria,
so that it was no longer possible to speak of a herbarium serial number and it was
impossible for the outside user to know what the serial number was exactly. He argued
that these were numbers identifying the sheets and if they were not pencilled they
could serve very well to identify the sheet. He explained that pencilled numbers were
often added on loans, a practice he thought should be discouraged because such loan
numbers were then often quoted in type citations as the sheet number. [The amendment
was seconded.]
May noted that for fungi and cryptogams there were no sheets, but packets. He disagreed
with the amendment and preferred the term “accession number” to cover the circumstances
in most.
McNeill suggested that there might be a friendly amendment from “the herbarium sheet”
to “the herbarium specimen”. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Kirk stated that fungi were not plants and their reference collections were not herbaria.
[Groans.]
Knapp berated the audience “No moaning. No moaning allowed.”
Hawksworth pointed out that Kirk was quite correct and he supported him, and suggested
use of the term “reference collection”, he added that the Section should also remember
that the Code now covered permanently preserved cultures in microbial collections
where this was quite critical, so the word “herbarium” should certainly be removed.
McNeill agreed it was totally unnecessary and he thought it could just be “the specimen”.
Knapp noted that was an editorial thing.
Saarela thought that “the number identifying” was too ambiguous as it would include
a barcode. He agreed with the earlier commenter who said that barcodes should not
be used for this because they were not permanent.
Paton thought part of the problem was there is not necessarily one number: a collector
number, a barcode number, an accession number. He thought it was vague, but was also
against clarifying it as he did not really like the Recommendation.
Thiele thought the issue could be solved by saying “a number permanently identifying
the specimen”. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Stuessy felt that if it just said “a number”, to him that meant the number of the
collector and he did not think that was the intention, rather an institutional number,
a collection number. He thought that needed to be qualified.
Janarthanam thought it could be something like “unique number” after “herbarium”,
identifying the specimen. Serial numbers and accession numbers were unique for each
sheet.
Knapp exercised the Chair’s prerogative and decided to stop the wordsmithing of the
Recommendation and decide about the principle.
Unknown speaker called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a majority for, so the amendment was accepted.]
Walsh was sure the intention was implicit but he wondered if it needed to be added,
in the case that a herbarium might mistakenly have two identical permanent numbers
or the number was incorrectly cited, that priority should always be given to the information
around the specimen rather than the institutional number.
Knapp asked for clarification as to whether he was proposing an amendment to the proposal.
Walsh guessed he was, and suggested adding the words “In the case of a duplicated
or incorrectly cited…”
McNeill thought it sounded that what he was suggesting belonged in an Article rather
than a Recommendation.
Walsh accepted McNeill’s opinion and retracted his comment. [The amendment was withdrawn.]
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
Prop. B (18: 97: 1: 0) was ruled rejected.
Prop. C (90: 20: 5: 0).
McNeill introduced Rec. 37A Prop. C and D, which were independent distinct proposals.
Both encouraged what the Rapporteurs considered important information in the protologue:
that the type and its place of preservation be presented in the Latin alphabet rather
than in any language—such as Chinese. These were proposed by two Japanese authors
and they were suggesting that designation of the type and the place where it was preserved
should appear in Roman characters—Latin characters—rather than Chinese or Japanese.
Stevens noted that it could be a little bit complicated because on some Chinese sheets
the collector’s name was in Chinese and there was no transliteration.
Prop. C was accepted.
Prop. D (93: 17: 5: 0) was accepted.
Recommendation 37B
Prop. A (8: 101: 1: 1) was ruled rejected.
McNeill moved to the series of proposals on sanctioned names that were outlined earlier
on.
Lendemer requested clarification as to whether the issues would just be discussed
or if the Section would be voting on it today, because he wanted the evening to read
it in detail.
McNeill clarified that this would be the debate on it and the decisions on the grounds
that it had been distributed.
Lendemer moved that the discussion be postponed until the following day to allow people
the evening to read such a complex proposal.
May thought that due to the complexity and importance of the Art. 59 proposals it
might be appropriate to introduce it now to allow time for people to digest it.
Redhead decided that the proposers were not prepared at this point to talk about Art.
59, but wanted to point out that either tomorrow or the next day there would be a
group presenting from the floor a proposal, which would be discussed with the other
published proposals in Art. 59, and they had supplied on the registration desks copies
of this to allow the members of the Section to look at it overnight in advance of
it being discussed. He highlighted that there were many copies of a new proposal on
Art. 59, which would be discussed in conjunction with the published proposals that
were on the agenda.
McNeill added that this meant that when Art. 59 did come up for discussion no-one
would be in a position to say “But wait a minute, we haven’t read it”, as ample opportunity
would had been given.
Redhead added that there were other documents also available—the Amsterdam Declaration
and a rebuttal to the Amsterdam Declaration—all pertaining to Art. 59.
[A short discussion of Art. 38 Prop. A occurred here and has been moved to the normal
order in the Seventh Session on Thursday morning.]
Knapp thought that the proceedings had come to an impasse, where there were a lot
of difficult things to be dealt with that were not worth even trying to deal with
in the 20 minutes maximum left for the day. So she let everybody off early, but with
the proviso that, if it was not all finished in time, everyone would have to come
back on Saturday for Saturday detention in the Nomenclature Section! [Laughter.]
Seventh session
Thursday, 21st July, 2011, 9:00-12:45
Knapp welcomed the Section back with two items of news. She proudly reported that
the Section had made it into the journal Nature and noted that in her considerable
experience with Nature it was incredibly rare that systematic botany got a mention,
so she suggested that we should be incredibly pleased with ourselves for having done
that. The second thing was that she had made a little tot-up of how many proposals
had been done and how many were left to do and the good news was that the Section
had dealt with 130 proposals so far and the slightly bad news was that 70 proposals
remained, not including the sanctiotypification proposals and Art. 59, which were
going to be slightly revised, plus 28 proposals to amend the glossary, which were
very helpful. She concluded that there were essentially 100 things left to do, slightly
more than half-way done and more than half-way done with our time. She exhorted the
Section to concentrate their minds, be brief, not repeat themselves and if people
were saying the same thing to restrain themselves.
Article 37bis (new)
Prop. A (60: 25: 7: 10).
McNeill introduced Art. 37bis (new) Prop. A, a proposal from the mycological community
to require that organisms treated as fungi under the Code should have the citation
of an identifier issued by a recognized repository in the protologue as an additional
requirement for valid publication.
Hawksworth pointed out that the details of the proposal had been worked out very extensively
by consultations involving a large number of mycologists, and that after they had
been published in Taxon they were discussed at the International Mycological Congress
in Edinburgh last summer where they were unanimously supported. He announced that
something like 80% of new fungal names were already being registered voluntarily in
the system according to this proposal.
Norvell suggested two friendly amendments: in Art. 37bis. 1 to substitute “the” for
“an” after “the citation of” and add the phrase “for the name” after “repository”
so that the text read “…the citation of the identifier issued by a recognized repository
for the name (Art. 37bis. 3) in the…”, and in Art. 37bis. 2 add a phrase after “(b–e)”
that would read “when accessioned and published information for an identifier differ,
the published information shall be considered definitive”. [This was considered a
friendly amendment by the proposer.]
Knapp checked that what had been added was correct.
Norvell clarified that it would be a lower case “w” and a parenthesis after “e”.
Knapp joked that it was close enough for government work but it was never close enough
for the Nomenclature Section. [Laughter.]
Demoulin disagreed with his friend Hawksworth on this and especially on the fact that
it had been unanimously supported at the last Mycological Congress, because he was
there and he had never accepted this as an Article. He could accept it as a Recommendation,
but as an Article he thought it was premature. He felt that after 12 years the vampire
was rising from his grave again! He had personally always been in favour of some form
of registration as a means of making several registering centres aware that a publication
existed. But he argued that this went into a lot more detail on what should be done
and whether it was effective or valid publication. He feared that the result was the
same: “you can’t use the name”.
He suggested that the Section think about what had happened every time a new requirement
for a valid publication had been added in the Code. With the Latin diagnosis, the
type designation, there had been a period of time before everybody applied the new
rule, which lead to a number of names that sometimes were very well presented but
lacked a single requirement for valid publication, which led to posterior publications,
sometimes by the publishing author, who had been made aware that he should add something.
Sometimes, he added, this was also done by predators, who took the opportunity to
add their name and make a new publication by validating other things.
He thought this was an unfortunate situation and having special rules for fungi should
be avoided as much as possible. He acknowledged that he had himself presented things
that were special rules for fungi, but only ones he considered unavoidable because
of historical reasons, like the sanctiotypification story, or absolutely urgent political
necessities, like the change in title or the English diagnosis. But he did not really
see the need for fungi to have a special rule on a matter like this.
If some day there was a general agreement on registration, or even this step further
of deposition, he felt that the Section should be aware that at the moment it could
be a Recommendation because a repository existed. He felt that making it a requirement
meant a monopoly was being given to the single existing repository at the moment and
there could very well be people who objected to working with the website. He referred
to people like himself, who just hated having to navigate an airline company, university,
congress website and thought that the concept of websites were mutants with a different
mind than his. His last comment was that people also would not like to give their
name to give bigger power to the controversial director of the CBS.
Buck felt that this was obviously registration rearing its head again and he thought
the problem was that, for most who had traditionally been against registration, the
effective date of publication was tied to the date of registration rather than anything
else. His biggest problem was that this identifying number was often a MycoBank number,
even though it was not listed by name. Yet from his understanding, if you were at
an institution that did not have ready access to the internet, it was not possible
to register a MycoBank name by filling out a form on paper and mailing it in. So that
really limited the taxonomy to those in more developed countries, and he thought it
kind of reeked of imperialism. He was against the proposal.
Kirk, before he supported the proposal, wanted to correct two inaccuracies. He stated
that there were now two options for registering names and in the next week there would
be a third. He would be in Beijing helping the Chinese mycologists launch a Chinese-language
portal for registration. Second, in the second portal for registration, which was
centred on Index Fungorum, the global nomenclator for names of fungi, there was nothing
to suggest that one should go online to register the name. A simple e-mail to him
would guarantee an identifier for the proposed name.
He supported the proposal—86% of names produced by mycologists were being registered
voluntarily. He argued that this clearly suggested that they wanted it to be part
of the Code.
McNeill interjected that the Nomenclature Committee for
Fungi
voted 11 to 3 in favour of the proposal.
Ulloa agreed with Demoulin and Buck that registration was debated and defeated strongly
in St Louis with another audience that was more internationally representative than
in Melbourne. She was totally against the proposal and noted that there had already
been a lot of concessions made for the fungi people. She referred to the decision
about entering English yesterday that was after a fungi proposal and expressed the
opinion that the Section had had very little time to discuss the issue and the vote
was called without letting people in the audience discuss that proposal.
May clarified the percentage—86% of mycologists attending the IMC were in support
of the proposal. He also proposed a friendly amendment to delete the asterisk and
the phrase “The only current operational repository appointed was MycoBank”, because
the word “appointed” was incorrect, it had not yet been appointed, and secondly there
were other operational repositories. [This was considered a friendly amendment by
the proposer.]
Gams begged to disagree with Demoulin and strongly defended the proposal. He highlighted
that the mechanism was working in practice and most of the journals were requiring
this deposition and the text was certainly not written as a Recommendation but could
only be handled as a requirement in an Article. The only thing that worried him was
a letter of concern in Mycotaxon by Morris and co-workers, who had made very constructive
suggestions of adding mechanisms that assured that the MycoBank entries were in as
perfect as possible agreement with the published matter. He considered what Norvell
had proposed was already a concession to the suggestions and endorsed all the suggestions
made in that paper.
Marhold was not a mycologist and did not think that it was an exception for mycologists,
he felt it was a good example that registration could work and that “we should skip
any ideology and emotions and stop hunting for witches and start to discuss [the]
matter”. He acknowledged that there were now a lot of options to publish and he thought
it was high time to find some mechanism that would register names and make the community
aware of the names. He added that the fact that something was defeated 12 years ago
did not mean that it was defeated forever. He certainly doubted whether international
representation here was less representative than it was in St Louis.
Stuessy agreed with Marhold that it was probably inevitable that registration would
eventually take place, so suggested taking a practical view and looking at this as
a pilot project. He advocated letting the mycologists run it, seeing how it went and
finding out what the problems were. He felt that would then offer a better solution
to address the broader question for all the other groups.
Penev noted that there already were pilot projects with ZooKeys, where for the last
two years all the taxa were registered in ZooBank by the publisher, and also in PhytoKeys,
where it was mandatory, so he did not think it was a big problem at all and highly
supported this proposal.
Lendemer described himself as a lichenologist who published, edited and actively described
new taxa and new combinations etc. He quite regularly used Index Fungorum and MycoBank,
which were the two repositories that were currently active.
In reply to Kirk’s point that the third option would be available in a week, the bottom
line was that what was being discussed were the two things that were currently active,
not a third thing that may or may not actually become active in a week. He added “we
can’t talk about the future; we can only talk about the present”.
He continued that MycoBank was the only one of the two currently working repositories
that actually gave a number immediately upon deposition. [Initially he thought that
Index Fungorum did not, but in his comment slip he wished the record to be corrected
that Index Fungorum did automatically give a number.] His point was that most journals
were requiring MycoBank and he considered MycoBank to be the more applicable of the
two, but the unfortunate thing was that he felt MycoBank was very clunky for use for
groups that did not use cultured fungi as types. He found that the interface that
was involved for putting in type information and other aspects of the protologue,
which were required to generate a number at the end to submit with the manuscript,
required fudging different aspects of the type information and it did not really offer
a good way to input all of the information normally used in citing a type specimen
for some groups of fungi.
He also thought it was important not to confuse compliance with a mandate. He referred
to the number everyone had been citing—86% of mycologists were doing this, or 86%
of mycologists supported this and a certain percentage of mycological names being
published were currently doing this—but he did not think this was helpful. As the
editor of a journal that used MycoBank numbers for every new combination, every new
taxon proposed, he did not think it should be a mandate. He submitted all these things
to MycoBank and got the numbers himself, but he did not think that authors should
be forced to do that as a condition for publication.
Gandhi agreed that we should not be dwelling in the past. He pointed out that we had
overcome the electronic publication requirement and the Latin requirement. His personal
belief was if the majority of the mycologists preferred a kind of registration their
opinion should be respected.
Applequist felt strongly that whatever your opinion of registration, the basic rules
of the Code should be the same for all included groups, except where necessitated
by taxonomic history or life-history traits. Otherwise what we have was not a botanical
and mycological code; it was a botanical code and a mycological code, schlepped together
into the same book.
Greuter proposed a friendly amendment as apparently no-one had noticed that the Article
did not say what it was. It was placed, as suggested, between two Articles dealing
with names of new taxa, but as he understood it, it was to work for all new names
and this must be said, otherwise it was not clear. So the amendment could be just
at the beginning to insert, after “For”, “new names of”. [This was considered a friendly
amendment by the proposer.]
Gereau noted that mycological colleagues gave the assurance that the registration
system was working quite well on a voluntary basis, and he suggested letting it remain
on a voluntary basis.
Wiersema wanted it to be on record that the mycologists at his institution, which
happened to be the second largest mycological collection in the world, were supporting
this registration of names.
Redhead pointed out that this was an opportunity for mycology. He noted the advantages
of having Index of
Fungi
, and then Index Fungorum and then MycoBank and the exchange of information between
the two of them, and the long history of accumulating and databasing names so that
something like 90-some per cent of the fungal names were available electronically
in some form. He asked the Section to consider the human cost of having people track
this, of receiving journals, and now publishing electronically, the costs of trying
to track all the names, and he suggested there was a chance of losing the opportunity
to have a complete list of names and he wanted to keep the momentum going and keep
continuity of the fungal names. He highlighted that if you were looking for a potential
homonym for a plant or algal name the list could be consulted. He was very strongly
in support of this proposal as a mandate.
He also noted that the International Mycological Congress had a very international
attendance, being held in Edinburgh, close to Europe, there was a good representation
of mycologists there and the majority were in support of it.
Funk requested clarification regarding a rumour going around that there was an egregious
breach of confidentiality with the fungal registration and that a competing lab was
notified of something and they were able to publish it ahead of time. She wanted to
know if that was true and, if so, had it been fixed so that it could not happen again?
Norvell confirmed that had happened, but it was only one event and it happened in
December and the individuals involved solved it immediately. She added that Mycotaxon
had changed its policy so that the MycoBank number should not be applied for until
after the paper had undergone final review but before final submission to the Editor-in-Chief.
Fortunato did not work with fungi, but she supported the proposal and thought that
the people who worked in her country and other developing countries also agreed with
it.
Janarthanam thought it was good proposal, but raised doubts about the number of repositories
there were in India, as the present National Biodiversity Act did not allow people
to send any living material outside the country.
Knapp clarified that the proposal was about registering names, not having repositories
of material.
Janarthanam had misunderstood and apologized.
Rico referred to the value of 86% and wanted to know how the people who did not attend
were considered, whether they were asked by ballot vote, or some other process.
Norvell explained that there was a three-day Nomenclature Section and also questionnaires
that were disseminated among all participants who attended the Congress in Edinburgh.
These were disseminated and around 160 ballots were returned. She added that everybody
who went to the Congress had the ability to vote and/or attend the Section via both
a show of hands and the actual written ballots.
Rico wanted to know about the people who did not attend the Congress, because they
were unable because of budget or something like that, were they considered?
McNeill thought that the short answer was “no”.
Lendemer called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
[The following discussion, pertaining to a new proposal by Marhold concerning Art.
37bis, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Marhold’s proposal
[The proposal was submitted electronically and read: “Add words “and as vascular plants”
to the Art. 37bis. 1 in the following way: 37bis. 1. For organisms treated as fungi
under this Code (Pre. 7) and as vascular plants, from 1 January 2013 the citation
of an identifier issued by a recognized repository (Art. 37bis. 3) in the protologue
is an additional requirement for valid publication.”]
McNeill introduced a proposal by Karol Marhold on Art. 37bis. He summarized that it
had been agreed by approving the proposal to establish in Art. 37bis that we would
have registration of fungal names, and there was now a proposal coming from Marhold.
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Paton strongly approved of registration, but thought it was premature to go for it
before there was some way of declaring how registration would be run sustainably and
a plan to go forward.
McNeill agreed.
Funk proposed that a Special Committee be set up to examine registration of plants
and how it might be implemented in the future.
Knapp suggested that the Section first needed to vote on the proposal and then she
could make that proposal if it failed.
Funk agreed that was fine but noted it might be faster. [Laughter.] In which case
she would vote “no” on the proposal.
Challis thought a Special Committee on registration had already been established.
Knapp clarified that it had not yet been voted on.
Gereau stated that there was no mechanism proposed, no method of assuring the perpetuity
of the process, and there was no funding mechanism proposed. He felt it was completely
unacceptable at this time.
Greuter wanted to be able to vote “yes” on the proposal but could not as it was formulated.
He moved an amendment, possibly friendly, to change “2013” to “2018”, which would
be after the next Congress. [Laughter. That was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Applequist noted that there was still no guarantee that such a repository would exist
in 2018, but she felt that a proposal of this magnitude should have been proposed
in advance and subjected to a preliminary mail vote, not dumped on the Section at
the end of the last day. [Applause.]
Nic Lughadha reiterated the advantage of having registration approved for fungi and
the opportunity to see how that went and adopt the same rules, or slightly different
arrangements, for registration for vascular plants in six years’ time, whereas Greuter’s
amendment would jump the gun and assume that it was going to work in just the same
way for vascular plants as for fungi. She opposed the whole proposal.
Cafferty called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Marhold’s proposal was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Recommendation 37bis A (new)
Prop. A (56: 24: 8: 11).
McNeill turned to Rec. 37bis A (new) and checked to see if there were any friendly
amendments or changes before discussion started.
Norvell noted that part of the Morris & al. manuscript had suggested an insertion
of a following Recommendation and wondered if it should be considered at this time.
They wrote: “The author of a manuscript should request identifiers for names proposed
in that manuscript after peer review had been concluded.”
McNeill thought that it should be a separate proposal.
Hawksworth started to point out that it was actually already there…
Knapp exclaimed “Excuse me, excuse me, wait. David, don’t start talking until I recognize
you or I’ll send you out!” [She then relented and recognized him.]
Hawksworth replied “Sorry, ma’am. Do I get detention after?”
Knapp responded in the affirmative.
Hawksworth clarified that just before (b), the suggested insertion was already covered
where it said “as soon as possible after the papers were accepted for publication”.
Knapp confirmed that the Section could discuss that when that new Recommendation came
up as proposed, later, and focused the discussion on Prop. A, for the new Rec. 37bis
A.1, which started “Authors of names of organisms blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” She
added that it did not literally read “blah, blah, blah”.
Greuter apologized for continuing to interfere but he was always wary of wording ambiguities
and in this case it was the word “minimal” under (a), which could be read in two opposite
senses. It could mean at least minimal, or it could mean only minimal. He suggested
that this should be clarified or perhaps rather than “minimal” one could add some
other words, like “essential”. He asked the proposers to specify whether they meant
at least minimal, or whether they meant only minimal.
Kirk explained that the “minimal” meant those elements that were required for valid
publication: the name, the author, the diagnosis and information about the type for
a new taxon, the basionym and its reference for [a new] combination etc. “Minimum”
was in the context of Code mandated requirements, rather than illustrations, discussions,
lists of references, gene sequences blah, blah, blah, which were not required by the
Code.
McNeill suggested that for purposes of debate “minimal” be replaced by “the required”
and the Editorial Committee could specify by reference, what the requirement actually
was.
Kellermann noted that in 37bis. 2 the minimum elements for information that must be
accessioned were named because it said “are those required for valid publication”.
Alvarado thought it would be fine to specify required elements in writing, because
it could be interpreted in different ways by different people.
McNeill assured him that the Editorial Committee would make sure it was unambiguous.
Lendemer pointed out that depending on what system was used to get your number there
were different elements that were required, not necessarily what names were being
used, but for information for type specimens different elements were required. And
he wanted to call the question.
Knapp did not feel that was allowed unless he stood up the second time. But she agreed
that there seemed to be no more comments. She added that the same person could not
call a question more than twice in a day—it was a new rule! [Laughter. There was a
sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. A was accepted as amended.
[At this point discussion of Art. 7 Prop. L took place, the proceedings of which can
be found under Art. 7 in the normal order under the Second Session on Monday afternoon.]
Norvell’s proposal
Knapp introduced a proposal from the floor for Rec. 37bis A (new): “The authors of
a manuscript should request identifiers for names proposed in that manuscript after
peer review has been concluded and the manuscript has been accepted for publication.”
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Redhead outlined that the Recommendation was a result of some positive critiques of
the proposals that were published, or about to be published in Mycotaxon, and several
people had looked at it and agreed that the polishing was appropriate and good.
Dorr felt that it was starting to get a little bit ridiculous. He wasn’t sure if anybody
remembered the Reid Moran article about a new county record in which the text was
“I got it there then”, and then the acknowledgements went on for pages. He felt that
we were starting to set up requirements for people to make nomenclatural action, yet
all the steps that they need to do were being prescribed, short of “The author should
use a computer of such and such power and keyboard of such and such dimension”. He
thought it was becoming very silly and trivial.
Redhead explained that this was being proposed because there were potential changes
between when a number was obtained and when [a name] actually came out, and it was
thought that there was a potential for making mistakes, and so this would take care
of those situations.
Norvell wanted to make clear she was doing this at the request of the author. If it
was regarded as trivial that was fine, but she wanted to make certain the author’s
position was expressed here on the floor.
Penev did not think it was authors but the publishers who should do that after the
manuscript was accepted.
Paton had fed into the paper that proposed this and thought it may already be covered
under the first Recommendation, because it did say after the paper had been accepted
for publication in the first Recommendation. So he thought it may not be necessary.
Norvell’s proposal was rejected.
Prop. B (55: 24: 9: 11).
McNeill introduced Rec. 37bis A Prop. B, which required that information or other
nomenclatural acts be added to the record of the name. He noted that whereas Prop.
A received 11 to 3 support from the Committee for
Fungi
, this one received almost the same, not quite, with one abstainer: 10 to 2 in favour
of Prop. B.
Reveal noted a minor editorial detail that “record number” should be changed to “identifier”
in the last line.
Prop. B was accepted.
Article 38
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 38 Prop. A, took place during the Sixth
Session on Wednesday afternoon.]
Prop. A (55: 5: 16: 19).
McNeill introduced Art. 38 Prop. A, where Doweld had noted that there was a slight
gap due to a change in wording on the Article dealing with the need for an illustration
as a type of a name of a fossil plant. There was a period of time in which names that
were thought to be validly published were, in fact, not and proposed this amendment
to the Code to plug that gap. McNeill reported that it had considerable support—55
to 5 in the mail vote—and it was looked at by the Committee for Fossil Plants, who
agreed by a vote of 7 to 3 that it was desirable, although they were less enthusiastic
about his Examples, but those would go to the Editorial Committee anyway and the fossil
plant people would offer advice. Proposal A was the proposal; Prop. B was the Examples.
Herendeen from the Committee for Fossil Plants pointed out that this was a technical
problem and the solution would fix it. He did not think the Section needed the history
on it. He noted that the couple of Committee members who voted against it were questioning
just how many cases there might be lurking out there that would fall into the gap.
He noted that they did know of one and it was a conservation proposal, so this would
fix a problem and, while it was not known how big the problem was, he felt it was
better to fix it.
Prop. A was accepted.
Prop. B (21: 21: 36: 19) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (28: 33: 16: 20) was ruled rejected as a corollary of Art. 8 Prop. B, which
was rejected.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Article 41
Prop. A (48: 19: 34: 3) and B (45: 17: 38: 4) were referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (11: 68: 23: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. C received quite a strong vote against: 11 to 68, 67% against.
He added that it dealt with names above the rank of family and it seemed to the Rapporteurs
that it was based on some misconception but was seeking to increase the restriction
as to the requirements for the publication of such names.
Reveal agreed that the Rapporteur was quite correct, what was in the proposal was
exactly what everyone already did, and the last line, which seems to be of a bother
to some folks, above “diagnosis and description must be in Latin” was exactly what
was required today. Because names above the rank of family were not in Art. 41, where
there were exceptions to the rest of Chapter II, all provisions in Chapter II applied—as
decided by the Editorial Committee back in 1989 or ’90 when Ruud Hoogland and he were
starting this work. Therefore a Latin requirement was necessary, so the only thing
the proposal did was just add in what was already done.
He suggested that the other item that may be of some interest was that there was nothing
in the Code about what was required to validate a name above the rank of order. In
theory, you could use a description of a variety as a validating reference to an order
or above, and as a result in 1981 Cronquist began to characterize orders using descriptions
of monospecific genera in monogeneric families and create monofamilial orders. This
tradition that he started of using this provision of validating an ordinal name on
the only species in that order had been followed. Instead of everyone having to just
know what the tradition was, we were proposing actually including it, so nothing changed
from what was already being done at present.
Turland responded to the proposer’s comment about the last sentence of the proposal.
He argued that it would in fact change the current situation, because currently it
was possible to have a suprageneric or, in this case, suprafamilial name that was
not the name of a new taxon but effectively a renaming, a name at a new rank. He gave
the example of an ordinal name based on a familial name, and because such names can
be renamings, they were exempt from the Latin requirement because they were not names
of new taxa. He explained that this proposal, with the last sentence, would have the
effect of invalidating an unknown number of suprafamilial names. The function of Art.
41 was to restrict the ranks of the taxa to which the previously published validating
description or diagnosis applied, so it did not really have the effect of exempting,
or otherwise, the Latin requirement.
Redhead wondered if the proposal was supported, was it open-ended and would this then
require Latin descriptions in the future?
McNeill responded that there was no change suggested in the Latin description, noting
that Art. 41 did not deal with that. He stated that Reveal was perfectly correct,
that a new taxon at any rank required a Latin description at the moment. The Rapporteurs’
point was that it was already covered in the Code. The case was that many names at
higher ranks were not names of new taxa; they were renamings of existing taxa at a
different rank.
Redhead questioned whether there was currently a limitation now: from 1935 forward
Latin was required and from 2013…
McNeill explained that a renaming must be that of a validly published name. So if
the previous name was published before 1935 without a Latin description then it was
validly published. In other words, you could publish a name today at the rank of superorder
based on an order that was validly published, even if that order validly published
had an English description because it was in 1934.
Reveal asked Turland for confirmation that, in his opinion, this name would indeed
be valid because it was a new name and a new rank, which overturned the opinion given
back in the early ’80s—late ’80s or early ’90s.
Turland responded that
Malvaceae
Adanson was not validly published in 1763 because that was before the starting point
for suprageneric names, so it could not be a renaming of
Malvaceae
Adanson.
McNeill noted that did not mean it could not be validly published…
Turland added that it could be validly published as a renaming based on something
else though. Presumably
Malvaceae
was validly published prior to…
Reveal suggested we pretend for convenience’s sake that it was
Malvaceae
Jussieu 1789.
Turland agreed that in that case, Malvidae of Wu was indeed validly published as a
name at new rank, a new status, based on Jussieu’s family name.
Prop. C was rejected.
Prop. D (3: 24: 42: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. E (27: 21: 56: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. E had a Note as well as an Example, and the Rapporteurs commented
that the Note did not belong here, but rather in Art. 16, and that it would be a helpful
addition to the Code. He suggested that if the Section were to vote in favour of it,
it would be assumed that it would be placed in the most appropriate spot editorially.
The mail vote was very heavily in favour of a reference to the Editorial Committee,
doubtless with that in mind: 27 for, 21 against and 56 to refer it to the Editorial
Committee.
Buck questioned whether, according to the Rapporteur’s comments, this new Note would
not affect the current Code at all.
McNeill thought that if it was genuinely a Note then it stemmed from the existing
Articles of the Code, something that was implicit in the Code but not explicit.
Buck suggested it should probably go straight to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp confirmed that a “yes” vote would be so interpreted.
Prop. E was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. F (29: 37: 38: 0), G (26: 37: 39: 0), H (7: 75: 22: 0) and I (33: 29: 41: 0)
were referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 42
Prop. A (29: 50: 36: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 42 Prop. A, which was a rewording of one component of the
Article. The intent of this was to make it clearer, define more precisely, what constituted
an illustration with analysis, or rather the analysis of an illustration. There was
a grammatical defect in the proposal, but that was purely editorial. He reported that
the proposal was not very strongly supported: 29 in favour, 50 against, with 36 recommending
it go to the Editorial Committee.
Nic Lughadha requested a reminder of the new definition of illustration that had been
agreed on earlier in the week, because it might be relevant in this context. [Art.
8 Prop. A was displayed.]
Buck objected primarily to the fact that it said you had to have more than one figure,
and if your single figure was diagnostic there was no reason to have more than one.
That was why he had voted against it to begin with.
Barrie wondered why this was being restricted to vascular plants.
McNeill replied that it was because there were provisions for unicellular organisms—algae—that
were separate. Article 44.2 was the one that covered non-vascular plants.
Nic Lughadha was still not getting enough sleep, but she thought this meant that an
analysis could now be a photograph and she found that new and unusual. She had always
understood it to be a figure with detail, and now it looked like the door was being
opened to pointing at a photograph instead of a description in certain rare instances.
Prado clarified that the proposers’ intention was to clarify for vascular plants what
was meant by “analysis” in the Code. He elaborated that sometimes it was very difficult
to decide if a drawing representing a vascular plant was [adequate for a name to be]
validly published or not, and one Example was presented to help to understand the
modification. The proposal had three parts: A, B and C; B was a clarification about
caption. He was not sure if he had proposed the correct wording of the Article, but
he thought it needed improving in the Code because it was hard to use this rule.
Stevens really could not see what the proposal added.
Soreng agreed that there was a problem with using photographs as types. There were
a lot of old photographs of specimens at Berlin and if they could be used as types,
he would be scared.
McNeill reassured him that we were not really discussing types but what an analysis
was in the phrase “illustration with analysis”.
Gereau felt that anyone who had worked with a great deal of the literature from the
late 18th century through much of the 19th century would probably have encountered
great difficulties in deciding whether a given illustration really was an illustration
with analysis, and he felt that clarification was highly desirable. He thought the
“at least one additional figure” clause here was very clarifying and desirable. He
acknowledged that the proposal as written had some problems but it should certainly
not be rejected and he would like to see it referred to the Editorial Committee.
Gandhi noted that in his line of work, to determine the validity of a published name,
all he looked for whenever there was a fig involved was whether there was an additional
figure cited in addition to the main figure. He did not go into detail about whether
the cited additional figure was one or a group of figures that provided the analysis.
He believed that it was beyond the requirement of an indexer.
Knapp asked whether he was supporting or opposing the proposal.
Gandhi [Laughing] responded that in the beginning, as Stevens had said, it was not
clear to him how it changed the Code, but he supported it.
Davidse was not so against it in principle, but did not particularly like the phrase
“the plant habit plus a detail of a segment, neither diagnostic” used in the Example.
He interpreted that those were now determined as not diagnostic. He thought it was
necessary to be neutral and consider that the original person thought that they might
be diagnostic.
McNeill noted that the clause would be deleted by the Editorial Committee because
there was nothing in the Code to specify that a description had to be diagnostic,
so why should an illustration?
Davidse agreed that that was exactly the point that he was trying to make.
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (42: 46: 27: 0) was rejected as a corollary of Art. 42 Prop. A being rejected.
Prop. C (35: 48: 30: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. D (18: 68: 22: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. D, by Brummitt, which was a similar restructuring, in this
case trying to do something that on the face of it looked very desirable: that was
to avoid so much repetition as currently exists in the Code with regard to illustrations
with analysis. However the Rapporteurs had pointed out that it had some difficulties.
It had been pretty well defeated in the mail vote: 18 in favour, 68 against.
Prop. D was rejected.
Prop. E (12: 92: 6: 0) and F (7: 97: 4: 1) were ruled rejected.
Prop. G (34: 22: 47: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 43
Prop. A (7: 4: 96: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 44
Prop. A (9: 79: 16: 1) was ruled rejected.
Article 45
Prop. A (45: 11: 47: 1) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. B (54: 7: 27: 11).
McNeill noted that Art. 45 Prop. B, by Demoulin, was linked to proposals on
Microsporidia
, and he was rewording and adding a section, restricting the present Article to the
first sentence and transferring the rest into a new Art. 45.5. McNeill added that
the Nomenclature Committees for
Algae
and
Fungi
were both asked to comment on the proposal, or more correctly the Committee for
Fungi
was, and inadvertently the Rapporteur wrote Prop. A instead of Prop. B for the Committee
for
Algae
, who therefore did not actually vote on it but did express their support for the
proposal. The Committee for
Fungi
did vote on it and voted 10 to 1, with some abstentions, in favour of the proposal.
That was a 71% vote in favour.
Demoulin added a small word of explanation that this came not only from reflection
after the Mycological Congress on how to handle the
Microsporidia
, but also from another meeting, which was devoted to blue-green algae and where there
was discussion on the nomenclature of such organisms treated under different Codes,
and discussion with Professor Oren from the Bacteriological Nomenclature Committee,
who was very satisfied by the way the botanists were handling the situation but noted
that there still were some loopholes of the kind that Redhead had pointed out in the
case of
Microsporidia
.
So Demoulin had tried to devise an absolutely general provision for those cases of
the algae and fungi that could be sometimes treated as protozoa. This was an old classical
situation, the dinoflagellates, but there were more and more organisms that people
were hesitant to place in one group and so this was the result. It was a completely
general way of having portability of names from one group to another and Professor
Oren had told him that it was a good way of handling it and it had been well supported
by mycologists and algologists.
Reveal was a little concerned by the phrase “nonbotanical Code”. He felt this suggested
that he could write his own personal Code, say he was following it—it did not deal
with botany, but he was describing fungi and algae. He suggested the inclusion of
some modifier like “Internationally accepted”, or “established”.
McNeill thought that was a very good point, which the Editorial Committee should address.
Redhead felt, in general, that there was support for this at the International Mycological
Congress. He was in the Committee for
Fungi
and also supported this as a broad approach to many of the problems being run into
with organisms that may not have been traditionally viewed as fungi.
Prop. B was accepted with a supermajority.
[At this point discussion of Preamble Prop. A took place, the proceedings of which
can be found under Preamble in the normal order under the Second Session on Monday
afternoon. A short discussion pertaining to Art. 33 Prop. B occurred here and has
been moved to the normal order in the Sixth Session on Wednesday afternoon.]
Article 46
Prop. A (53: 41: 11: 1).
McNeill noted that the proposal was by Brummitt, and while it followed from the Brummitt
proposal that had been rejected, it could be considered separately. He summarized
that it was proposed that names above the rank of family would not have the suggestion
that they required authorship. The vote was 53 in favour, 41 against, so it was not
roundly defeated.
Greuter pointed out that the proposal was not an Article as it was worded because
it did not say “are not to be used”. He moved that it be treated as a Note, the added
new sentence of which was just a statement of fact.
McNeill thought it had to be an Article and should read “are not to be”, because the
provision at the moment of Art. 46 did not mention ranks but taxa, so there was no
provision in the Code to say that those names for which priority did not apply did
not need to have an author or may not have an authorship.
Greuter felt that that was an amendment to his amendment.
Knapp clarified that McNeill was leaving Brummitt’s proposal unamended. She asked
if Greuter was formally proposing to amend this to a Note.
Greuter proposed McNeill’s amendment in his name. [The amendment was seconded.]
Knapp instructed the recorder to add the words “to be”.
McNeill corrected that to “Are not to be”.
Knapp became philosophical, quoting Shakespeare, “To be or not to be, as it were”.
Reveal had no objection to this although he thought it would cause a little confusion
when trying to figure out what to do. He suggested that if it was going to be a Note,
instead of “not”, to make it optional to a user whether or not they would use author
names. So “Author citations…”, instead of “are not to be used”, “Author citations
may not be…”, in order to allow the choice.
McNeill suggested it would be a Recommendation to that effect, that they should not
be used.
Reveal agreed that probably a Recommendation was appropriate, if Greuter had no objections,
that [author citations] need not be used above the rank of family.
McNeill asked if Reveal wished to propose something.
Reveal thought that Greuter had allowed the proposal to become a Recommendation rather
than a Note.
McNeill disagreed and clarified that it was currently an Article.
Reveal then decided to re-amend the amended amendment to read, as a Recommendation,
“Author citations are not necessary to be used after names of taxa above the rank
of family” to be fixed by the Editorial Committee.
McNeill added “should not”.
Knapp repeated that the proposal was to amend this to be a Recommendation instead
of a rule.
Reveal agreed, noting that the new wording should allow one the choice of doing it
or not doing it. [The amendment was seconded.]
Knapp noted that discussion was on the amendment, from being a rule to being a Recommendation.
Redhead thought we were originally discussing the original amendment…
Knapp said it was withdrawn.
Redhead said it was not.
Knapp clarified that it was turned into a Note.
Redhead thought we only should be discussing the original amendment but now an amendment
had been made that countered the…
Knapp explained that the original amendment was to add the words “to be” and returned
the discussion to the words “to be”. She apologized and noted that it was getting
a bit confusing because the proposer was not present.
McNeill added that it would almost certainly have been a friendly amendment but unfortunately
with the proposer absent it could not be.
[The amendment was accepted, so the words were changed to “to be”.]
Knapp moved on to Reveal’s amendment, which was to change this from a rule to a Recommendation.
McNeill clarified that the Recommendation had to be “should not” because there was
no obligation to provide authorship. It was something that may be done if it was desirable,
particularly in nomenclatural works.
[The amendment was accepted.]
Knapp moved to discussing Prop. A as a Recommendation and not a rule.
Demoulin agreed that it could be discussed independently of the rejected proposal
but still believed it really only made sense if that proposal had been accepted. He
felt that if the requirement of a description for valid publication of those names
was maintained, he did not see why there should not be reference to who did the description,
like for any other taxa. He did not see why the use of author names in that category
should be discouraged.
Gereau agreed.
Knapp praised Gereau for being good and not saying what had been said before and requested
that be recorded.
Wiersema was not clear what was being voted on. He was not sure if the entire Prop.
A was being included or just the highlighted part as the Recommendation.
Knapp clarified that it was just the highlighted part.
Wiersema thought that had already voted been on.
Knapp explained that the Section had voted on turning that from a rule to a Recommendation.
Wiersema thought that had been approved.
Knapp explained that the change from a rule to Recommendation had been approved and
now the vote was on whether the Recommendation was going to be included in the Code.
She agreed that it had got a bit confusing and asked for a vote on including the highlighted
text as a Recommendation in the Code.
Turland thought there was definitely a majority against.
Knapp agreed, but not a 60% majority.
McNeill said it did not have to be—there was a majority against.
Turland corrected him to a majority in favour.
Knapp decided to discuss it again to make sure it was absolutely clear.
McNeill stated that on the hand vote it was a clear majority, but not clearly a 60%
majority.
Knapp reiterated that it was a clear majority in favour but not a 60% majority.
Barrie called for a card vote.
Reveal had a point of order in that his original suggestion for the Recommendation
was not the wording being voted on. His suggested wording for the Recommendation would
allow an author to either use or not use authorships.
McNeill noted that that was totally unnecessary, because that was exactly what the
Code already said.
Reveal agreed.
McNeill asked if he should have just voted against the original proposal.
Reveal had done so, and would vote against this.
Knapp [later] reported the results of the card vote on Art. 46 Prop. A as a Recommendation
that author names should not be cited above the rank of family. For was 244 votes,
which was 51.8%, and against was 227 votes, which was 48.2%, which meant that it did
not achieve a 60% majority so therefore the proposal failed.
Prop. A was rejected on a card vote (244: 227; 51.8% for).
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 46 Prop. B, took place during the Ninth
Session on Friday morning.]
Prop. B (42: 33: 28: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. B, to amend Art. 46.2, which was addressing the situation
in which an author did not actually ascribe the description to anyone and the presumption
had to be that it was to be ascribed to themselves. He added that there was a very
precise definition of “ascribed”, which did not cover a number of situations with
respect to descriptions as opposed to names.
Nic Lughadha pointed out that the text on the screen did not match the text in the
synopsis and made less sense than the text in the published synopsis. She pointed
out that there was a “both” on the screen that did not belong.
Knapp agreed and thanked her, adding that “and” should also be struck out. She invited
other comments or discussion on the proposal, which now matched the one in the synopsis,
in case those in the audience did not have their synopsis and were counting on the
projected version of the Bureau, which she considered to always be a fatal error.
[Laughter.]
Gandhi still did not understand how it differed from what was already in the Code.
He felt an Example to support it would be appreciated.
Perry explained that it was simply the fact that the Example in the Code said that
the description was ascribed to an author, when in fact there was no mention of the
author’s name with the description. So it was simply to make evident what the Code
already implied but did not explicitly state.
Applequist wondered if this was a substantial difference, and wished to know how many
names might change authorship as a result of the acceptance of the proposal.
Perry suspected none.
McNeill presumed this was based on her analysis of existing Examples in the Code and
others. He added that there was a large number of Examples associated with this, which
would be referred to the Editorial Committee whether or not this was approved.
Prop. B was accepted.
Prop. C (43: 36: 24: 0), D (39: 34: 28: 0) and E (26: 25: 55: 0) were ruled referred
to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. F (30: 45: 29: 0) was discussed as an alternative to I [below] and rejected.
Prop. G (24: 41: 37: 0) and H (7: 14: 83: 0) were ruled referred to the Editorial
Committee.
Prop. I (59: 22: 23: 0).
McNeill moved to Art. 46 Prop. I, which was adding a new sentence in Art. 46.2 and
had associated Examples. He noted that the proposal had received positive support
in the mail vote.
Gandhi referred to the Example, which illustrated how he had come across several situations
wherein the publishing author and the ascribed author provided their own descriptive
material towards the validation of the name. In such cases it became a problem as
to whom the correct authorship should go and he felt that even though it was a technicality,
it was still needed. He believed it should be the ascribed author who also provided
some validating remarks.
Gereau thought that it would change the ascription of authorship in a great many cases—for
example, this one, which would become “Buchanan-Hamilton ex D. Don”—and he found it
misleading and undesirable.
Perry had a point of order: what happened to Prop. F?
McNeill apologized, he had said that Prop. F was an Example only but was, in fact,
addressing the same issue but had a different approach to it. He did not think they
should be looked at as alternatives but acknowledged that Prop. F should perhaps have
been taken first.
Knapp thought that, since discussion of Prop. I had started, that should be completed
and voted on and then discussion could return to Prop. F.
Perry felt that, despite what the Rapporteur said, they did address the same issue.
McNeill clarified that he said they do address the same issue but he did not think
they were strict alternatives.
Perry suggested the Section look at them together.
Knapp felt that as they were not strict alternatives, discussion should continue to
Prop. I bearing in mind that Prop. F was a different approach—but not strictly alternative—to
the same issue.
Wiersema noted that this had been characterized as though it might create instability
but he thought it helped eliminate uncertainty because these situations could be being
treated both ways right now. He felt that this gave a clear way of dealing with them.
McNeill decided that he was inclined to think the proposals should be treated as alternatives,
actually, so the discussion was extended to both proposals, and a vote would be taken
as to which one was to be preferred and then the final vote to accept between Prop.
F and Prop. I.
Knapp took the advice from the Rapporteurs and outlined that the discussion would
be started over and instructed everyone to rewind the clock and start again discussing
Prop. F and Prop. I as alternatives. She added that this meant doing the same as earlier:
taking two proposals, choosing between them and then voting to amend the Code with
the proposal that was chosen as the preferred proposal.
Malécot thought that Prop. F was dependent on Art. 32 Prop. I, which had been rejected
a few minutes earlier.
McNeill acknowledged that it was slightly sloppy writing on the part of the Rapporteurs.
He explained that, had that other proposal passed, this would have been critical for
clarification. He thought it could still be considered independently.
Demoulin noted that the mail vote had rejected Prop. F and supported Prop. I, and
he found that logical and would vote the same way, because he found Prop. I, even
if it may destabilize a few situations, clearer and the most logical thing to do.
Perry asked Gandhi what he regarded as being the validating description in his proposal.
McNeill thought that the question arose from the fact that the Section had defeated
a proposal that would define the validating description and had opted for leaving
flexibility in determining typification so that either description could be conceived
as a validating one. He interpreted the question as: “in your proposal’s wording,
what do you mean by ‘validating description’, seeing as we have, in fact, not defined
one”?
Gandhi clarified that in his line of work he came across hundreds of situations wherein
the ascribed author just provided some very meagre descriptive material, which was
not enough for a validation, so as long as there was adequate diagnosis or descriptive
material by the ascribed author for the validation of the name, then that was what
he called validating.
McNeill checked that this meant any description that would validate.
Gandhi agreed.
Applequist felt that if something of this sort was wanted, Prop. F was superior because
it also covered a hypothetical case in which the publishing author ascribed part of
the description to the same author as the name and part of the description to a third
party, a case that Prop. I did not cover.
Perry had a problem with Prop. I, where in the first line it said a validating description
was of the author who provided the name and a description and in the bottom line just
“description or diagnosis” was referred to, not saying whether it was validating or
not.
Greuter highlighted that he had just a moment ago given an example in the other context,
which the Rapporteur had wrongly thought was inappropriate. He asked the proposer
or the Rapporteur if either of those versions, and if so which, would cover his concern.
It was not infrequent that a name was validated from a herbarium label and ascribed
to the author of that herbarium label in a perfectly good formal publication by another
author or later author who gave a description, diagnosis and then cited the type with
the full text of the herbarium label on which was “flowers yellow”. In that case,
“flowers yellow” was from the author to whom the description was ascribed. His feeling
was that that both these versions would then make the author of the label the author
of the name. He added that if he was correct, he would vote against both.
McNeill thought he was correct but that there were situations that the Code could
not possibly cover and that was a rather extreme one.
Perry thought Greuter was right but the idea was so that it would be possible to be
able to assign the author of the name before lectotypification or the choice of validating
description; otherwise, nobody could ascribe the authorship until somebody had lectotypified
the name.
Gandhi had mentioned at the very beginning examples with John Torrey and Asa Gray’s
Flora of North America, wherein they had incorporated several names associated with
validating descriptions from Nuttall but they had also added their own remarks. In
such cases he reported that when this was examined nearly four years ago involving
McNeill, Greuter and Nicolson, among others, the decision was taken, as far as typification
was concerned, to look at the entire protologues. He concluded that the question of
authorship and the typification would be kept separated.
Knapp moved to a simple majority vote on a choice between Prop. F and Prop. I. By
simple majority Prop. I was chosen as the proposal to discuss as an amendment to the
Code.
Gandhi called for a card vote on Prop. I.
Knapp [later] reported the results of the card vote on Prop. I: for was 209 votes,
against was 230 votes. As this did not reach the supermajority, the proposal failed.
Prop. I was rejected on a card vote (209: 230; 47.6%).
Prop. J (42: 28: 34: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. K (52: 27: 28: 0).
Reveal noted that the first line had nomen novum, which should be replaced with “replacement
name”. He explained that the case in the proposal did not occur very often, but when
it did, it made it rather challenging. He suggested for those of the audience who
were bibliophiles in getting authorships right that the proposal would help in making
a fairly simple decision, but it did require some effort on the part of the subsequent
individual working in the indexing centres to actually look at such things as introductions
and acknowledgements and so forth. It was just a convenient way of handling a relatively
rare situation.
Prop. K was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Prop. L (19: 79: 6: 0) was ruled rejected.
Prop. M (9: 66: 27: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 46 Prop. M, which noted the difficulty of determining authorship
of the name of a new taxon that was validated solely by an illustration with analysis
and there was no evident authorship to it. He felt that there were difficulties in
implementation of it and the Rapporteurs suggested that a more satisfactory solution
would be to rule that a name so validated must always be attributed to the author
of the publication that was defined in Art. 46.5.
Van Rijckevorsel felt that the main issue was that at the moment nothing was provided
for. The illustration with analysis was there by exception and all the provisions
on authorship did not take it into account. As a practical matter, the most clear
case was when you had on the illustration a name that was ascribed to an author. Then
it was obvious to everybody who was the author. He added that, as the Rapporteurs
noted, that was not necessarily the case. In his view, that was a second case, when
sometimes the illustration was included in a publication, in which case the author
of the publication could be the author of the name. He also referred to the case in
which there was an illustration with a name on it and no author, in which case the
name may not be ascribed to an author and there was no clear author of the publication
and then you were really in trouble. He had drafted an addition in case the name was
not ascribed on the illustration and that should cover most cases. The cases that
it did not cover were going to be very, very difficult and he had no idea how to deal
with them.
McNeill pointed out that it was not possible to cover all situations in the Code,
but he thought it seemed a useful addition to what was in the original proposal.
Sennikov thought that the proposal looked a little bit illogical because, in this
case, the illustration with analysis served in place of a description, and it could
be ruled in the same way as a description and it was the same matter. The ascription
of the name that was published was not necessarily connected with the authorship of
the description, and the authorship of the illustration, if taken literally, may not
be connected with the ascription. The author to whom the new name was ascribed may
have not seen that illustration and may have done nothing but suggest the name for
the taxon. So if common logic was applied in the same manner, this rule would be contralogical
[sic].
Gereau, while preparing for the mail vote for this case, had gone through the BHL
[Biodiversity Heritage Library] for the last six cases of species validated solely
by an illustration with analysis to see what the results would be, and in five out
of those six cases there was no author on the fig and there was an author ascription
in the associated text. Not descriptive text but where the name was mentioned in the
text. In the sixth of those cases the authorship was slightly different, and that
listed in the text was clearly the author of the work. So he thought the proposal
was not helpful and possibly confusing.
McNeill noted that it was quite strongly defeated, but not by 75%, in the mail vote.
Prop. M was rejected.
Prop. N (86: 7: 13: 0) was accepted.
Prop. O (69: 5: 30: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. O, which he noted, rather like Prop. N, was to make explicit
what was currently implicit.
Sennikov had a question for the proposer: did this case cover the situations of citations,
when the descriptive matter was quoted from the previous publication?
McNeill answered that what he was describing was not covered under the proposal, but
there were proposals that addressed the matter and they were the ones that had just
been passed over.
Sennikov wondered why we should believe that the person who referred to the previous
description could own the authorship of that previously published description, even
if it was quoted. He could not see the need for the Note, because it was just a reference
to a previous publication. He likened it to his making a reference to Linnaeus but
not owning the authorship of the Linnaean text to which he had referred.
McNeill thought the point was that it paralleled the proposal immediately before,
which had been accepted. Article 46 was quite precise as to what ascription was but
it was perhaps too precise in places, because people did not normally put their name
at the end of a description, except when they were citing somebody else’s description.
It was assumed from the fact that they were the author of the work. Proposal O was
to deal with this situation with regard to the normal situation where a name was validly
published on the basis of a concurrent description or diagnosis. Proposal O was dealing
with the same situation where the description or diagnosis was in an earlier work.
Turland agreed and added that if the description or diagnosis was from an earlier
work but it was quoted, reproduced verbatim in the current work, then this would not
apply to that situation.
McNeill stated that it would fall under Prop. N.
Greuter would be happy to support the proposal if he understood it, but his English
was too poor to understand it fully as it was worded. He suggested that it be referred
to the Editorial Committee to try to put it into an English understandable for the
nonEnglish speaking. [That was acceptable to the proposers.]
Glen, as an Englishspeaking person, was also lost, and he asked the proposer to work
through an example.
Turland noted that there were actually some current Examples in the Code that showed
the issue and he thought Art. 46 Ex. 13 would be an example. So when publishing
Elaeocarpaceae
, Candolle wrote “
Elaeocarpeae
. Juss.”, so he ascribed the name to Jussieu, but the validating description came
from that earlier publication of Jussieu, so therefore he also ascribed the validating
description to Jussieu.
Challis believed that the intention of this proposal was to deal with post-1958 names
where there was a defective type citation and someone subsequently published the name
of the new taxon correcting the type and they referred to or quoted the earlier author’s
description.
Turland answered that that was not necessarily so, it would apply there but that was
not the intention.
Challis continued that it would apply, and there were several examples where this
would be very helpful to clear up the authorship. She was speaking for the proposal.
Prop. O was accepted.
[The following discussion, pertaining to a new proposal by Reveal concerning Art.
46, took place during the Tenth Session on Friday afternoon.]
Reveal’s proposal
Reveal referred to a proposal from the floor submitted on Wednesday.
McNeill stated that he had no other proposals in front of him except one, which he
was just about to come to. He pointedly noted that the Section had been instructed
twice to make sure he had all new proposals. He was still willing to take it, but
he had no note of any more proposals.
Reveal persevered that McNeill had it in his own possession.
McNeill responded “Sorry?”
Reveal repeated that he had given it to McNeill; he had it in his own possession.
McNeill conceded that had occurred earlier on by e-mail, yes, but he did not have
it in front of him now. [Laughter.]
Knapp pointed out that this was the Nomenclature Section and when the Rapporteur said
he wanted it on a piece of paper in front of him, we were all nomenclaturalists, and
that was just what it meant on the tin. She moved to the proposal from Reveal and
Gandhi to add a Note to Art. 46 with an Example. [The proposal was seconded and supported
by three others.]
Reveal briefly noted that it had been brought to their attention by Greuter and discussed
by McNeill, Wiersema and others over a couple of weeks in early summer, late spring,
and this was a result of that discussion.
Gereau requested a point of information from the proposers as he did not understand
the impact of this. This was authorship of
Cephalotaxus
latifolia
W. C. Cheng & L. K. Fu ex L. K. Fu & R. R. Mill, as originally cited. It was not clear
whether this was as it was originally cited or as it appeared in Novon.
Gandhi referred to the usage of “ex” authorship citation. Normally the manuscript
[i.e. original] author failed to provide something like the description or the relevant
material needed for validation. There were a few cases wherein the originally ascribed
author did provide a Latin description but for some technical reason might have not
published the name validly. Then in the next step the name became validated. The validating
author may be a common factor to both, before the “ex” and after the “ex”. Normally
in such cases the authorship was accepted as originally ascribed, but in this particular
case, where L. K. Fu was a common factor both before and after [the “ex”], and they
did not ascribe the authorship to the original author, they wanted the authorship
for themselves. So that was explicitly made clear by citing their own name. He wondered
what to do in such cases. Should the “ex” authorship be accepted or omitted? He felt
that the cited Example would be useful.
Greuter thought that the question was that, as the Code said, ascription, as defined,
meant that the name was ascribed or attributed by the author to someone else. If someone
else published a name such as “X ex Y” and Y was himself or “X ex myself”, he ascribed
the name to himself and not to the person preceding “ex”, so it was not ascription
to Mr X or Y. He moved an amendment, possibly friendly, to let the Note stay as it
was, Note 4, referred to here, but turn it into an Article. Article 46 Note 4 was
in the Code and had been followed and was useful, but it was not actually covered
by the Articles, so it was not a Note. That was the reason for turning it into an
Article, so that it could continue to be used without problems, and he thought it
would solve the problem that had been addressed by the present proposal, so it might
be accepted as a friendly amendment by the proposers. [It was accepted as a friendly
amendment.]
Knapp summarized that the proposal, as amended, was to change Art. 46 Note 4 to an
Article and keep the Example.
Nic Lughadha was a native English speaker but wanted to ask about the significance
of the “withstanding” in this case, as it was not clear to her.
Knapp thought that that text was no longer relevant.
Dressler noted that there was a “may” in the Note and wondered if that was an editorial
matter to change the wording.
McNeill confirmed that if it was changed to an Article it would have to have the appropriate
structure of the verb.
Redhead was a little confused as he thought that the latter half of Art. 46.4 already
allowed what he thought was trying to be added into the Code, so it looked redundant.
He acknowledged that he may be misinterpreting it but thought that “However, in both
cases authorship as ascribed, followed by ‘ex’, may be inserted before the name(s)
of the publishing authors” was exactly what was being talked about.
Gandhi explained that since one of the authors before and after “ex” was a common
factor, some people may want to omit everything after “ex” and just retain only what
came before the “ex”, in order to avoid that mistake. L. K. Fu, before the “ex” as
well as after the “ex”, was a common factor.
Stevens called the question.
Knapp felt that the debate was getting into a discussion about the finer points of
nomenclature, and actually this should have been in proposals and people could have
discussed it for a longer time than here on the floor. [There was a sufficient majority
in favour of voting.]
She counted 37 “no” and 59 “yes”, which was 61%, so the proposal was accepted and
Note 4 would be turned into an Article.
Reveal’s proposal was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Eighth session
Thursday, 20th July, 2011, 13:30–17:30
Recommendation 46D
[The following debate, pertaining to Rec. 46D, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Prop. A (71: 24: 14: 0).
McNeill introduced Rec. 46D Prop. A by two authors actually called Nobis. The Recommendation:
“Authors should cite themselves by name after each new name they publish rather than
refer to themselves by expressions such as ‘nobis’ or ‘mihi’. These expressions should
be used only if they are identical with the name of the author in which case they
should be written with an initial capital, i.e., ‘Nobis’ or ‘Mihi’, and, where necessary…”.
The covering note suggested that the Code was discriminating against authors by the
name of Nobis and there were indeed two Polish authors by this name who were authors
of this proposal.
Knapp concluded that this “just goes to show nomenclature can be fun”.
McNeill thought that editorially it might be wiser to confine it to the first portion
rather than the second one.
Karen Wilson commented that in this age Latin was becoming so much less common that
using “nobis” or “mihi” in these circumstances should be discouraged, just for clarity.
She added that too many people would not know what was meant.
McNeill interpreted that as supporting the first part of the Recommendation.
Karen Wilson confirmed that.
Greuter suggested that Prop. B be referred to the Editorial Committee to try to cover
its intent by finding a simpler wording.
Demoulin wondered whether it was necessary to have this proposal at all for very rare
cases. He was against it but thought it was better for the Section to decide whether
the Recommendation was desirable or not, and if so it could be arranged by the Editorial
Committee. He felt that if it was referred to the Editorial Committee and the Editorial
Committee decided after all we can do without it, there would be people who would
later say that the Editorial Committee had been doing too much.
Marhold would vote against it as he felt it was common understanding that if somebody
had the name Nobis, nobody would treat him as “nobis” in that sense.
Barkworth understood that one of the criticisms when a paper was rejected was that
the author was using “nobis” after the name and he should not do so because the Code
said he should not, so it was the reviewers that were a problem.
Knapp added that it was people who were ignorant.
McNeill emphasized that he may have misled the Section earlier as the only part that
was new was the second paragraph. The first sentence was in the Code already.
Knapp noted that her counting skills were being tested to the limit and reported that
there were 52 in favour and 49 against, which did not reach the supermajority to amend
the Code so the proposal failed.
Prop. A was rejected.
Article 48
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 48, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Prop. A (83: 0: 26: 1) was accepted.
Prop. B (66: 20: 18: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 48 Prop. B, which was seeking to clarify the circumstances
under which the adoption of an existing name resulted in the publication of a later
homonym utilizing some of the criteria from Art. 52. He noted that the phrase “original
type” appeared in the Article at the moment, which was a rather unusual circumstance
for older names, other than generic names, and not a term that was well defined in
the Code. The proposal had good support in the mail vote: 66 in favour, 20 against,
18 to the Editorial Committee.
Greuter had a difficulty with clause (c): “a previously conserved type under Art.
14.9”. “Previously conserved” meant that it would have dates for conservation, but
he argued that it was not possible to know exactly when a name was conserved—was it
by the final action of the Congress, a report etc.? Either way he felt that (c) was
irrelevant and could go. He suggested a friendly amendment to delete “previously”,
then he would be prepared to leave (c) in but otherwise he would propose an amendment
to delete “(c) the previously conserved type under Art. 14.9”. [This was not considered
a friendly amendment.]
[The amendment was rejected.]
Prop. B was accepted.
Prop. C (2: 14: 89: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 49
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 49, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Prop. A (7: 72: 27: 1).
McNeill introduced Art. 49 Prop. A, which was concerned less with author citation
and more with illustrating that the basionym or replaced synonym must legally be a
definitely included element in the new combination etc. He added that the Rapporteurs
felt that it was not in the appropriate place and that it applied more generally.
There was a strong negative vote in the mail vote: 7 in favour, 72 against, not quite
75% though.
Gandhi had come across several situations like this, wherein the publishing author
with this new name cited an earlier name with the identical epithet with the expression
of doubt, so it became a problem whether to treat the newly published name as a new
combination or as [the name of] a new species.
Whenever such difficult situations arose he always had discussions with his nomenclature
colleagues and drew support from Art. 52, wherein whenever an earlier synonym was
cited with an expression of doubt, it did not cause superfluity to the newly published
name. He wanted to know why, if that was the criterion, was this not applied to the
situation given in the proposal? That is, the cited earlier name with an expression
of doubt should not be treated as the basionym. In other words, the newly published
name should be treated as the name of a new taxon. In general his colleagues agreed
with him because the epithet was identical, it should not be mistaken for the basionym.
Despite a lot of negative votes in the mail vote he was positive that a decision had
to be made to treat the newly published name as a new combination or treat that name
as the name of a new taxon. He was quite agreeable one way or another.
McNeill referred to the Rapporteurs comments that if the Code required definite inclusion
then an expression of doubt ruled that out. Generally speaking, if the supposed basionym
had an expression of doubt, it was not definite inclusion and therefore ruled out
under other Articles. Their concern was it did not belong in Art. 49 and might fit
better in 33.
Gandhi was agreeable to that; he felt that as long as there was some Example in the
Code addressing the situation it would be very useful.
Alvarado had a question for the proposer: did he mean, for example, that if someone
described a new species but was in doubt of the genus, then the species was valid
but the genus was not?
Gandhi responded that that situation was already addressed in the Code. Such examples
were validly published. It was because the expression was of taxonomic doubt, but
not nomenclatural doubt, that the names were valid.
Prop. A was rejected.
[The following general discussion about the
Acacia
issue took place during the First Session on Monday morning.]
Acacia
general discussion
McNeill explained that the proposal by Brummitt, Art. 51 Prop. A, received substantially
more than 75% “no” votes [83%], indicating that it would not be discussed. He suggested
that the published proposal had a right to be talked about first, although the half-hour
discussion was intended to be wideranging and informal. He asked if anyone wished
to bring the proposal forward for discussion, requiring five people to propose it.
He went on to explain the content of the Brummitt proposal. It suggested using the
name
Acacia
independently of the taxonomy, so the name
Acacia
could still be used regardless of whether it was considered to belong to the group
that is called
Acacia
now, or the group that would be
Vachellia
or
Senegalia
. The generic name would not indicate the relationship.
Knapp displayed the proposal on the overhead screen. She also mentioned a compromise
proposal, which had been published in Taxon but had not been part of the formal synopsis
of published proposals [Turland proposal.]
Barrie thought it would be easier to try to get the first proposal reintroduced before
moving onto the next, suggesting the Section could vote on whether it should be discussed
or not.
McNeill clarified that nobody had proposed the Brummitt proposal for discussion.
Barrie proposed discussion of the proposal by Brummitt, Art. 51 Prop. A, and asked
if there were four people to support it. [There were.]
Herendeen had understood that the half an hour that was set aside was an informational
half hour to get people up to speed and it seemed to him that information should be
presented so that people understood these proposals, regardless of how many mail votes
they received. He asked if someone could present a quick, one- or two-minute synopsis
summarizing the
Acacia
options.
Knapp clarified that if the Section wanted to discuss a proposal that had been defeated
in the mail vote, procedure required that it be proposed and seconded by four people,
which had been done, so it was possible to proceed to discussing the proposal.
Van Rijckevorsel found the Brummitt proposal very interesting, but he was not sure
if he was in favour of it. He thought the wording was quite inappropriate, so wanted
to submit an alternative wording if it was going to be discussed. He disliked the
Turland proposal, which would mean that nobody could use the name
Acacia
, and proposed a third option: conserving the name
Vachellia
with a conserved spelling. If there was deep feeling that a different name would be
more acceptable, then the Section could conserve the spelling for
Vachellia
, and the working option he suggested was
Afroacacia
. He suggested this would be the most efficient way with the minimum disruption of
names and the minimum disruption of the Code.
McNeill summarized Van Rijckevorsel’s proposal. The Vienna Code had been accepted—
Acacia
was the conserved name with
Acacia
penninervis
as type, the suggestion was a conservation proposal, which would have to go through
the necessary steps but could be expedited, by which the name
Vachellia
would be treated as conserved, with a conserved spelling, which would be
Afroacacia
. That would give the name priority from the date of publication of
Vachellia
, which may or may not be desirable. It would have to receive the broad support of
the Section, and then the proper procedures for a conservation would have to be adopted.
Van Rijckevorsel accepted that as an almost accurate summary. He elaborated that he
was proposing to include the rule in the Code, that it was to be treated as conserved,
which would mean that the Section could accept it immediately, and there would be
no need for a conservation proposal, but he also clarified that he was not seriously
proposing this, just suggesting it would be the minimum disruptive proposal.
Gereau claimed that both the proposal on the board and Van Rijckevorsel’s amendment,
and all other proposals calling for exceptional nomenclatural actions with no precedent
and unpredictable consequences, were really completely unnecessary. He pointed out
that the uses of the name had been established by procedures that already exist. He
encouraged voting “no” on all compromise proposals and living with the results of
the votes in Vienna and Melbourne.
Lewis noted that Van Rijckevorsel’s suggestion of
Afroacacia
was looked at quite seriously as a possible compromise position, but reminded the
audience that
Vachellia
was a pan-tropical, not an African-specific genus. The reason
Afroacacia
was not supported was that it would be egocentric to pick on a name that was specific
to one continent, whereas the plant actually spanned several. He addressed Gereau’s
proposal to just move on, because a vote had been taken and
Acacia
penninervis
had been supported, and suggested that, while that might be a practical and pragmatic
way forward, he feared the end result would be six more years of disagreement about
Acacia
. He considered it absolutely fundamental for the good of the nomenclatural and botanical
community to arrive at a solution that was acceptable to all, and not acceptable to
just some of the people in the audience.
Boyne was at one of these Sections for the first time and was not entirely familiar
with the rules. He prefaced his question with the caveat that it might seem naïve,
but he wondered, was it possible to have two versions of
Acacia
?
Acacia
sensu stricto for the most narrowly defined monophyletic
Acacia
and
Acacia
sensu lato to apply to all genera once classified as
Acacia
, whether monophyletic or not.
Schrire was worried about the Brummitt proposal because he claimed that recognizing
Acacia
as one taxon was becoming less and less tenable as evidence had shown that
Acacia
was polyphyletic and comprised widely separate evolutionary lineages. He found it
untenable to recognize all of these by the name
Acacia
or
Acacia
sensu lato, as suggested. He pointed out that implicit in the Brummitt proposal was
that all of the combinations in
Senegalia
,
Vachellia
, and
Racosperma
would be considered illegitimate and therefore unavailable for future use. He found
this a dangerous, bad principle and retrograde step.
Maslin thought it was a bad idea to accept either of the proposals [Brummitt’s or
Turland’s] because two acceptable names were already available:
Acacia
and
Vachellia
. He noted that combinations had already been made for around half the species in
Vachellia
, and the name had already been taken up to some extent in scientific and other literature
and web resources. He offered to enumerate these if desired. [It was not desired.]
He suggested the Section let the due processes of the nomenclatural system take their
course.
Levin wanted to know if enough people supported discussion of the Turland
Acacia
compromise, as for the Brummitt proposal. He also requested that Turland explain his
proposal.
Turland asked for a copy of the proposal to be put up on the screen. [This was done.]
He introduced the concept and why he had proposed it, prefacing his comments by saying
that he was quite neutral on the issue and personally had no preference for where
the type of
Acacia
should be. He neither supported nor opposed the proposal, it was a suggestion for
the Nomenclature Section to consider. The rationale behind it was that if a vote occurred
at the Nomenclature Section in Melbourne, which resulted in one side of the
Acacia
dispute winning and one side losing, then it could result in negative feelings, which
could persist for the next six years. So the idea of the compromise was so both sides
could leave Melbourne with something acceptable, rather than one side going away defeated
and the other side the winners. Basically, the mechanism suggested was to conserve
three names:
Acacia
; and then the name
Austroacacia
, used in the sense of
Acacia
under the Vienna Code; and
Protoacacia
, used in the sense of
Vachellia
under the Vienna Code. These names would be deemed to have been simultaneously published,
so in effect,
Austroacacia
and
Protoacacia
would be conserved orthographies of
Acacia
. The three conserved names would need to go through the usual process of conservation
of names, so they would need to be agreed by the Committees. If the genus
Acacia
were recognized or circumscribed in the broadest sense, which many people agreed was
taxonomically untenable,
Acacia
would be the correct name. However, if the segregate genera were recognized, then
Acacia
would not be used for any of them, and
Austroacacia
would be used in the sense of
Racosperma
or
Acacia
and
Protoacacia
in the sense of
Vachellia
. The existing combinations in
Acacia
would provide the authors and places of publication, so it would not necessitate 1400
new combinations, but it would obviously necessitate name changes.
Knapp clarified that if this was to be discussed it needed to be proposed and have
four seconders. [The motion was seconded and supported by three others.]
Demoulin gave the perspective of a teacher of general botany to pharmacists, geographers
and biologists. With limited time to devote to any important plant genus for something
like
Acacia
he would teach pharmacists and geographers that it was a big genus, very important
in ecology of tropical and subtropical areas with a dry season, and it produced Arabic
gum, note that there were a lot of species in Australia, it included two invasive
species in the Mediterranean region, and that was all. He voted for the Brummitt compromise,
because it would allow him to retain that kind of statement, but he was also ready
to vote for the present compromise, because it would retain the word
Acacia
in some combination that would be easily understood. He added that pharmacists used
books that had been using
Acacia
for two centuries, and geographical description of vegetation, even tourist guide
books. If the Brummitt proposal was considered rejected, he was in favour of the Turland
compromise.
Alvarado felt that science should not be hindered by traditions. He thought that the
Section should follow the usual procedure that was followed with other plants, that
the clade in which the type of
Acacia
was found should be called
Acacia
and other groups should be called according to their oldest described species—in their
own genus.
Sebsebe Demissew noted if the IBC meeting had been somewhere in Africa, the vote could
have been different, but he respected the decision of the people here, even though
he expected that there were many members of the Australian community voting for the
motion. He reminded the Section that
Acacia
was not just a matter of molecular studies and clades, it had ecological, historical,
cultural etc. implications. He stated that you cannot dissociate Africa from
Acacia
, but having now agreed to follow the decision of the Committee, he found the Turland
proposal to be a better option. Not the best option, but a better option that would
keep
Acacia
for Africa as
Protoacacia
. He made the comparison that people in Africa would consider it better to have a
little bit of yourself in a photograph than none at all. He considered having
Austroacacia
and
Protoacacia
would be a better option for the future, not just in terms of legume systematics,
but thinking of the global community, tourism etc.
Karen Wilson made the parallel with a similar problem in Australia in the past when
Eucalyptus
was split up.
Corymbia
created a furore amongst foresters and native plant enthusiasts. What people eventually
had come to accept was that you could still use the name eucalypt as a common name,
and she suggested the same could apply to
Acacia
. She felt that Australians would use acacia as a common name, and people in Africa
would continue to do the same. She pointed out that the general public could continue
to use acacia as a common name and the botanical community would know which was the
appropriate name to use in scientific terminology.
Rico wanted to point out that while many people were focusing on how important
Acacia
was in Africa it was also important in the neotropics. She referred to Maslin, who
said that some people had already taken up
Senegalia
and perhaps other names in papers, but asserted that in real life ecologists and others
were very confused. She suggested that some of the changes to
Senegalia
and
Vachellia
had nomenclatural inaccuracies and the same people who made
Vachellia
and
Senegalia
combinations had started to submit proposals to conserve some
Vachellia
or
Senegalia
under
Acacia
, due to their importance. Her main point was that the
Acacia
problem extended further than Australia and Africa, into the Americas, Asia and to
India, giving examples of
Acacia
nilotica
in India and
Acacia
farnesiana
,
Acacia
tortuosa
and
Acacia
aroma
in the Americas.
West brought the discussion back to the Turland compromise proposal. Like Lewis she
was very keen to see some sort of compromise come out of the debate, and requested
clarification from the proposer or Rapporteur-général as she suggested that the proposal
may set a precedent for the Section to be able to change names of any group of plants.
Turland noted that because the issue involved conservation of names, it was possible
to argue that if a Section did not like the name of a particular plant and there were
compelling reasons for nomenclatural stability, then it was already possible to change
the name under the current rules. He suggested that what was meant was the desire
to change the name of a plant for some reason other than nomenclatural stability,
and he agreed in theory that the answer was, yes, it could set a precedent. He added
that he hoped that
Acacia
was a unique case and that he personally thought it unlikely that something as controversial
as this would again reach the stage of having been conserved and ratified by a Congress,
and then questioned afterwards.
Mabberley was not in favour of the Brummitt proposal and had some sympathy with the
Turland proposal, but thinking about the true users of names, he believed that some
Acacia
was better than no
Acacia
. He suggested an amendment to the notion of
Protoacacia
if the Turland proposal was to be seriously considered. The connotations of evolutionary
succession were undesirable and he suggested Millero-, after Miller. He could see
where Austro-, came from, although he noted that the distribution of this group did
go as far as Hawai’i and various other places.
Gandhi had been contacted by the Botanical Survey of India, who asked him to convey
their interest about retaining the name
Acacia
for India. He also agreed with Karen Wilson that the term acacia could be used as
a common name for any group, regardless of what scientific name was chosen, and gave
the example that in the southern U.S. the term mimosa was used for
Albizia
, which was far more incorrect than using acacia as a common name.
Smith thought that the Section recognized and accepted the outcome of the first card
vote on Monday. Unfortunately, as had already been mentioned, he felt that this would
do nothing to get rid of the controversy, and the next six years, 12 years, 18 years,
however long, could be spent, at least by a component of the botanical society, trying
to change things around. He suggested this was an opportunity for compromise. He was
not in support of any of the compromise proposals as the full implication of adopting
any of them was impossible to foresee.
Redhead pointed out that if the Turland proposal were to be voted on, amendments would
have to be made to Art. 11.1, which talked about correct names.
Orchard wanted to know whether the third proposal from Van Rijckevorsel was on the
table for discussion or not.
Unknown speaker asked for a point of information as to when the thirty minutes might
finish.
Knapp confirmed the discussion would be closed in about five minutes.
Van Rijckevorsel formally proposed introducing a new rule, which would treat
Vachellia
as conserved, with a conserved spelling to be determined, with
Afroacacia
as a working proposal. Other options would be
Anacacia
or
Abacacia
(something with an ‘A’). [The motion was seconded and supported by three others but
seemingly not revisited in the later discussion.]
Demoulin pointed out that in Europe, acacia was used as a common name for
Robinia
.
Lewis queried whether there was another
Acacia
proposal by Linder and Crisp.
McNeill confirmed that there was a proposal to set up a Special Committee to explore
the matter including suggestions as to what the Special Committee would consider including
the existing proposals and now the others that had come forward. They qualified it
that the Committee should include people who were not previously involved, and unbiased,
which struck many as difficult to achieve, unless they were not vascular plant taxonomists.
Lewis responded that, while his personal view was that it would be not a good idea
to drag this further, it struck him that that would be a default position if the Section
did not reach a consensus supporting either the Brummitt or the Turland proposals.
He queried whether the other option was that it would stay as it is.
McNeill envisaged that, having had this discussion, the people most interested in
the topic would get together over the following day or two, to see if something could
emerge that would be likely to receive significant support. He felt that the value
of having had this general discussion was that it got a lot of views on the table,
which would make it easier for taking things forward informally, in the hope that
something more concrete might be presented at the appropriate time later in the week.
Knapp closed the discussion at just over a half hour.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Article 51
Prop. A (11: 89: 6: 1).
McNeill introduced Art. 51 Prop. A as significant primarily because it was the proposal
from Brummitt regarding the use of the name
Acacia
. He reported that the proposal had received quite a substantial negative vote in
the mail vote: 11 in favour, 89 against, six to the Editorial Committee, and one to
a Special Committee, with an 83% negative vote. [The motion to discuss the proposal
defeated in the mail vote was seconded and supported by four others.]
Davidse was strongly against the proposal as well as the other so-called compromise
proposals. To him, it introduced an entirely new concept, sort of through a back door,
which he thought of as hyper-conservation. He thought, as had been said during the
earlier discussion period, it was a very bad precedent to vote for.
Nicholas was not supporting the proposal, but wanted to mention that he had seen publications
already out there that used the notation, in particular
Lessertia
, with
Lessertia
and then in brackets after that,
Sutherlandia
, so it was being used by other people out there.
Gandhi was also not supporting the proposal. His department was concerned that the
citation of
Acacia
followed by
Senegalia
within parentheses or
Racosperma
in parentheses might cause confusion as to whether such parenthetically cited names
represented subdivisions, such as subgenera.
Hawksworth also thought it was a very bad precedent putting something like this in
the Code because he could imagine all sorts of things in the future going into that
detail. He maintained that the Code should be about the principles and not deal with
special cases.
Van Rijckevorsel thought it was a very brave and courageous and bold proposal, which
unfortunately was, well…
Knapp asked “A dangling sentence, Paul?”
Anderson recalled that when this was discussed at Vienna, there was…
McNeill interrupted that this was not discussed at Vienna.
Anderson continued, what was discussed was the
Acacia
…
Knapp ruled the comment out of order and stated that the Section were not discussing
what happened in Vienna, at all, in this session. She added that it was a Chair’s
rule.
Anderson was just going to say that there was political pressure put on…
Knapp cut him off and repeated that there would be absolutely no discussion of what
happened in Vienna, adding that we were here in Melbourne now, and were moving forward.
Nic Lughadha called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. A was rejected.
Turland’s proposal
McNeill introduced another proposal relating to the topic of
Acacia
that was published in Taxon.
Schrire proposed that the Turland proposal be discussed. [The proposal was seconded
and supported by three others.]
Potgieter suggested some of the wording be changed, hopefully as a friendly amendment.
She proposed that the name
Protoacacia
rather be
Acanthacacia
, as it did not have a geographical bias and was actually quite descriptive of the
thorny nature. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Redhead thought that it was what he had commented on earlier, that it looks like publication
of alternative names, so Art. 11.1 would have to be modified to make exceptions, because
Art. 11.1 said that there can be only one correct name.
Turland did look at that when it was mentioned on Monday. Each family or taxon of
lower rank with a particular circumscription, position and rank could bear only one
correct name. He wondered if there was the suggestion that there was more than one
correct name for a particular taxon here.
Knapp suggested that, although he was not the person proposing the motion from the
floor, he was the person who wrote the proposal, and it would be good if he would
explain it very succinctly so that people who were not involved in having read it
before understood what had been proposed.
Turland explained that the mechanism was to deem that when
Acacia
Miller (1754) was published, there were actually three names simultaneously published:
Acacia
Miller (1754);
Protoacacia
…
Knapp added that this was now amended to
Acanthacacia
.
Turland …now amended to
Acanthacacia
; and also
Austroacacia
Miller. So, this meant that also any combination published under
Acacia
, with this cut-off date, 1 January 2011, was treated as having been simultaneously
published under all three generic names. So not only the generic names were simultaneously
published, but any combination published under
Acacia
before that date was also simultaneously published with the corresponding combination
under
Protoacacia
or
Austroacacia
.
Then there was also a ruling on priority, where
Austroacacia
and
Protoacacia
both had priority over
Acacia
, except when a genus was circumscribed to include the types of all three names. In
other words, when
Acacia
was circumscribed in the broadest sense, in that case,
Acacia
had priority over the other two. The function of this was that the name
Acacia
would not be able to be used at all, unless a genus was circumscribed to include the
taxon
Acacia
in its broadest sense, which was arguably taxonomically untenable.
Then the other rules were to take care of various exceptions, for example with alternative
names, and the other thing that would be necessary would be to have the names conserved,
which could not be done in the Section; that would need to go through the Committee
for Vascular Plants and be conserved with conserved spellings and types.
Redhead guessed that, the way it was outlined, any particular classification was either
accepting them all together in one, in which case it was called
Acacia
, and there was one correct name under that classification, or, if it was split, then
there was only one correct name under the split, which would either be
Austroacacia
or
Protoacacia
or whatever it was changed to. Then he had noticed that the type was simultaneously
publication [sic] via conservation of
Austroacacia
penninervis
versus
Acacia
penninervis
with the same authority, which he thought seemed … imaginative. [Laughter.]
He was just worried it was going to run into conflict with Art. 11.1. It seemed to
him, from what had been explained, that perhaps the bullet had been dodged on that
one, because the question came up: what was the correct name? He supposed under any
particular classification, under the scenario outlined, you would be led to one correct
name. So he guessed that alleviated his concerns and had just wanted to walk himself
through it.
Malécot was wondering why there was a date there with 1 January 2011 and what would
happen if someone wanted to describe a new
Acacia
in 2012 from, say, Brazil,
Acacia
brasiliana
.
McNeill explained that it was just an
Acacia
.
Malécot clarified that someone would have to make a new combination into
Acanthacacia
.
Turland agreed that that was correct.
Lewis firstly supported the proposal and secondly he thanked Turland for going to
so much effort and trouble in trying to seek some sort of compromise on the
Acacia
issue. He acknowledged that there were some technical difficulties, but considered
it important for the future credibility of the nomenclatural process that a wellconsidered
attempt was made to give the wide tropical botany community some sort of solution
on this issue. There were many who felt under-represented at nomenclatural sessions
and he felt that the proposal absolutely spoke for them. Currently it was the only
compromise proposal left on the table. If the Turland proposal were to be voted down,
then in his personal view the
Acacia
saga had not been resolved.
Applequist was concerned about the statement that to be conserved the names had to
be run through the Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants in a separate step.
It seems to her that the Section should be able, by democratic vote, to change the
Code by putting names into the Appendices, just like any other change. But if this
had to be run through the Committee, she felt it important to ask what happened if
the Committee did not approve the conservation of those names and the rest of the
material was already inserted in the Code. She saw a serious risk there.
McNeill also thought it was a serious risk. He added that Art. 14 was very clear as
to how names should be conserved and he thought it would be very unusual to amend
Art. 14 temporarily in some way and certainly would not want a situation to arise
in which the due process was not put forward for virtually every name. The purpose
of the conservation proposal was of course stability of names and that would be the
criterion that would be being looked at.
Wiersema agreed that it would have to go through the relevant Committees in order
for the conservation to be active, which made it all provisional. He asked how to
put in a rule that depended on these other elements in order to enter the Code. Did
that have to be accounted for somehow in the wording of the rule?
McNeill thought that the rule could enter as it stood, because all it would mean was,
until and if the conservation was completed, the names could not be used in that sense.
He acknowledged that that would be difficult because they would all be typified under
the same name,
Acacia
penninervis
.
Wiersema added that the other names did not exist and then wondered if they would
exist simply because they were in the Code.
McNeill explained that if the proposal was passed, then they would exist, but until
they were conserved with different types they would be inoperable. He added that it
was not illogical to include it, it would be just provisional and if they were not
conserved in that manner then presumably it would be done at a later Congress. He
noted that there had been provisional provisions in the Code before, to be implemented
in a further Congress, and then it turned out they were not.
Wiersema believed that those were stated as such when it was the case.
Nicholas philosophized that in science, if there were extraordinary conclusions, extraordinary
proof was required and he thought in cases of extraordinary nomenclatural problems,
extraordinary solutions were actually required. He fully supported the proposal.
Nelson understood that the proposal would perhaps create some nomenclatural problems,
perhaps not; however, he wondered what nomenclatural problem the proposal was designed
to solve, because it was not at all clear to him that there was one.
Sebsebe Demissew thought that everyone knew what had happened in the last five or
six years, and was not going to go through the details.
Knapp thanked him for that.
Sebsebe Demissew continued that there had to be a solution as it was undesirable to
bicker around for another five years and he thought that Turland’s proposal was the
best option.
Luckow responded to Nelson that there was a nomenclatural problem that he and possibly
others were not aware of, in that as things were there were two parallel nomenclatural
systems being applied. She explained that in Africa and many parts of Latin America
neither
Senegalia
nor
Vachellia
had been taken up, which meant that
Acacia
was not being used in a consistent fashion by everyone either in the legume community
or even in the floristic community. She characterized this as a worst nightmare for
what could happen and pleaded for a solution that would lead to a single application
of the names.
Thiele felt that it might be useful to have an Australian perspective. He acknowledged
that he could not speak for all of Australia because Australia had varying views on
the proposal and others may wish to speak for it. He was against it and wanted to
make the room aware that a number of Australian institutions, in preparing for this
Congress, discussed the proposal at great length. They greatly appreciated the work
that Turland had put into preparing a compromise and fully supported the desire for
an outcome that helped in some of the political issues that had been raised and they
could see the desire for compromise.
However, before coming to this meeting several institutions decided that, no matter
the outcome, they would not support this compromise because they saw it as solving
a problem that was solvable in other ways and solving it using a mechanism that to
them compromised the Code. They were concerned about the precedent that it may set.
He hoped that it was an entirely unique case, but did not think it was possible to
say that. In the future, other cases may well arise that were equally controversial,
which may cause a desire among some parties for a similar type of solution. In conclusion,
they did not support this proposal.
Reveal had a question out of ignorance. Neither of the names that were orth. cons.
had been published and these were newly proposed names. When would they become effective
and would they have to go through the Committee for Vascular Plants to be conserved?
Because normally a name was proposed and then, for one reason or another, it was acted
upon.
McNeill replied that if he had read the proposal correctly, if it were to be passed,
the three names would be deemed to have been published in 1754, therefore they did
exist. The action of the Committee would be to conserve them, because as they stood
they would be sitting there, all published by Miller, but none of them with priority
over the other. So, what was more, they would not be distinguishable one from the
other. So it was inoperable until such time as the names were conserved, but the answer
was they would be deemed to be published by Miller.
Reveal, in his newly imagined electronic journal,
Acacia
of the World, wondered if he were to publish, on 2 January 2012, hundreds of new combinations
into
Austroacacia
and
Acanthacacia
, what would that do?
[Pause.]
Knapp wondered if either of the Rapporteurs wanted to answer that question or if they
would prefer to let it hang there. [Laughter.]
McNeill replied that they could cause enormous nomenclatural disruptions.
Breitwieser asked Thiele to explain what he meant by saying there were other ways
of solving the problem.
McNeill noted that, if the proposal should fail, then of course it was not a vacuum,
Acacia
had been conserved six years ago with
Acacia
penninervis
as type. That was the default if the proposal was rejected.
Kellermann was for the compromise, but it seemed to him that the Committee step was
a major issue and he wondered how many people of the Committees were present.
Knapp pointed out that the Committees were newly elected by the Section at the end
of the session, so there currently was no Committee.
Ladiges had a problem with the view that the names were deemed to have been named
back in 1754 when they were not. She did not claim to be a nomenclature expert, but
did not understand that component. It sounded like storytelling to her.
McNeill agreed that indeed it was. He elaborated that it was a mechanism to give priority
to ensure that a whole lot of new combinations did not have to be published.
Mabberley wanted to reiterate the point that he had made on Monday that some
Acacia
was better than no
Acacia
. Users of names for all of these trees and other plants, those users were going to
have to change everything and he did not think that was in the spirit of the Code.
Cameron noted that it seemed to have escaped other people’s propositions that there
was one simple resolution that we could go back to, which had the benefit as Mabberley
had just pointed out of not losing the name
Acacia
altogether, but in the spirit of the exceptional circumstances did actually give voice
to some of the concerns that had been raised by people from other continents. This
was simply to, in the spirit of the controversy regarding the validity of the decision
made in Vienna, which…
Knapp interrupted to reiterate that there was to be no discussion of Vienna.
Cameron argued that he was not discussing the issue, whilst of the available options
he would favour the Turland proposition, he wanted to point out that were that to
fail, another option that should then be considered as an alternative was that we
could go back to accepting
Racosperma
for the group that was currently
Austroacacia
. That would retain a proportion of species in that genus.
Knapp refocused the debate on the Turland proposal, not alternative proposals to the
Turland proposal. While she understood people’s desire to broaden the discussion,
she highlighted that the Section had already had a very wide-ranging discussion for
about 45 minutes on the first day, at the very end of the day when we weren’t discussing
any proposals in particular, so as Chair she ruled that we were discussing the Turland
proposal and not alternatives to that at this time—actually the Schrire proposal.
Nic Lughadha followed up on Ladiges’s “storytelling” by asking, if we can deem that
things were published in 1754 by Miller, could we not equally deem that they were
conserved by the Committee for Vascular Plants last week? [Laughter.] Otherwise, she
felt that the proposal was seriously flawed if there would be a gap, where we had
to wait to see [if the names were conserved].
Applequist, as the person who had raised that alarm, felt she should say now that
two of the Committee members felt that if the Section democratically voted for this
proposal, the Committee would be bound—whatever their own feelings—to conserve the
names the Section instructed them to conserve and she hoped that others on the Committee
would feel likewise.
Greuter was speaking in fact neither for nor against any feeling of
Acacia
lovers. He was speaking for the Code, and the Code won’t be happy with this. [Laughter.]
Nor, he predicted, would the Editorial Committee. He saw a number of technical problems
if the proposal was accepted as presented, but could not even see the solution for
the future Editorial Committee. For instance, there was a rule in the Code somewhere,
he thought Art. 6, that a name in order to be validly published must be effectively
published and in order to be acceptable at any way must be validly published.
He thought a motion had been approved earlier, an Article saying conserved names were
validly published, even if they were not in the place where they have been deemed
to be validly published in the conserved entry.
McNeill noted that this applied only to family names in App. IIB.
Greuter repeated that it was only for the family names, so it would not even apply
to
Acacia
and
Protoacacia
and
Austroacacia
. He argued that they could not be conserved if that was not in. Further on it was
deemed that all combinations under these nonexistent and nonconservable generic names
were validly published when they were formed, which was not the case. They were not.
They were not conserved. So even if you had a rule that these names were conserved,
the generic ones, it would not allow the formation of names under the conserved imaginary
generic names to be usable. They would not exist under the Code.
There would be so many basic principles in the Code overruled and affected by this
unusual proposal that he could not see how it would be possible to make enough cross-references
to implement them at all. He warned against accepting it. However his feeling may
be one way or the other, he thought it was unworkable.
Potgieter had a point of order, there should be no “o” in “Acantho-”.
Gandhi was in a very unusual position to express two opinions, because he was given
thoughts from two different institutions. From Harvard, they were reluctant to accept
this compromise proposal because the two names that were not published by Miller were
being ascribed and attributed to him as though he published them. He was concerned
that a few in the audience may not realize that Miller did not propose them. However,
from India, they had asked him to support this proposal. So he would be voting in
both ways. [Laughter.]
Flann pointed out that if this was not accepted, then there was a solution, as had
been mentioned, in that the Congress had voted then to accept the process that had
occurred up to now. In her mind, it was more of a political issue than a nomenclatural
issue. She thought that everybody wanted to resolve the ongoing dissent and dissatisfaction,
but a compromise would only work if both sides accepted it. Personally, she would
vote against the proposal unless it was clear that
Austroacacia
was broadly accepted as well as
Acanthacacia
.
Geltman felt fortunate that there were no acacias in his flora and really had no idea
why the question was so sharp. However, he thought that it was a great danger for
botanical nomenclature and felt that we must do as much as possible to ensure that
it would be the first and the last exception, because he felt that the precedent could
open gates for exceptions in other genera.
Orchard noted that it seemed to him that the meeting had perhaps, by consent, overlooked
the basis of the whole controversy, and that was to conserve
Acacia
in order to stabilize over 1000 names. If the proposal was accepted, then
Acacia
effectively had no names. He asked, what did we vote for on Monday if not to vote
for the stability of nomenclature?
Smith had to support the compromise. He was so requested and instructed by a great
many people that were unable to attend. The reality was that there should have been
an effort to have a compromise that would be acceptable to many parties. If it was
not possible to reach that point, he thought the reality was that the controversy
would just carry on until the next conference or the one after that. He added that
this was not a threat. He thought a great many voiceless people who simply did not
have the means to attend would be seeking ways that were legal within the provisions
of the Code to undo this.
Barrie wanted to support what several other people had already said. One was Nelson,
who pointed out there currently was no nomenclatural problem. He elaborated that it
was not a nomenclatural problem because there was
Acacia
—all of the taxa had names that could be used, so no nomenclatural problem was being
solved. The second was Greuter, because he felt it would be a nightmare to get this
to work logistically over time.
He added that he thought 20 years from now people would wonder why this was in the
Code. He suggested that students would go to Miller and say “Well, these names aren’t
in the Gardeners Dictionary. What’s going on?” If the names started being used, he
thought there would be a lot of people who would not be coming to the Code looking
for answers but looking in the literature like they look for everything else.
As much as he appreciated the sentiment and intentions behind everyone who had worked
on the issue over the last eight or ten years, he could not support the proposal and
thought the issue should be kept as it was and just recognize that
Acacia
was conserved with an Australian type.
Nicholas reported that his colleagues who were ecologists and physiologists had said
to him that they would continue to use
Acacia
no matter what was decided at this conference, and this worried him. The reality was
that people in Africa were going to continue to use
Acacia
. He felt that a solution was really needed and, while not wanting to insult anyone,
noted that at teatime, someone actually called it “nomenclatural imperialism”, so
that was how deep the feelings were running.
Rico wanted to point out the degree of confusion that had been created so far in that
there were already publications out that had two entries for the same species, one
as
Acacia
and also for
Vachellia
.
Ford-Werntz referred to Nicholas’s comment that his nontaxonomic colleagues were going
to use
Acacia
regardless. She wondered if he was speaking for or against the proposal in that case,
and if he was saying that they would not adopt the
Acanthacacia
,
Austroacacia
names either.
Nicholas had not managed to talk to them, but was sure that they would be happy with
Acanthacacia
because it was descriptive and it retained
Acacia
in the name. They were not happy with
Vachellia
.
Fortunato was part of the legume group, people who worked and also published on
Acacia
, and the new proposal that the Section had now, as divided into
Austroacacia
and
Acanthacacia
by continents, was not a solution as it was much too complicated. She noted it was
just a vision of people who work in
Acacia
. You can say in other positions
Acacia
was a genus just as divided, and the new proposal was more complicated.
Knapp asked if Fortunato was speaking for or against the proposal.
Fortunato replied that she felt that it was possible to accept it, but after that,
new things, new changes would be made.
Barrie made the point that under the current system and current conservation of
Acacia
people were well within their right to use
Acacia
in their names, they did not have to use
Vachellia
or
Senegalia
if they were using
Acacia
in a broader sense and that had not changed at all.
McNeill commented that under the Code there were other mechanisms by which the name
Acanthacacia
could be the correct name for what would otherwise be
Vachellia
that did not require this particular proposal.
Knapp lamented that she had just told somebody else they could not talk about that!
[Laughter.]
McNeill apologized and justified that it was in response to a comment.
Knapp added that since McNeill was sitting up the front she could not point at him
in that same sort of way…
Karen Wilson was very sympathetic to the issues that some of our colleagues were facing,
also sympathetic to the users here and issues that they would face. If there were
other ways of reaching the same result, then she thought it was actually relevant
to hear about them now because that would certainly influence how she voted on the
issue.
McNeill clarified that there was no mechanism for reaching the same result, it would
be a mechanism for achieving a result in which
Acanthacacia
would replace
Vachellia
.
Karen Wilson was interested to know from some of the Africans or Americans whether
that would influence their thinking too.
Knapp suggested that discussion should stick to the proposal now so as to not muddy
the waters.
Rico thought it would be better to have
Acacia
in a word than no
Acacia
at all in any words; at least some people in each continent would know that the thing
belonged in the past to something that was an
Acacia
. To some extent, the prefix of Acanth- or Austro- would give you the idea where it
was sitting in the cladograms.
Levin suggested a card vote at the outset, because it was a pretty critical situation,
unless that was out of order to call it at the start.
Knapp wished to stick with the procedure as it was correctly laid out, first a show
of hands and after the show of hands, if people wished to have a card vote, they could
so call that.
Nic Lughadha thought that this was such a political issue that people would probably
vote more freely in a card vote and suggested that just on this one occasion it might
be best not to have a show of hands.
Knapp made a proposal from the Chair, noting that Nic Lughadha and Levin had both
proposed a card vote. If she could have three people to second that, the Section could
do a card vote from the outset.
Annette Wilson made what she termed a point of order: that she saw no reason to hide
this vote if the Section had not hidden any others.
Knapp noted that she was very sorry but that was technically not a point of order
and she was not going to take it as such. She said that she had made a proposal from
the Chair, it had had a number of seconders, and she suggested now that the Section
was going to…
McNeill said the Section was going to take a vote as to whether people wanted a card
vote immediately.
Knapp agreed to take a vote as to whether people wanted an immediate card vote or
whether they wanted to vote a show of hands first and then whatever happened after
that.
[Turland said something off-microphone; McNeill laughed.]
Knapp exclaimed that Turland could just be consigned to outer darkness. [Laughter.]
She clarified that Turland was suggesting that we discuss the proposal for a card
vote, which she deemed had just occurred, so she asked the Section if they were ready
to vote on whether or not to have a card vote. [There was general agreement and the
Section voted for holding a card vote on the proposal immediately.] For complete clarity
she outlined that voting “yes” for the proposal that was put forward by Schrire from
the floor meant that we would have three names, one
Acacia
, one
Acanthacacia
and one
Austroacacia
, all simultaneously proposed by Miller in 1754. The names
Acanthacacia
and
Austroacacia
would need to go to the Committee for Vascular Plants to be conserved and then there
would be a number of things following on from that. Voting “no” meant you did not
approve of the proposal. [Time passed.] Knapp reported the results of the card vote:
the “yes” votes were 169 and the “no” votes were 396, which meant that the proposal
failed by a 70% majority vote.
Turland’s proposal was rejected.
Knapp wished to put on record, that as Chair, she very much appreciated the civilized
way in which the debate was conducted. She thanked everyone who contributed and participated
for being calm, collected, brief and very to the point and felt that a round of applause
was due. [Applause.]
Article 52
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 52, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Prop. A (17: 10: 81: 0) and B (16: 2: 90: 0) were ruled referred to the Editorial
Committee.
Prop. C (4: 97: 8: 0) was ruled rejected.
Prop. D (12: 71: 26: 0).
McNeill noted that Prop. D, which was the addition of a new Note with an Example,
had been heavily defeated in the mail vote—65% “no”, but not by 75%.
Gandhi was curious to know from the audience whether the cited Example was not clear
or that Example was wrong and would not be accepted.
McNeill explained that the Rapporteurs’ comment was that the suggestion was implicit
but it was perhaps not necessary, because a Note was there for something that was
implicit in the Code but was not altogether explicit. The Rapporteurs comment that
this “ought to be quite obvious from Art. 11.2. If it were felt that a frequent mistake
was to regard as illegitimate under Art. 52 a new name that included the type of a
name at a different rank with a different final epithet, then a suitably reworded
version of the Note (with ‘does not make’ changed to ‘does not in itself make’) might
be considered.”
Gandhi added that the only reason he thought that this Example was an interesting
one was when an author was using a different epithet from a different rank, one of
his colleagues had argued with him that the proposed new name was superfluous and
illegitimate. He strongly disagreed with the person but the person did not agree with
him, so he thought this kind of Example would be useful.
McNeill stated that the Example would certainly be looked at by the Editorial Committee
and he had no reason to suppose it was incorrect.
Gandhi wished to withdraw the proposal if the Editorial Committee was willing to consider
it.
Prop. D was withdrawn
Article 53
[The following debate, pertaining to Art. 53, took place during the Ninth Session
on Friday morning.]
Prop. A (34: 63: 8: 0) was withdrawn.
Prop. B (16: 50: 40: 1) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. C (8: 95: 8: 0) and D (8: 92: 9: 0) were ruled rejected.
Prop. E (32: 50: 27: 0).
McNeill introduced Art. 53 Prop. E, which was to add text to Art. 53 voted Ex. 9,
regarding the confusability or similarity of thibeticus and tibeticus, thibetensis
and tibetensis and, for that matter, tibetanus. He added that there was a negative
mail vote: 32 in favour, 50 against.
Barrie was sympathetic to putting thibeticus and tibeticus as being confusable but
was not happy with, and argued against, considering the endings ensis and anus and
icus as all confusable. He thought that was a bad idea. He was against the proposal.
McNeill thought that the proposal was solely suggesting that each pair was confusable;
not for a moment that tibeticus was confusable with tibetensis. He added that the
Rapporteurs’ feeling was that there were rather a large number of Examples in the
Code already dealing with Tibet and wondered if another one was necessary.
Barrie said that in that case he did not have a problem with it.
Gereau thought that some of the epithets listed in the reworded Example were likely
to be confused, but certainly not all of the variants were necessary and he felt it
should go to the Editorial Committee for their considered opinion.
Knapp suggested sending the addition of the text about Tibet to the Editorial Committee…
Turland pointed out that that was not possible as it was a voted Example.
McNeill thought that the Section would have to at least endorse it with the caveat
that the Editorial Committee need not include them all or something to that effect,
because with the voted Examples it was necessary to agree that these were confusable.
He did not think there was any question that if one pair was the others were also,
because the terminations were the same.
Glen had what he framed as a dumb question: “do we really need to have a complete
list of every possible pair of confusable epithets in the Code, because this seems
to be occurring in Ex. 9?”
McNeill noted that there was a proposal for an Appendix that he thought had been adopted.
Kellermann thought the “t” and “th” example was quite useful. There were several cases
where that was a problem but seeing that an Appendix had been voted for, all of the
similar examples probably should move into the Appendix and that was up to the Editorial
Committee.
McNeill thought that he was hearing that the vote would be in favour of confusability
with the caveat that the Editorial Committee should decide how many should appear
in the Code and how many should be in the Appendix.
Wiersema wondered about the Appendix being set up to deal with the decisions under
Art. 53.5. He wanted to know if that meant that these kinds of cases would have to
go through the procedure of being submitted to the General Committee and get their
decisions before they could enter that Appendix.
McNeill deemed that the decisions were of higher status than that because they were
voted Examples in the Code. However, if an Appendix was introduced for the references
and materials from 53.5, it would be sensible to include an extract from the Code
of those situations that were also confusable, otherwise the Appendix would be incomplete.
Wiersema was not sure that the Art. 53.5 situation had actually been dealt with.
McNeill apologized, as it was still to come.
Knapp explained that a vote “yes” would be interpreted as these epithets were confusable
but with the proviso that should an Appendix for these instances be approved that
these would be referred to that Appendix and for the attention of the Editorial Committee.
McNeill noted that not all three would necessarily appear in the Code.
Prop. E was accepted.
Prop. F (16: 67: 25: 0) was rejected.
Prop. G (81: 16: 9: 1).
McNeill moved on to the matter of an Appendix that he had erroneously thought had
already been decided on. This was Art. 53 Prop. G, by Paul Silva; a proposal to establish
an Appendix to list binding decisions regarding confusability of names and to add
at the end of Art. 53.5 “These binding decisions are listed in Appendix VIII”, or
whatever number it would be.
Prop. G was accepted.
Prop. H (62: 1: 43: 0) was accepted.
Silva’s proposal
McNeill noted that Prud’homme van Reine had a new proposal from Paul Silva that related
to Art. 53 and asked him to introduce it.
Prud’homme van Reine had received a letter from Paul Silva, who asked him to introduce
a term, “parahomonym”, in Art. 53.5. There was a recommendation at the end whether
or not to treat the names concerned as homonyms. The proposal was to add “para-” between
brackets after “homonyms”. He added that the Committee for
Algae
was in favour of the proposal.
McNeill summarized that it would add parahomonyms to the Code in a manner in which
it was defined.
[Aside discussion between Rapporteurs]
Turland pointed out that this would be the only place where the word “parahomonyms”
appeared in the Code and he wondered if it would be adequately defined simply by putting
“para” in parenthesis before the word “homonyms”.
McNeill had actually translated the proposal a little bit, to a slightly broader one
to require the Editorial Committee to include “parahomonyms” in the Code in a manner
in which it was defined. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Paton described himself as a bit thick and slow and asked if somebody could explain
what a parahomonym was.
McNeill explained that it was indeed just what was defined in Art. 53.5—names that
were sufficiently alike to be confused but that were not homonyms. He had elaborated
the proposal a little as there was no point in putting it in unless it was clearly
defined.
Demoulin thought “para” should not be in parenthesis because they could not be homonyms.
McNeill clarified that the discussion was not on the precise suggestion of Prud’homme
van Reine, but instead whether the word “parahomonyms” should be included in the Code,
with a suitable definition in a suitable place in Art. 53 or even elsewhere.
Redhead was not certain it was needed because this was a recommendation of whether
or not to treat the names concerned as parahomonyms. The Article was there to decide
whether to treat them as homonyms, so why would they be treated as parahomonyms?
McNeill clarified that the issue was whether or not it was worth instructing the Editorial
Committee to provide a definition for a parahomonym, which was “two names that were
rather similar”. He explained that “parahomonym” was a wellunderstood word for a name
that was almost a homonym, but there was a rule in Art. 53 that some such names were
treated as homonyms and others were not, but they still remained parahomonyms.
Nic Lughadha was concerned to understand exactly what definition the Editorial Committee
was proposing because “two names that were rather similar” did not do it for her.
“Confusingly similar names” was the phrase with which she was familiar and if the
intent was to say that parahomonyms were confusingly similar names then she would
be prepared to consider it, but she felt that the Section needed to know what definition
was being proposed.
McNeill accepted that and noted that, as it was worded, he thought it would have been
confusing. The original proposal was in this context, in which it would have had to
have been a confusingly similar name.
Gereau saw absolutely no utility for the proposal. He stated that we have homonyms.
We have a rule that says we can rule things to be considered homonyms because they
are confusingly similar. We call them confusingly similar names and after being so
ruled they are homonyms by our decision, so what is the point of another term?
Barrie added a point of clarification, that after a name was ruled as confusingly
similar the pair did not become homonyms—they become treated as though they were homonyms.
Prud’homme van Reine mentioned that there already was a definition and he was planning
to propose to put that in the Glossary; he referred to a definition that Hawksworth
had already given—“two or more words orthographically or phonetically so similar to
each other that they were likely to be confused”.
McNeill noted that it could only be added to the Glossary if it appeared in the Code,
and he was pretty sure it did not.
Marhold thought that the situation and terminology in the Code was clear enough and
he did not think another term was needed. Epithets were either treated as homonyms
or not and that was it. He did not think there was a need for another term that would
just require other changes in other places in the Code and would confuse people.
Stevens called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Knapp moved to a vote on the inclusion of “parahomonyms” in Art. 53 in the context
of confusingly similar names.
Silva’s proposal was rejected.
Article 54
Prop. A (33: 53: 4: 9) was withdrawn.
Article 55
Prop. A (74: 0: 32: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Article 58
Prop. A (101: 4: 12: 0) was accepted.
Prop. B (11: 4: *94: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Chapter VI
[The following debate, pertaining to Chapter VI, took place later in the day during
the Eighth Session on Thursday afternoon.]
Prop. A (72: 7: 10: 4).
McNeill introduced Prop. A under Chapter VI, which was that the chapter title should
be changed. Instead of “NAMES OF FUNGI WITH A PLEOMORPHIC LIFE CYCLE” it would become
“THE NAMES OF ANAMORPHIC FUNGI OR FUNGI WITH A PLEOMORPHIC LIFE CYCLE”. He reported
that the proposal had received strong support, both by the Nomenclature Committee
for
Fungi
and in the mail vote.
Prop. A was accepted.
[Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
Article 59
Prop. A (2: 77: 2: 3) and B (11: 70: 1: 4) were ruled rejected.
Prop. C (64: 11: 4: 5), D (35: 38: 4: 7), E (34: 38: 6: 7), F (61: 14: 4: 6), G (59:
14: 4: 5), H (58: 13: 5: 6), I (32: 40: 6: 7), J (50: 16: 10: 7) and K (61: 10: 7:
6) were withdrawn.
Prop. L (21: 55: 2: 6) was rejected.
Prop. M (13: 65: 2: 6), N (10: 66: 2: 6), O (10: 65: 4: 5) and P (11: 64: 4: 5) were
ruled rejected.
Redhead’s set of proposals
McNeill moved on to Art. 59, which was going to be quite different from what was in
the original documents, but the material had been distributed. Redhead was going to
introduce the alternative proposals developed by the group of mycologists present.
He added, for those who were not as quite as familiar with the Code over the years
as others, that Art. 59 was the Article that dealt with the provision of alternative
names for groups of fungi with a pleomorphic life history, where there was both an
anamorph asexual stage and a teleomorph sexual stage. Historically the name of the
fungus had been that of the so-called holomorph, the anamorph and the teleomorph,
and the matter was what type of material was eligible as type of a holomorph. The
provision, which many people with modern molecular understanding of relationships
between organisms felt was anachronistic, allowed the ability to have two separate
names for the same fungus depending on whether it was present in an asexual or a sexual
stage. He described that as an ignorant vascular plant taxonomist’s summary of Art.
59.
Redhead had served as the secretary of a Special Committee that was put together after
the Vienna Congress. At that time there were some changes to Art. 59 that were put
forward by Hawksworth and were modified. A couple of the proposals put forward were
contentious and they were sent to the Special Committee for consideration. They had
worked on it for five and a half years, never quite reaching consensus on what to
do. Ultimately he had published a report on the Special Committee rather than of the
Special Committee, and then he took some of the ideas that were put forward within
the Committee and published them as a series of proposals, which were in the synopsis.
Gams and colleagues had published a series of counterproposals and those were also
in the synopsis. Together they had all been milling out what to do about it. Since
then there had been a symposium in Amsterdam, and one of the things that had been
discussed within the Committee was put forward, which was what would happen if Art.
59 was removed? There was a series of repercussions. So then he was asked to put together
a proposal to present here, indicating what would happen if Art. 59 were removed.
He hoped that amongst the mycological community here, including Gams and colleagues,
that they had agreed to roll all the proposals in under Art. 59 and basically replace
them with three different options.
The first option had been distributed in hard copy and was put forward as a new set
of proposals that covered Art. 59 and some additional Articles. The second package
would be basically the set of proposals that he had published in Taxon and were in
the synopsis, with a slight emendation to it, in that he had forgotten to take out
Recommendations. The third option was that same set of proposals but, if the first
two options fell, then the third option was to recover some of the information that
was in those proposals and eliminate one of the more offensive paragraphs to some
people and remove a date. They would be presented as three different packages. He
tabled the three sets of proposals to be debated for Art. 59.
Knapp asked for clarification as to whether he was presenting these to each be voted
on as amendments to the Code with a 60% majority as three separate sets of votes;
or as two options to be voted with a simple majority between the two options and then
a modification of the other option.
Redhead clarified that if the first option was rejected, discussion would move to
the second one and if that was rejected, the Section would go on to the third one.
Knapp just wanted to make sure that everybody understood that this was not a simple
majority type vote between two options but the presentation of scenario one, a vote;
scenario two, a vote; scenario three, a vote.
McNeill clarified that scenario two would not come to attention unless the first one
was defeated.
Dorr was concerned about the procedure, as there was a set of proposals that were
published and people were able to consider before the meeting. He wanted to know if
that was being withdrawn and this being substituted, as he thought that was necessary.
McNeill agreed because if the material that was in the published area would never
appear if the first one was passed then the published material was being withdrawn
for the moment, although it may be returned to.
Dorr thought it had to be withdrawn and the proposal considered, and then if Redhead
wanted to have the Section consider what was published before the meeting, that had
to come up separately.
Knapp added that it would have to be re-proposed and have four seconders as it were.
Dorr just did not want to be put in the position of having to choose between three
things.
Knapp agreed and, as had very clearly been pointed out, proposal one had been proposed
by Redhead from the floor. [The option 1 set of proposals was seconded and supported
by three others.]
McNeill added that this meant that all the other matters on Art. 59 had now been withdrawn,
although they may come back later on.
Redhead agreed that was correct. He referred to the handout that had been available
for at least two days and had been definitely announced last night.
Basically, he outlined that Art. 59 covered the scenarios where it was possible to
have alternative names for sexual and asexual stages called teleomorphs and anamorphs.
This had created a system where the same species or same taxon could have two or more
names. The suggestion was eliminating Art. 59 totally so that the exception was eliminated
from the Code, but then there was the concern that if you just removed Art. 59—because
the Code was retroactive and because mycologists had been publishing alternative names
simultaneously—that some of the names might become illegitimate or invalid, depending
on the circumstances and typification. So Art. 59.2 was left in so that for that period
of time when Art. 59 was in effect these names would not become illegitimate or invalid.
Basically the section above that in the printed handout eliminated the ability to
publish alternative names. The second paragraph protected names, by catching them
in a safety net, and then they had to be sorted out by the mycological community as
to which names were to be used and which ones not to be used. The other proposals
presented were ideas to try and manage the fallout of removing the protection of Art.
59 and they could actually be voted on independent of Art. 59 but they were there
to buffer the effect.
So he started by putting forward the proposal:
“59.1. On and after 1 January 2013, all names of fungi, including fungi with mitotic
asexual morphs (anamorphs) as well as a meiotic sexual morph (teleomorph), must conform
to all the provisions of this Code that are not restricted in application to other
groups of organisms or from which names of fungi are not specifically excluded.
Note 1. Previous editions of this Code provided for separate names for so called “form-taxa”,
asexual forms (anamorphs) of certain pleomorphic fungi, and restricted the names applicable
to the whole fungus to those typified by a teleomorph. All legitimate fungal names
are now treated equally for the purposes of establishing priority, regardless of the
life history stage of the type.
59.2. Names published prior to 1 January 2013 for the same taxon of non lichenized
Ascomycota
and
Basidiomycota
with the intent or implied intent of applying to, or being typified by separate morphs
(e.g., anamorph, synanamorph or teleomorph) are not considered to be alternative names
under Art. 34.2; nor are they to be treated as nomenclaturally superfluous under Art.
52.1. If they are otherwise legitimate, they compete in providing the correct name
for the taxon under Art. 11.3 and 11.4.”
He noted that there was a growing body in mycology, because of phylogenetic work,
where there were intermingled genera and intermingled species names sometimes for
the same species with different names and different genera. There was also concern
amongst other communities about the standard way of doing things and how that would
confuse things, so there was some debate here.
McNeill checked that at the moment Redhead was proposing the acceptance of the first
part but not the additions to Art. 14 and that they should be debated separately
Redhead agreed that those could be debated separately, if the first part was accepted.
Gams referred to two other pieces of major background information that had also been
available in hard copy. One was the Amsterdam Declaration of mainly molecular workers
and applied mycologists. The other was the critical reaction to that document. Very
briefly he pointed out that the mycological community was very strongly divided and
he felt that even a majority was against the move to one species, one name. He urged
the Section to abandon this proposal, which was exactly the expression of what in
the Amsterdam Declaration was intended, and to reject this.
Demoulin agreed with Gams. He suggested that if you watched the history of discussions
on the issue, the divide of about 50/50 between the partisans of dual nomenclature
and of one fungus, one name was pretty stable. There was a very intensive debate at
the International Mycological Congress in Oslo 2002, where there was a vote taken
that came to about that percentage. He felt it should be noted that the Special Committee
that Redhead had handled was also divided about 50/50. There was more support for
one fungus, one name inside the general fungal committees that he chaired, but he
felt that the difference between the Special Committee and the Committee for
Fungi
lay in the fact that the Special Committee was composed of people directly concerned
by anamorphic fungi, while the Committee for
Fungi
probably had a majority of agaricologists and then some lichenologists and very few
people working with anamorphs.
He referred to the Amsterdam Declaration, where the majority of people were in favour
of one fungus, one name. But he suggested that it was really a meeting of the convinced,
like a conference on intelligent design where they invited one evolutionary biologist,
politely listened to him and then said “Yes, we were tolerant, we’ve listened to somebody
representing this standpoint but we stick to our standpoint”. He felt that all the
discussion about the Amsterdam Declaration was highly political and not very scientific.
He argued that it was trying to give the impression that the large majority of mycologists
and mycological associations were supporting the Declaration.
He gave one example of the so-called European Mycological Association. He had been
involved with European Mycological Congresses since 1966 and the Association was mostly
the grouping of people who organized the Congresses. He had never seen any activity
of the Association outside of organizing Congresses, which at the beginning were essentially
field trips. He stated that he came from Belgium, a small country with a limited number
of mycologists, and he thought he knew them all. He had looked at the list of people
having signed the Amsterdam Declaration and he had discovered two Belgian mycologists
he had never heard of before who had signed it. He added that if you looked at the
signatories of the other declaration, the one of Gams and his colleagues, there were
also two Belgians signing that declaration, himself and André Fraiture, who was supposedly
the Belgian representatives at the European Mycological Association that we were told
was unanimously in favour of the Declaration!
Knapp thanked Demoulin and urged everyone to be quite brief. She then recognized “the
man with the 2002 International Mycological Congress t-shirt”.
Kirk supported the proposal. He offered a little bit of context as editor of the Index
of
Fungi
, a twiceyearly current awareness of new nomenclature, which was the equivalent of
Index Kewensis. In the last 18 months he had noticed a change, such that in the July
issue 5% of the names—higher for those names relevant—would have a comment: “Validly
published but contrary to Art. 59”. He claimed that there was already anarchy and
if nothing was done now, in six years’ time it would be open warfare.
Alvarado thought that if the proposal was going to take effect there should be a provision
to keep the teleomorphic and anamorphic names that had not been matched together.
So that a single name would occur only for those taxa that people were completely
sure were matched. He did not think it would be good to just say the classification
stops on this day and then the names were not available anymore.
McNeill explained that there was no reason under the Code why it would not be used.
Redhead agreed that that was correct, and felt it was a misunderstanding.
Wiersema knew that the mycologists at his institution were sympathetic to the movement
toward one fungus, one name, but all the opinions that had been expressed and circulated
and to which he had been privy had been opposed to the Amsterdam Declaration proposals
that were being presented, so he would have to vote against them for the institutional
votes.
Lendemer intended to vote the exact same way. He thought there was a perfectly good
reason why there were two sets of names and he thought they were perfectly usable.
He added that they were really great when you had to file specimens in a herbarium
and put a name on a specimen, because they did not always have both states; any specimen
could be one or the other state. He thought that if one name was adopted people would
start saying this genus, this species, anamorph, teleomorph, which he felt was practically
moving back to polynomials and did not seem very much like progress to him. There
was something else he was going to say, but he had lost it. [He laughed.]
Knapp warned that he had better say it now because she might not call on him again.
[Laughter.] She then relented and said that she was just teasing him.
Greuter was not going to speak either for or against the proposal but he was willing
to say that from a nomenclatural point of view it looked appetizing, clean, workable
and easily applicable. He had two questions for the proposers. One was whether anyone
had assessed the nomenclatural consequences of adopting the proposal. One of the main
worries he saw was, for instance, the fact that in the past teleomorph genera may
have been published and provided a name, while including anamorph genera as a synonym,
so that if this was passed now they would become illegitimate. If that was an unjustified
worry he would be pleased to know.
The second thing he wished to know, before voting on the first option, was if the
second version or scenario was worse than this one maybe he might vote in favour of
this rather than being thrown back to the second one.
McNeill answered that the second scenario, as he understood it, would be the material
on a subset of the proposals in Art. 59 that had been presented in the synopsis that
received substantial support from the Nomenclature Committee for
Fungi
.
Redhead responded to the concerns about the effect, and noted that it was debated
through the Committee. They had gone through several examples to see what the effect
would be. The conclusion was that in some cases there would be substantial effect,
but nobody had the time to go through all the scenarios. That was why they had put
in the second set of proposals [as part of option 1] and hoped that special committees
would be put together to look at selected groups and then draw up a list and say “This
is the list of names that we want to accept for this group”. He envisaged that they
would then be approved via some mechanism, which had been outlined, so those were
the safety nets for the potential effects.
Knapp queried whether it was part of option number one.
Redhead suggested that the second set of proposals could be voted on separately but
they were all part of this package. He added that if the Section voted to accept the
first part then it would be necessary to consider the next two.
Knapp decided to be nice and allow Lendemer to speak twice because he had remembered
what he wanted to say.
Lendemer thanked her. [And laughed.] Having heard someone say that people were submitting
names with the statement that it was contrary to Art. 59 his attitude was if they
were not following the rules, too bad. He did not feel that the Section should create
rules and make changes just to recognize people doing something wrong.
Unknown speaker added that they would just break them too.
Lendemer agreed. He did not see the point in recognizing people doing something wrong.
He reminded the Section that if they did not vote for any of these three options Art.
59 would remain in place and nothing would happen.
Knapp asked for other comments from people who had not made comments before but also
asked them to remember everything they were going to say when they were given the
microphone.
Hawksworth wished to explain a bit more of the history of the issue. When it was discussed
at the International Mycological Congress last year and there was a vote on it, the
majority of mycologists, including mycologists across the board, not just ones specialized
in fungi that had the problem, were for working towards one name for one fungus. He
reported that they wanted that to be done in a way that would result in the minimum
disruption of names and that it was not clear how that could best be achieved.
The meeting that was convened in Amsterdam was deliberately organized in order to
try and come up with a roadmap of where to go. It was an open meeting, obviously people
with particular interests were those that went, but it was deliberately one where
people involved in applied areas of mycology were represented, because these were
some of the areas where people had particular problems with this issue. Particularly
those dealing with plant quarantine and health and safety and so on, where people
in biology generally and in regulation just did not understand why there was a problem
with different names.
His concern was to try and get a reasonable way ahead because the current situation,
as Kirk had mentioned, was that it was rampant, that people were ignoring this. In
a single publication that came out of collected papers this year, there were five
different ways this was being used in different papers. It was total chaos. He suggested
that the proposal was the only way to actually have a clean approach forward, and
he was afraid that if it did not pass the chaos would continue. He concluded that
the current Code was not being followed and that options two and three did not go
far enough toward what people actively wanted, and so he felt this was a route the
Section had to take.
May appreciated the difficulty of non-mycologists in trying to decide how to vote
on this issue. In effect, he suggested that if one was interested in allowing the
mycologists to have a say on this it was worth considering what is the majority that
is usually used, that it would take a 60% majority to pass it. He thought, being very
fair and looking at the wider mycological community, each time the issue had been
put there would have been a 60% majority. He referred to Demoulin’s comments about
particular organizations including the International Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
, various national fungal bodies and so on. He acknowledged that when those bodies
supported the Amsterdam Declaration, in some cases it was not unanimously, but he
thought it was a very fair comment to say that all of those organizations had consulted
their members. The bodies he was on had all consulted widely and in all of those bodies
there would have been more than 60% support for ratifying the Amsterdam Declaration.
He concluded that there had been attempts to come up with middle-ground compromise
solutions that worked towards it, but they were so messy that it was just not going
to work. He felt that it was necessary to take a quantum leap and he felt that the
community was ready for it. Redhead had got the provisions in there for the consultation
of groups like the International Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
to draw up the list, so there were mechanisms to deal with the conservation proposals
that would be necessary. He argued that the mycological community wanted to move towards
this but the move had to be quantal and if done incrementally he felt it would be
more chaotic than either not doing it or going there in one hit.
Luckow felt kind of weird speaking, since she was a non-fungal person, but the mycologist
from her institution did speak to her about the issue before the meetings and she
had serious reservations about going forward with this proposal.
Prud’homme van Reine noted that phycologists also had to deal with different generations,
gametophytes and sporophytes. The first that had been published had priority and in
each genus all the species had to follow that. There was no rule if the sporophyte
or the gametophyte had priority. The mycologists did it in another way. He thought
that they had to clean up the mess but the decision had to be made here.
Knapp asked if he was speaking for or against the proposal.
Prud’homme van Reine responded “Ummm…” [Laughter.] He thought against.
Knapp commended him for his honesty.
Gandhi was also a non-mycologist and wanted to convey that his department supported
the proposal.
Johnston thought that there were two issues being dealt with here. One of them was
whether it was sensible to have two separate names for a single organism. He did not
think it was. The second was if there should be only one name for a single organism,
then how to choose that name. It seemed to him that, under this proposal, basically
a process of priority used widely throughout the Code was proposed. He felt it was
a sensible, very simple and clean solution to the mess and he was speaking in support
of the proposal.
Gams noted that so far there was the clear rule of precedence of teleomorph names
and the whole system of
Ascomycetes
was based on teleomorph genera. According to this proposal and the next one any genera,
whether anamorphic or teleomorphic, would compete according to priority and would
cause very drastic changes. He argued that it would all be committee work to decide
which of these two competing genera were going to be switched. He felt that it was
quite often not even desirable to make this choice and gave the example that in
Trichoderma
versus
Hypocrea
,
Hypocrea
was well known as
Hypocreaceae
,
Hypocreales
and so on and the teleomorphs, anamorphs were now usually connected. The anamorphs
were better differentiated. He had no objection to using the anamorph names for most
of the species, but unfortunately several of them did not have an anamorph at all
or it was not
Trichoderma
-like.
He believed that the Amsterdam Declaration and its adherents were inspired mainly
by a few well-studied genera of technical or economical importance. He felt that in
facing the whole biodiversity of
Ascomycetes
only a minority of these fungi had been critically studied with molecular techniques
and that had to be taken into account. He maintained that it was not justifiable to
synonymize names that had been connected as anamorph and teleomorph of the same taxon,
because the molecular evidence was not yet available.
Some defendants of the one name, one fungus move compared the situation with the development
of insects. He did not think that was fair. Every insect larva would develop into
an imago and that defined the species. But with fungi that was absolutely erratic
whether there was exclusively an anamorph or by chance the teleomorph available.
Kirk explained that the scenario that he had mentioned in his previous comments were
from forest pathologists, not systematists. They were taking the naming of the organisms
important to them into their own hands, because the current system did not work. He
responded to Gams, saying yes, there would be a lot of work, but he claimed that “It’s
our mess, we’ll clean it up.” [Pause.]
Knapp exclaimed “Right, no holding the microphone and not talking!” [Laughter.]
Kirk continued, saying that the priority names would be dealt with because users of
names outside systematics want them dealt with. According to him, insignificant organisms
that had been seen by one or two people on the planet Earth were not important and
just muddied the waters. He felt that Gams’s comments were not relevant to the users
of names.
Demoulin thought that the issue where it was so divided was whether names were needed
for what was standing in front of you, what you see or not. And he thought there were
a number of cases where people would like to have a name to designate what they saw.
That was a curse with the algae. It was perfectly true what Prud’homme van Reine had
said, that the phycologists never tried to fix this issue and they accepted priority,
but you may find in the algological literature comments that it would be nice to be
able to name those very different things; and—even if it was not legal—you would see
it still in many papers and books.
For example, the red seaweed called
Asparagopsis
armata
, because this was the name that was chosen in the ’30s when the Feldmanns discovered
that two very different morphological things,
Asparagopsis
armata
and
Falkenbergia
rufolanosa
, were a gametophyte and a sporophyte of the same thing. They chose the name of the
gametophyte, but you very often just see the sporophyte that reproduces vegetatively
because the climate conditions were not favourable for formation of the gametophyte.
And in vegetation description in the Mediterranean, for example, you will see it under
the name of the stage that you see—that is,
Falkenbergia
rufolanosa
. He took this as proof that it was useful to have a dual nomenclature, since people
who were not allowed to do it did it nonetheless.
Cafferty asked Gams or Demoulin to respond to the comment by May that the proposals
had consistently received 60% support from the mycological community, he wished to
know if they agreed with that.
Knapp asked for one-word answers: Yes or no.
Gams began by saying 60%…
Knapp reiterated that it was a yes or no question.
Gams thought that 60% would be true but…
Knapp interpreted that the answer was also “yes”.
Demoulin did not have the numbers, but trusted Gams.
Knapp summarized that the answer was “yes”.
Gams repeated that it reflected exactly the division of the mycological community.
May responded to the idea of naming different stages in the life cycle. He reminded
everyone that one of the principles of the Code that was right up at the beginning
was that each taxonomic group with a particular circumscription, position and rank
could bear only one correct name and then it went on to the say “except in specified
cases” and he argued that this was one of them. In terms of databases, and he pointed
out that there were a lot of integrated global databases of biota, the existence of
two different names for one fungus was very chaotic outside of the particular user
community.
He noted that in all other cases, whether it was plankton that had a completely different-looking
free-swimming form and then they settle down to form something, or butterflies, in
no other biota could you have Code-compliant or Code-mandated names for the different
stages. He concluded that it was an anomaly for the fungi and it was necessary to
get rid of it.
Price called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Knapp moved to a vote on option 1 of Art. 59: Art. 59.1 and 59.2, which belonged together.
McNeill added that this was excluding the part of how to look after the problems,
as that had not yet been discussed.
Knapp confirmed that the vote was on the section before the corollaries.
[The proposal was accepted.]
Redhead explained that there were three other parts to be discussed: a part for Art.
14, a part for Art. 56 and a part for Art. 57.
Knapp confirmed that Redhead was suggesting each of them be voted on separately.
Redhead agreed and began by introducing the first part to be considered: Art. 14 (new)
“For fungi, permanent lists of names” as Appendices to be numbered in the future,
obviously in this case these [are names] “registered and assigned either historically
or currently to selected specialized taxonomic groups” [quoted from the proposal].
He suggested that this meant that the rusts or the smuts or some other group could
be carved out where there was a group of specialists in the world—or the
Basidiomycetes
or the
Ascomycetes
. The idea was to send them to subcommittees appointed by the Committee for
Fungi
in consultation with the International Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
, and the accepted names on these lists were developed and then they could be conserved
as a block. This would be a way for the mycologists to handle the lists internally
with specialists involved in those particular groups.
Applequist thought that this seemed to be an attempt either to create something like
the names in common [sic] use that was resoundingly defeated some years ago, or an
attempt to substitute the taxonomic judgement of some elite group regarding which
anamorphs and teleomorphs went together for the taxonomic judgement of the community
over time. She maintained that such proposals did not have a place in the botanical
Code because the community had repeatedly said it did not want them there.
Buck had a question for the Rapporteurs. Was there any other reference in the Code
to a group outside of IAPT, like the International Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
? He thought not.
McNeill was also thinking it would be appropriate to ask, because personally until
he saw the Amsterdam Declaration he had never heard of the organization. He invited
the proposer to explain what the International Commission on the Taxonomy of the
Fungi
was.
Buck added that he was not sure it was appropriate for our group to tell another group
of which we were not a part what to do, so he thought it was inappropriate to have
a non-IAPT group embedded in the Code.
Knapp thought that other group would be consulted by the Committee for
Fungi
.
Buck felt that the point was that they would be embedded in the Code and they were
not part of this organization.
May moved an amendment to suggest a wording along the lines of “appropriate international
bodies, such as the International Commission on the Taxonomy of the
Fungi
”. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Greuter had several points. The first and most important was that a relatively sweeping
change of Art. 59 had just been accepted, and the Section had been made aware that
it would entail many disruptive changes of names. He believed that the only way to
deal with that flood was to establish such lists as were advocated. He thought they
would probably be something comparable to what was proposed as the Names in Current
Use list—not “common”. He noted that these were defeated very strongly at one Congress
and just defeated at another so he argued that it was not quite correct to say that
the community was unanimously against them.
He suggested leaving the past out of the question and thought that such lists were
needed for the mycologists. He believed that they would be useful and essential to
avoid risking similar revolutions as had been experienced in the recent past.
He raised another issue regarding how the lists would be governed and embedded and
he was glad of the amendment that had been passed. However, he was not glad about
the fact that the Committee for
Fungi
was figured as something autonomous and autocratic, as in the nomenclature hierarchy
the General Committee was above all other Permanent Committees, and it was that body
with which in the first place the Committee for
Fungi
and this subcommittee should liaise. He formally moved that “in consultation the General
Committee” be added ahead of the other one. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Demoulin noted that there was a question that had not been answered—what was the International
Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
? In his opinion, there was a big problem in the governance of fungal nomenclature
and taxonomy outside of the well-established rule of the IAPT and someday that would
have to be fixed.
Hawksworth explained that the International Commission on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
was an inter-union body between the International Union of Microbiological Societies
and the International Union of Biological Sciences, established in 1986, that looked
at issues to do with promoting taxonomy. It had been brought to the attention of these
Congresses before because it was a subcommission of that group that produced the list
of names in
Trichocomaceae
, which was the subject of a special resolution in the Tokyo Congress in 1993. And
they actually produced a list there for protective purposes, partly because of the
difficulties with this Article. He added that it was not true to say that this body
was not known to the series of botanical Congresses.
Barrie agreed that there was an issue with the way the thing was being structured,
because in all other cases where there was special consideration of names, or lists
of names, they were referred in the first instance to the General Committee and the
General Committee then referred them to the Permanent Committee and whatever subgroups
they might have. It was published in Taxon and then it went to the Committees; the
secretaries picked them up. That was the way it was structured, and it was the way
this should be structured. He suggested that the lists be referred to the General
Committee first and then referred down to the other bodies and noted that it would
apply for both the Art. 14 and Art. 56 proposals.
Knapp asked for clarification as to what exactly he was proposing.
Barrie thought that it should be reworded in some way so that it said that these lists
that were being set up were in the first instance referred to the General Committee.
He suggested that was the way the nomenclature group here kept control over what was
going on, because the General Committee was the main body that had authority between
Congresses.
Knapp asked if he had a suggestion for how it should be so worded.
Barrie did not.
Knapp asked him to help out a bit.
Barrie apologized [laughing] and described himself as an “idea guy”. [Laughter.]
McNeill suggested “Accepted names on this list, once reviewed by the Nomenclature
Committee for
Fungi
and the General Committee become…” He felt that it was the final process that needed
to go through the regular channel of approval. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Knapp noted that everyone was still smiling, which she thought was quite a good sign.
Wiersema did not see any provision for listing the types of the names and felt that
the names were meaningless without the type being there. He wondered if this needed
to be included somewhere.
Knapp heard someone up there say “Taken as read”, so she thought names and their types
might be added. She encouraged the Section not to wordsmith the Code.
Redhead noted that currently they looked at lists of conserved or rejected names and
there were names there that had no types, so in some cases a name was rejected and
it did not matter whether it had a type.
Lendemer offered a friendly amendment, for a group that had never been impacted by
Art. 59—because apparently they had played by the rules—which was lichen-forming fungi.
He thought that they had always been excepted from Art. 59 and that they should be
excepted from the impact of the decision. He suggested that at the beginning it should
say “For nonlichenforming fungi” to parallel what used to be in Art. 59, which had
now been changed, and what had just passed. [This was not accepted as a friendly amendment.
It was seconded.]
Dorr asked that the amendment, if it was accepted, be parallel to the language of
[the newly approved] Art. 59.2; he was not sure that the Editorial Committee would
do that.
McNeill assured him that they would use the phrase that was used in the Code generally
for lichens.
Dorr deferred to McNeill and the Editorial Committee.
McNeill was sure they would make it balance.
Knapp pointed out that somebody was bound to call them up on it if they got it wrong.
Demoulin thought that the amendment was absolutely logical and in line with Art. 59.2,
which had been accepted. He thought there may have been some misunderstanding by Redhead
and asked him to explain why he did not consider that a friendly amendment.
Hawksworth, speaking as one of the two lichenologists in the room, preferred that
it was left out, for the simple reason it was a biological situation and in many cases
the biology of the fungi was not known; it was not known whether they were lichenized
or not. He felt it was better to be left out because there may be cases where lichenized
and non-lichenized groups were in the same genus where a list was needed.
Norvell called the question.
Knapp moved to a vote on adding the words “nonlichenforming” or their proper equivalent
according to Code language to this Article.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a majority against so the amendment was rejected.]
Funk thought it had been decided that it was inappropriate to list any body that was
outside the IAPT nomenclature structure, so why mention the International Commission
on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
? She suggested an amendment to remove everything after “appropriate international
bodies” and get rid of “such as the International Commission on the Taxonomy of the
Fungi
”, because that could change and then it was stuck in the Code. [This was accepted
as a friendly amendment.]
Van Rijckevorsel was still very unhappy about the last sentence, especially “become
the correct name”, because he felt that meant no more taxonomy was possible. He also
wondered, the correct name of what? He was a little concerned about how it was to
be conserved against competing names, while all provisions now in the Code were more
specific, for example, with the same type.
Greuter distilled the consequence of these comments, which he wholeheartedly supported,
into an amendment to remove “Become the correct name and” and replace the first line
“that were registered and assigned either historically or currently to selected specialized
taxonomic groups” with “established”. He suggested that would leave the mycologists
the flexibility of structuring their committees or subcommittees as they wanted and
they might regret having restrictions in afterward. [These were also accepted as friendly
amendments.]
Prud’homme van Reine noted that the International Society of Protistologists had asked
their group if a delegate of that group could be involved in the ruling of botanical
nomenclature, and now they had one member on the Nomenclature Committee for
Algae
. He suggested that it could be done the same way for the fungi.
Barrie announced that he had run out of ideas and was ready to rewrite the proposal.
He thought it should say “For fungi, permanent listed names may be referred to the
General Committee”, so that it was similar to what was in Art. 14 and 56. “Permanent
listed names may be submitted to the General Committee, which will refer them for
examination to the Committees in the appropriate”—“for examination by the Committee
for
Fungi
”. Then the Committee for
Fungi
can do it as…
Knapp summarized that the suggestion would make a parallel to the wording in other
places.
Barrie agreed and added that he would also delete Appendices X and Y at the top, as
that was not an appropriate place. He continued that then the names could be treated
as conserved and listed in Appendices X and Y in the last line.
Knapp thought it was reasonable to assume that it would be put into more sensible
English.
Barrie was hoping that the Editorial Committee would save him. He summarized that
the general idea was to say that the lists were going to be referred to the General
Committee and the General Committee would refer them in turn to the Committee for
Fungi
and any appropriate subgroups that the Committee for
Fungi
had established. Once they were reviewed, the Committee for
Fungi
would send the recommendations back to the General Committee who would review them
again and once they were approved they would end up on the list. He added that this
was the way things were structured now for conservation proposals, which were sent
to the General Committee who referred them to the relevant Nomenclature Committee,
who sent recommendations back, and the General Committee reviewed them and then they
put them on the list [of conserved names]. He was trying to set this up so the same
thing would happen with these lists. He did not think that the General Committee was
going to be looking at the lists to begin with. He thought that what it also said
was that the lists could come from anywhere.
Redhead clarified that the idea was to have subcommittees that would refer to it.
They may be asked by the General Committee via the Committee for
Fungi
but then it was the subcommittees that submitted it.
McNeill thought the effect of Barrie’s suggestion would be that before they started
being examined they would be published. He noted that may or may not be desirable,
but being referred to the General Committee actually meant being published.
Redhead agreed that the registration lists would certainly be published and available.
McNeill meant that they would obviously have to be published before they could go
in the final stage, but whether they needed to be in the first stage he deferred to
the Section.
Barrie pointed out that it was new territory, so was not sure how it worked.
McNeill felt that it was not quite the same as the conservation proposal in that sense.
Barrie was just trying to make it analogous to it.
Redhead saw it, with cleaned-up wording, as a friendly amendment but deferred to Hawksworth’s
opinion.
Hawksworth did not like the idea of the lists being published before they had actually
been scrutinized more. He thought it would create a lot of paperwork not at the right
stage. He added that if it was the feeling of the meeting that it was necessary to
go that route, then we should go that route, but it seemed a rather unnecessary layer
of administration to him.
McNeill concluded that it was not a friendly amendment but he could live with it if
it was passed.
Hawksworth agreed.
Knapp moved to discussion on the amendment to add the fact that the lists of names
would be submitted to the General Committee, which would refer them to the Committee
for
Fungi
for examination. Also to move the “listed in Appendices” down towards the bottom.
[The amendment was seconded.]
Van Rijckevorsel had two general points. Firstly, he noted that there were several
provisions in Art. 32 and 53 in which something could be submitted to the General
Committee and it would not be published until the relevant Committee had made a recommendation.
His second point was that at the moment something only went into an Appendix after
it had been passed by a Congress.
McNeill noted that the report of the General Committee was pointing out that the submission
of references under Art. 32.4 and 53.5 should always be published, so that exception
would disappear, all being well.
Norvell wondered if the General Committee wanted to do a lot of work. She suggested
it would be better to refer them first to the Committee for
Fungi
to go through the list, then to the General Committee. This would cut down on the
work for the General Committee, which may not be acquainted with these organisms.
Buck agreed with Barrie’s amendment, because he thought all the other proposals for
conservation were done in the open air so why should the fungi be done in secret?
Kirk, in the interests of transparency, noted that all this work would be done in
a publicly available online database. The publication, if there ever was one, would
be published from the database. The alternative for those who were frightened of a
list—non-seafaring legs—would be that a database would publish 500 proposals for conservation
individually. He claimed it was not rocket science in terms of database content and
publishing.
Barrie had a couple of ideas. One was that it was not necessary to publish the list
in Taxon, a reference could be published to the list that Kirk was just talking about.
He suggested that all that would be have to be done was announce the list was available
right now for review at this date and then refer to the list. The other thing was
that although there was this conceit that the General Committee received all the reports
and then dispersed them to the various Committees, in reality what happened was that
the Committee secretaries picked them up as soon as they were published in Taxon and
the Committees started working on them. So it was not like the secretary of the General
Committee was sending out letters saying these were the things that showed up and
this was the time to start working on them. It was understood in the system that that
was what happened. So that could be easily taken care of, especially if this list
was going to be made available online. He suggested putting an announcement in Taxon
saying the list closed on such and such a date, and those names would be reviewed
now. And then it could be done periodically whenever necessary.
Knapp wished to know if he was speaking for his amendment and answered her own question
“of course, because it’s your amendment”.
Greuter suggested that there had been insufficient clarification from the audience
on what was exactly intended, but that it would not be possible to come up here with
an exact wording that was not messy. So he suggested referring it to the Editorial
Committee to be cleaned up, taking into account the comments received from the floor.
Knapp thought that the discussion was on the amendment to put it in the right sort
of order first.
Greuter agreed that was his proposal and he also noted that for some reason the types
had disappeared. He wondered if he had missed something, or if it was just a slip.
He thought it was a friendly amendment, names and types.
Knapp noted there were rejected names that may not have types.
Greuter disagreed and stated that they would be lists of names treated as conserved,
not lists of rejected names. He asked if that was not a friendly amendment. He thought
it was.
Knapp clarified that it was not a friendly amendment and returned the discussion to
the amendment on the order of General Committee, Committee for
Fungi
, Special Committees.
Marhold agreed with Greuter. He felt that there was a usual procedure for conservation
of names that involved the General Committee and that there was no need to try to
invent something special. Regarding the conditions of publication of this material,
it was not written in the Code that it must be in Taxon; it could be electronically
on the webpage of IAPT, whatever. He suggested leaving this all to the Editorial Committee
to formulate it in a usual way as was normal procedure within the Code and not to
lose time here trying to play with words.
McNeill heartily agreed.
May called the question.
[There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting on the amendment and there was
a majority for, so the amendment was accepted.]
Knapp returned the discussion to the proposal for a new Art. 14, which she noted had
been seriously amended. [She laughed.]
Sennikov felt that the mention of types needed to be added to be in practice with
the rest of conserved names and proposed “Accepted names and their types in this list
are to be treated as conserved”. He argued that this was necessary because types were
usually mentioned in lists of conserved names. [This was not considered a friendly
amendment. The amendment was seconded.]
Lendemer asked if he could call the question.
Knapp said that was not possible without having at least a couple of discussion points
and people had actually had a chance to have their say.
Buck asked Hawksworth why he did not consider it as a friendly amendment, since all
other organisms had to require types for conserved names.
[The recording begins with audience laughter after an unrecorded portion, where David
Hawksworth answered that the addition of types to the conserved names list was not
considered a friendly amendment “because of the amount of work involved”.]
Knapp [Laughing] “O-kay…”
Wiersema felt that if the types were not there, it would lead to endless problems
trying to sort out all of the issues of the competing names on the list later on,
and nothing would have been solved.
Applequist knew that the Chair did not approve of wordsmithing, but thought that there
may be a certain distinction, technically, between conserving a name that had a type
and conserving a name with a conserved type. The current placement of the phrase implied
that the names and their types were to be treated as conserved. She suggested it may
be better to say “conserved and listed with their types”. [This was accepted as a
friendly amendment to the amendment.]
[The amendment was accepted.]
Walsh admitted it may be his misunderstanding or an unintentional ambiguity, and wondered
if the lists for fungi were really permanent. In the penultimate sentence, were these
names accepted at this stage or were they simply on the lists and then, subsequently,
conserved and accepted? He suggested that maybe the words “Permanent” and “Accepted”
could be removed.
McNeill asked the philosophical question “What was permanent?” Once on the list, he
assumed the intention was that it would have the same permanence as the lists of conserved
names, in the sense that names were not removed from them without some process.
[Inaudible, several people speaking at once without a microphone.]
Kirk thought that the problem was that it was permanent from the start. There was
a problem with the word “permanent” in that position, Appendices could not be permanent
and then subject to review.
McNeill considered it editorial.
Marhold thought that “accepted” should not be there.
McNeill thought it had to be there.
[Inaudible, two speakers stating the matter was editorial]
McNeill did not know exactly the nature of the lists being envisaged, but assumed
that there would be synonyms included as well. He presumed that there would not often
be a choice between an anamorph and a teleomorph name. He noted that both might be
mentioned but it was the accepted names that were being conserved, not any other name
that was mentioned in order to indicate the taxonomic association.
[The proposal was accepted as amended to read:
“Art. 14 (new). For organisms treated as fungi under this Code, lists of names may
be submitted to the General Committee, which will refer them to the Nomenclature Committee
for
Fungi
for examination by subcommittees established by that Committee in consultation with
the General Committee and appropriate international bodies. Accepted names on these
lists, which become permanent as Appendices XX–YY once reviewed by the Nomenclature
Committee for
Fungi
and the General Committee, are to be listed with their types together with those competing
synonyms (including sanctioned names) against which they are treated as conserved.
For lists of rejected names see Art. 56.n.”]
McNeill moved down to the next proposal, Art. 56 (new).
Redhead explained that, as a caveat to the earlier proposal that had just been dealt
with, once names were got rid of, even if it was possible to figure out what they
were, it was not desirable to have them resurrected, unless there was a very strong
case, in which case that should be presented, because we do not want to keep going
backwards in time. He felt that there was such a mess to clean up that once it had
been decided that it was impossible to know what those [names] were, even if something
was discovered later on, there would have to be a very, very strong case to get it
back.
Barrie assumed that what Redhead was saying was that the only way get names back was
by conserving them, and he suggested deleting everything after “only gain priority”
and add “by conservation under Art. 14” or something like that.
McNeill explained that names that were rejected in the lists were to be permanently
rejected as though under Art. 56. He added that what Barrie was suggesting was that
they could only gain priority by being conserved.
Barrie agreed that that was correct.
Knapp clarified that the suggestion was just different wording—“can only gain priority
by conservation under Art. 14”. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
McNeill encouraged keeping the discussion to substantive issues, not precise wording,
because it would have to be modified.
Gereau thought his comment was moderately substantive. When he had submitted an article
to Taxon in 1994 in which he said that something should be considered a nomen confusum,
Dan Nicolson had informed him that that term had not appeared in the Code for more
than a decade. He did not believe that either “nomen confusum” or “nomen ambiguum”
had any meaning under the Code today.
McNeill agreed that there was no provision of the Code that covered them and he thought
it had been deleted in Leningrad. He thought that it sounded as though there was a
situation that was envisaged for these lists, which had just been approved, that they
would include tentative synonyms. He thought that the proposer should clarify what
he meant by “nomina ambigua” and “nomina confusa” in that context.
Redhead noted that the descriptions of earlier fungi were just so vague that it was
impossible to figure out what they were and they had been misapplied or dropped. He
stated that when those terms had disappeared from the Code, it was envisaged that
one could always lectotypify or neotypify or something but these things were so vague
that you could just randomly pick almost any white fluffy something on a stick and
say “Well, that’s it”.
McNeill wondered why these names would appear on the list of accepted names and where
they would be linked to. It sounded to him as though what was really being suggested
was that you should just operate the normal application of Art. 56. He interpreted
that Redhead was saying that they were going to produce lists that would be rejected
under Art. 56 in the regular way, and not a by-product of the other lists established
under Art. 14.
Redhead agreed that they were trying to create lists of names they wanted to reject,
so the lists established under Art. 14 may not have been the appropriate place.
Greuter had a problem with the proposal, in that it referred to rejected names listed
in the Appendices established under new Art. 14, but no such rejected names were mentioned
in the new Art. 14. He felt that this should be integrated if approved in the prior
paragraph, and he thought it was worth approving, so that accepted names and rejected
names could be mentioned. As that was too complicated to formulate here, he suggested
that it be approved in principle and left to the Editorial Committee and not to mention
it under Art. 56, but to mention it under Art. 14. He also saw no reason whatever
to justify the rationale and recommended just treating it as if formally rejected,
full stop. [These were both accepted as friendly amendments.]
Knapp moved to a vote on Art. 56 (new), with the proviso that it be referred to the
Editorial Committee to put in the right place and in the right words.
[The proposal was accepted and referred to the Editorial Committee for wording and
placement:
“56.n. For organisms treated as fungi under this Code, lists of rejected names may
also be included in the Appendices established under Art. 14.n. Such names are to
be treated as though rejected outright under Art. 56.1 and may become eligible for
use only by conservation under Art. 14.”]
McNeill, before moving on to the final proposal, on Art. 57, asked the proposer if
he really wanted this to be a paragraph of Art. 57, in which case it needed to be
rephrased, or whether he really had this as a Recommendation, Rec. 57A (new); the
point being it was written as “should”, at the moment, so it was not written as an
Article.
Hawksworth stated that it was written to parallel the equivalent provision for names
with misapplied types, based on the same wording.
McNeill referred to Art. 57.1: “A name that had been widely and persistently used
for a taxon or taxa not including its type is not to be used in a sense that conflicts
with current usage unless…” etc. etc. He noted that there was actually no Recommendation
associated with rejection of names, but there was no reason why there should not be
if it applied for those. He thought that it seemed a very reasonable wording, except
that it was worded as a Recommendation.
Greuter did not think that it was possible, because we cannot recommend going against
or disregarding the Code, and that would be the case here. He felt that it definitely
had to be an Article, not with “should” but something like “Retention of the teleomorph-typified
name is authorized, until such time as…”; or “The case should be submitted to the
General Committee for consideration and, pending a decision by the appropriate Committee,
the use of the teleomorph name is authorized”.
Knapp noted that it was definitely a friendly amendment but as it was quite a lot
of typing she suggested that exactly the same thing might be done editorially, but
“should” could be changed to “must” and that would have the same effect. [That was
considered acceptable.]
McNeill added that it was recognized that it had to be changed editorially to parallel
the normal practice in this matter.
Knapp clarified that this turned the proposal into a rule and not a Recommendation.
Dorr referred to Funk’s comment earlier that, until fairly recently, the Code had
been fully self-contained. He thought the decision to introduce reference to ISSNs
and ISBNs, which were outside our control, was acceptable. He added that in the Section
the idea of ISO and other things outside our control had also been introduced. He
did not think that references to other bodies such as the International Commission
on the Taxonomy of
Fungi
should be put in. He felt that was a very dangerous thing and a violation of a principle
that had been held for well over 100 years.
McNeill had overlooked that when he said the wording was acceptable and thought that
it could be modified in exactly the same manner as the proposal accepted at the beginning
had been modified.
May moved an amendment, which he hoped was friendly: to remove the text from “by the
Committee for
Fungi
” onwards. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Applequist was confused, as it seemed to her that the existing Art. 59 had given precedence
to teleomorph-typified names. She thought that the Section had just been asked to
delete that and replace it with an Article that said teleomorph- and anamorph-typified
names would compete against each other for priority. Now this paragraph said that
whenever that proviso took effect it had to be run past a committee. She thought that
this would presumably happen thousands of times.
Hawksworth noted that it only related to widely used [names] and it was not the intention
that this would be done as a matter of course.
Barrie did not want to sound too chauvinistic, but pointed out that it should be approved
by the General Committee, not the Committee for
Fungi
.
McNeill agreed.
Greuter thought it was really the wording. He had suggested earlier including the
phrase “must not be taken up, but retention of the teleomorph-typified name is authorized”.
He felt that continued use of the anamorph name, if it had priority, should not be
precluded until there was a verdict that it was to be banned and that those that wanted
to continue to use the teleomorph name should also not be penalized. He thought that
was the idea.
Hawksworth agreed it was the correct idea but was not quite sure the wording was perfect.
[Groans emanated from the audience.]
Knapp wondered if Hawksworth thought that the wording would be editorial.
Hawksworth promised to do his best to make sure it was.
[The proposal was accepted as amended to read:
“57.2. In pleomorphic fungi, in cases where, prior to 1 January 2013, both teleomorph-typified
and anamorph-typified names were widely used for a taxon, an anamorph-typified name
that has priority must not be taken up until retention of the teleomorph-typified
name has been considered by the General Committee and rejected.”]
Recommendation 59A
Prop. A (10: 69: 3: 3), B (9: 70: 2: 3) and C (13: 67: 2: 3) were ruled rejected.
[A short discussion of Chapter VI Prop. A occurred here and has been moved to the
normal order earlier in this Session.]
[Article 9 Proposal V]
[This discussion of Art. 9 Prop. V, which also dealt with Art. 59, occurred here.
Eventually the proposal was withdrawn, but to follow the logic of the discussion it
is retained here as opposed to following the normal order and moving it to the Second
Session on Monday afternoon.]
Hawksworth thought that the proposal really should be kept, because there would be
cases where it may be desirable to have a teleotype and perhaps an epitype as well.
McNeill introduced Art. 9 Prop. V, which was a definition of the term “teleotype”.
He added that it was replacing the use of the concept of epitype for a situation in
which a type was designated that showed no evidence of the sexual stage, but was treated
as the type for a holomorph. This was a new term that was not the same as the traditional
epitype; it was an extension of the meaning of epitype and it was deemed to be better
to have a special term.
Redhead noted that part of the problem with designating an epitype that consisted
of a teleomorph for a fungus that was originally described as an anamorph was that
it precluded the designation of an epitype that actually matched it in morphology.
There was always that element of doubt that it was being mismatched. He explained
that was why they had refined it so that you could teleotypify a name, but you could
still epitypify the anamorph with another anamorph for which, maybe, you had the genetic
sequence. This allowed flexibility and was why they had coined the term. He pointed
out that it was to pertain to Art. 59, which had now been modified, and reference
to it had gone there, but it may still prove to be useful in typifying fungal names.
May commented that if Art. 59, as before, had been deleted, the point of the proposal
seemed to have disappeared because this was in order to put a teleomorphic title onto
an anamorphic name to then give that teleomorphtypified name priority. He asked Redhead,
given that there was no priority difference between anamorphs and teleomorphs, under
what circumstance would he consider utilizing this provision?
Hawksworth responded with the example that essentially, you may have an anamorph name
that was already epitypified and then discover the sexual stage and want to link that,
definitely, to a specimen that showed a teleomorph. There was a case he knew that
was just about to be published for another common
Aspergillus
species that was in that category.
McNeill wanted to make sure that it was understood that this was subject to editorial
modification, in the light of the deletion of Art. 59.
Demoulin was in favour of the proposal in the framework of the present Art. 59, or
revised version, but with the quasi-deletion that had been voted for, he also failed
to see the need for such a lengthy addition. He thought that it could be used for
historical purpose, to discuss what had been done in the past, but questioned whether
it was worthwhile putting that in the Code. He added that in the case to which Hawksworth
referred, since there was no special priority anymore, he thought it could be dealt
with by conservation eventually. He would not vote for the proposal.
Lendemer wondered how this would impact the passage of Art. 57.2, which had just been
passed, because that was where teleomorph and anamorph were in the typified names
and you were not supposed to take up the priorable anamorph-typified name. He was
confused that this proposal would mean that if you teleotypified it you accorded it
teleomorphic status and he thought that would have some kind of impact with Art. 57.2.
Redhead was inclined to think that the proposal was not necessary anymore, and was
only weakly supporting his own proposal.
McNeill did not think it could possibly be included in its present wording and it
would have to have an explanatory historical note, but as that had never been in the
Code before, maybe even that was unnecessary. He was very dubious about its need and
so was the proposer.
Funk wondered why we were talking about it. [Laughter.]
Knapp answered that was because the floor was still open and people were still raising
their hands.
Redhead withdrew the proposal. [Applause.]
Reveal wanted to remind everyone who dealt with epitypes of the actual wording in
Art. 9.7. An epitype may be selected only when it was demonstrably shown that the
specimen was ambiguous and exact identification of the name could not be done. He
was seeing more and more epitypes being proposed in literature without any justification
or any indication that there was ambiguity at all with the specimen; rather, people
were complaining about the state of the specimen. That’s tough. Epitypes do not correct
this.
McNeill could not agree more and also received many papers with that.
Knapp suggested that everyone was quite tired, several pieces of very important business
had been dealt with, and that we end for the day so it was possible to rest before
the dinner. She reminded the Section of how much business remained to be dealt with
in what was, essentially, a half a day tomorrow. She explained that was because there
was an IAPT business meeting scheduled for the afternoon. She also reminded everyone
to think about what they wished to say about the proposals that were still to be discussed
and to make their remarks as brief as possible. She thanked everyone very much.
Ninth session
Friday, 22nd July, 2011, 9:00-12:30
Knapp reminded the Section that by her calculations, 33 of the published proposals
still remained to be dealt with as well as an untold number that may have been skipped
over.
Marhold proposed that all the very valuable proposals concerning the Glossary that
were mostly of an editorial nature be referred to the Editorial Committee. [This was
deemed not the appropriate moment to discuss the issue and it was deferred until later.]
McNeill advised that the secretaries of the Permanent Nomenclature Committees of
Algae
,
Fungi
,
Bryophyta
, Fossil Plants and Vascular Plants should be ready to make a brief presentation towards
the end of the meeting, a report on their activities over the period of the last six
years.
[Some business conducted during the Ninth Session was relevant to provisions of the
Code dealt with earlier. The proceedings of the corresponding debates can be found
under Art. 9 Prop. H in the Second Session on Monday afternoon; Art. 32 Prop. H and
I in the Fourth Session on Tuesday afternoon; Art. 46 Prop. B-K in the Seventh Session
on Thursday morning; and Rec. 46D, Art. 48, Art. 49, Art. 52, Art. 53, Art. 54, Art.
55, Art. 58 and Chapter VI in the Eighth Session on Thursday afternoon.]
Article 60
Prop. A (37: 60: 13: 0).
McNeill noted that the Section had arrived at Art. 60, an Article that had often generated
more heat than light. [Laughter.]
Knapp commented that that was muttered under his breath.
McNeill maintained that it was quite audible. He went on to introduce Art. 60 Prop.
A by Gandhi and Reveal, which had a significant negative vote: 37 in favour, 60 against.
Gereau felt that the principle expressed was largely correct but wellknown and that
the etymology of the Example was unsure at best, as he had discussed in detail with
the Vicerapporteur and the overall effect of the proposal was undesirable.
Demoulin concurred with Gereau, and added that the etymology was not doubtful but
absolutely incorrect. He continued that the description implied that “hollow-seeded”
was meant, which implied that the Greek koilos was meant and not at all the Latin
caelum, which is “heaven”. He asserted that it was nothing to do with that and felt
it was better to drop the proposal completely.
Veldkamp added the additional note that Blume in the Bijdragen, where this name was
published, complained about all the spelling errors in it, and his excuse was that
he was ill and did not see the proofs. [Laughter.]
Prop. A was rejected.
Prop. B (25: 73: 10: 0).
McNeill moved on to Prop. B, which was dealing with making clearer that the use of
the diaeresis was permissible by inserting mention of it in a number of places. He
reported that again, the mail vote was rather negative: 68% “no”.
Greuter felt that the problem with the diaeresis was that it was mistreated in the
Code. He offered a proposal, which might be considered by the Chair as an amendment,
although it was rather different in context. In the paragraph in which the diaeresis
was mentioned, Art. 60.6, he suggested it should say that a diaeresis “is an optional
phonetic device that is not considered to alter the spelling”. He felt that if it
were put like that, it would not have to be dealt with in any other part of the Code
where the diaeresis was mentioned.
Knapp suggested that was actually substantially different to the proposal in question.
McNeill thought a separate proposal would have to be made though it might be considered
while dealing with Art. 60.
Knapp suggested the Section was ready to vote on Prop. B in order to make clear that
the diaeresis was permissible and amend three Articles in Art. 60.
Demoulin thought that the diaeresis should be dealt with in the way Greuter proposed
but also thought it was probably necessary to have it in real orthography. He proposed
to amend the proposal by adding, after “permissible”, “and often useful”.
Knapp confirmed that this was in Art. 60.4: “The diaeresis was permissible too and
often useful.”
McNeill queried whether this was in all three Articles or just the one, deciding just
the one, as “permissible” only occurred once.
Knapp agreed it concerned only Art. 60.4. [The amendment was seconded.]
May spoke against the amendment because he would like to discourage the use of [the
diaeresis], because in databases it was a real pain. [Laughter.] He continued that,
given a lot of information about plant names was now held in databases, it was a real
nuisance and he did not think it should be encouraged.
Alvarado thought that the use of the diaeresis was maybe useful in the past but nowadays
was a bit redundant. He pointed out that it was permissible but it did not say that
it needed to be done; you could either write them down or not if you were using a
computer database. He felt that it was not saying that it was advisable, just “permissible
and often useful”, which was not the same.
McNeill asked if he was speaking against the amendment.
Knapp asked if he was speaking for the amendment.
Alvarado responded “Hmm” and found it difficult to say… [Laughter.]
Knapp suggested that he was sitting on the fence. She moved to a vote on the amendment
to add the words “and often useful” to Prop. B in Art. 60.4…” after the words “permissible
too”. [The amendment was rejected.]
Prop. B was rejected.
Greuter’s proposal
Knapp used the Chair’s prerogative to take Greuter’s proposal at this point, since
the Section was thinking about diaeresis and would probably forget it in 10 minutes.
She added that the proposal would need four seconders and invited Greuter to repeat
the proposal.
Greuter explained that in Art. 60.6 it should say “The diaeresis” and the words defining
it: “is an optional phonetic device that is not considered to alter the spelling”.
He added that this, incidentally, meant that for database purposes it need not be
used and continued that it was useful in a published text, didactic in many cases—for
instance, in school floras, just as there were floras that gave the tonal accent on
generic names to tell…
Knapp interrupted to point out that he was starting discussion, then noted lots of
seconders, so allowed him to talk about it. [Laughter.]
Greuter thanked her and apologized as he had thought that it had been seconded.
Knapp said it had not.
Greuter acknowledged that he was rushing ahead, and apologized [again].
Knapp accepted his apology. [And laughed.]
Greuter took up the discussion again, saying that in many school books—for instance,
excursion floras used in schools—tonal accents were put on generic names to tell people
that the names were pronounced Clématis and not Clemátis and Ádonis and not Adónis
and a lot of things that common users would not easily know. In this context, he argued
that the diaeresis was just a special case of this; nothing more, nothing less.
Knapp asked whether the proposal also suggested deleting the last bit of the Article.
Greuter replied in the negative; it was just the portion concerning the diaeresis.
McNeill asked for confirmation if this was from “The diaeresis” to the semicolon.
Greuter confirmed that, and added that it would make one of the following proposals
redundant.
Knapp reiterated that the proposal was to just add those words to Art. 60.6.
Turland asked if Greuter was suggesting deleting the words between “indicating” and
“permissible”.
Greuter was not.
Knapp was not quite clear on the proposal.
McNeill suggested that it meant replacement of everything there, except possibly the
Example.
Funk [?] suggested this was editorial.
Knapp agreed that it could possibly be dealt with editorially.
McNeill agreed as long as the Section was clear what was being proposed, that it was
replacing the present definition with a new one.
Greuter clarified that he did not read it out in full because he had it handwritten.
It would read: “The diaeresis, indicating that the vowel is to be pronounced separately
from the preceding vowel” and then, instead of “is permissible”, would come what he
suggested.
Knapp confirmed that the words “is permissible” would be deleted.
McNeill agreed, but he thought Greuter was wanting to get all that didacticism out
of the Code.
Knapp clarified that the proposal was to replace the words “is permissible” with the
words “is an optional phonetic device that was not considered to alter the spelling”.
Barrie felt that it was necessary to have something that said permission in there,
or else…
Knapp chastised him for talking without the microphone. [Laughter.]
Barrie was not arguing specifically to keep “is permissible”, and he thought it was
editorial, but he felt that something was needed that made it follow, so that it was
not merely a definition of a diaeresis, because the ligature thing said they were
not to be used, so he felt that something was needed there that said a diaeresis could
be used but it was all editorial. He highlighted that the main thing was clarifying
that a diaeresis was not considered to alter spelling.
Demoulin wondered whether it would it be possible to have simply “and is thus permissible”.
[This was considered a friendly amendment.]
Greuter’s proposal was accepted.
Prop. C (54: 33: 22: 0) and D (32: 12: 64: 0) were ruled referred to the Editorial
Committee.
Prop. E (69: 17: 16: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. E, which was to append a sentence to Art. 60.9, in relation
to providing a rather different and hopefully more precise and more usable definition
of when a hyphen was permissible.
Turland acknowledged Greuter for the idea, which was to provide a mechanical way of
deciding in most cases whether an epithet should be hyphenated. The idea was to make
it easier on taxonomists who may not be particularly into linguistics, and was intended
as a helpful mechanism.
Gereau felt that the effect of the proposal was desirable but it needed rewording
because it lead to some undesirable consequences. He gave the example that the epithet
saudiarabica was still permitted under this revised wording but saudiarabica without
the hyphen was also required, meaning it would have the effect of requiring two conflicting
things. He added that the removal of the hyphen in
Eugenia
costa-ricensis
in the current Ex. 20 was contrary to the current rule, because the words “Costa Rica”
usually stand independently, so it needed some really serious editorial work not to
have effects that were contrary to other rules.
Greuter was sorry that he had inspired the proposal. [Laughter.] Contrary to what
the Rapporteurs appeared to imply, he thought it was not a case of adjective-adjective
epithets only. There was presently an example in the Code,
Veronica
anagallisaquatica
, which would be dehyphened if the proposal were accepted. There were a number of
wellknown Linnaean-named epithets with hyphens, like
Cystopteris
filixfragilis
, that were declinable adjectives that would be de-hyphened; not filixmas. He continued
that this would lead to the funny situation that
Cystopteris
filixfragilis
would have to be dehyphened and
Dryopteris
filixmas
not. He did not think it was a mature proposal and was against it.
Prop. E was rejected.
Prop. F (78: 13: 17: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. G (57: 20: 33: 0).
McNeill moved on to Prop. G, which was to add a new rule following Art. 60.10. He
added that it had quite good support in the mail vote.
Van Rijckevorsel noted that the proposal was on abbreviations in epithets and alluded
to earlier in the week when Greuter had spoken on Linnaean names and abbreviations.
He wished to raise a proposal from the floor at this point.
Knapp clarified that the current discussion was regarding Prop. G.
Van Rijckevorsel requested that the new proposal from the floor be dealt with immediately
following this.
Knapp agreed.
Van Rijckevorsel thought that the proposal was intended to be as restrictive as possible
and he knew only of cases of surnames that had a full stop, an abbreviation in them,
and he thought they should be converted into epithets and be dealt with.
Knapp asked if there were any comments and discussion about that.
Greuter apologized and admitted that his continual desire to comment may be a bad
habit. [Laughter.]
Knapp said that it was all right, “we’ll cure you in the end”. [Laughter.]
Greuter felt that what was really important, and should be in the Code, was that the
many abbreviations that had a period in the name when published, including many Linnaean
ones, not be considered not validly published because there was a period in the name
or epithet, but that they be expanded as had always been done. He suggested to amend
the proposal to say “Abbreviated names and epithets are to be expanded in conformity
with botanical tradition”. [This was not accepted as a friendly amendment and the
amendment was seconded.]
Wiersema suggested that if abbreviations were to be expanded in conformity with botanical
tradition, that meant that in the Example under Prop. H the spelling would become
saintjohnianum or sancti-johnianum due to Rec. 60C.5(d).
Barrie had a question for people who may be working with these things: were they putting
these St.-johnianum type names in indices and databases or were they being spelled
out? He was trying to ascertain which approach was going to cause the least amount
of work to deal with.
Knapp asked if there were any indexers who would like to comment.
Challis felt that it was best to have the epithet as the author published it, unless
there was an orthographical reason to correct it. She was concerned about whether
this would create a lot of additional work, but did not know because she had not prepared
anything.
Gandhi noted that he and Reveal had encountered a similar problem before the starting
up of IPNI, when the Gray Cards existed individually at Harvard. In those cases, especially
where the author was not surviving, they had taken the liberty of expanding “Saint”
as sancta or sancti where it was appropriate.
Knapp summarized that the answer was that it was done both ways.
Greuter thought that there may be a few people in the room familiar with the Species
Plantarum of Linnaeus. He felt that if the advice to adopt the epithets as published,
perhaps dropping the period, was followed, that would lead to names such as “Cystopteris
F-fragilis” and “
Hypericum
androsaemifol
”. He thought that about onethird of all lengthy Linnaean epithets had been abbreviated
in that way in the Species Plantarum, as was the usual procedure then. He suggested
“in conformity with botanical tradition” because he argued that everyone knew how
to expand these.
Van Rijckevorsel thought it would be useful to look quickly at the proposal he had
made, because it dealt with just that point.
Knapp disagreed and thought the Section was going to need to vote on the amendment
before moving to the new proposal.
Van Rijckevorsel insisted that just for information purposes, he would like to show
the new proposal for background and information because it dealt with just that point.
Not to be discussed or voted on but…
McNeill wondered if there was a problem in supporting the current proposal or if he
was speaking against it and saying there was another one coming up.
Van Rijckevorsel reiterated that there was another proposal coming up that dealt with
the point that Greuter was making.
McNeill clarified that he was asking if Van Rijckevorsel was speaking to the amendment
or not.
Van Rijckevorsel was opposing the amendment on the grounds that he had a specific
way to deal with the issue. He wanted to see it up on the screen so that people knew
that the problem could be dealt with.
Knapp agreed to put it up.
Barrie just wanted to say, given Gandhi’s comments, that he was supporting Greuter
on this, he thought it should be done.
Kellermann queried whether it was clear that the abbreviation would be expanded in
Latin or would it be expanded in French if the person after whom it was named was
French. He wondered if there was a problem there, that different people might expand
the abbreviation differently if modern names were concerned as opposed the Linnaean
names.
Knapp thought that the current discussion was on the amendment as it had been put.
She did not want to develop proposals from the floor in a way that was going to take
lots and lots of time, because there was a very limited amount of time in which to
get through quite a lot of the rest of the business of the Section. She noted that
the Section were seeing the new proposal on the screen, which may be germane to the
acceptance or not of the amendment by Greuter. She moved to a vote for the amendment
to Prop. G, which would add a sentence saying “abbreviated names and epithets were
to be expanded in conformity with botanical tradition” [The amendment was accepted.]
Knapp moved to voting on the amended Prop. G.
Prop. G was accepted as amended.
Veldkamp had what he couched as a stupid question: how to expand “st” for St John?
He thought that having accepted the previous proposal, it should be extended here
in the Example.
Knapp felt that would be editorial.
McNeill thought that the answer was that botanical tradition did not expand it.
Knapp felt it was very ambiguous.
Veldkamp queried if it should be “saint”.
McNeill said no, because botanical tradition did not expand it, so it would be “st”.
He clarified that what had been accepted was that abbreviations would be expanded
in accordance with botanical tradition and if the botanical tradition was not to expand,
they were not expanded. He assumed that was the intent of the amendment, adding that
otherwise it would have been nonsensical.
Wiersema pointed out that, as he had indicated before, Rec. 60C.5(d), last sentence,
recommended that these were expanded.
McNeill thought that it should be discussed as a separate issue as it was in fact
a genuine Recommendation, not a back-door rule.
Wiersema agreed, but assumed it was based on botanical tradition. [Laughter.]
McNeill hoped so.
Greuter elucidated that what had been accepted said that in the case of personal and
geographical names that contained a full stop, the full stop was treated as an error
and to be removed. It followed that abbreviated names and epithets were to be expanded.
He argued that if “St. John” was an abbreviation, it fell under the second clause
and was to be expanded, adding that the Example now in the Code agreed. However, he
argued that in other cases where it was just a period in a geographical or personal
name it was to be omitted. He thought it was clear enough and suggested that when
concrete examples were encountered they could be discussed individually but as a general
rule it would work.
Prop. H (31: 16: 62: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
McNeill noted that Prop. H was a discrete Example involving Nesoluma “St.-Johnianum”,
which would normally be referred directly to the Editorial Committee.
Knapp suggested that, rather than devising Examples by committee, we might, as a Section,
consider empowering the Editorial Committee to make this make sense with Examples.
Magill thought that the Editorial Committee seemed to be biased in the other direction
of what the Section wanted.
McNeill felt that the Editorial Committee, or some members of it, certainly did not
mind at all on the matter and would be entirely willing to follow what seemed to be
general botanical usage. He suspected that, like many of these situations, the recommendation
in Rec. 60C was not always followed and that, in fact, practice was extremely diverse
and it was probably necessary to reflect that in whatever was done. He added that
those working in indexing and so forth would know that better than him. He interpreted
that Wiersema was agreeing that things were diverse.
Wiersema thought that putting this Example in one way or the other would clarify the
issue.
Prop. I (36: 33: 35: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Greuter felt that Prop. I should be discussed in the context of Rec. 60C.
Knapp disagreed because the Section had voted that things having to do only with Examples
would be referred to the Editorial Committee.
Dorr agreed with Greuter that the Example made no sense whatsoever unless Rec. 60C
was removed and suggested postponing it until Rec. 60C was decided on.
McNeill reiterated the decision that all Examples would be referred to the Editorial
Committee, which would act in accordance with the decision of the Section on the other
proposal.
Prop. J (26: 57: 23: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. J, which dealt with Rec. 60C. He noted that it had received
a negative but not extraordinarily negative vote in the mail vote at 26 for, 57 against,
23 to the Editorial Committee. He read what the Rapporteurs said: “Prop. J makes a
valid point that epithets which are unchanged personal names, rather than Latinized
genitive or adjectival forms of a personal name, are against the tradition of botanical
nomenclature (although apparently permitted under Art. 23.2) and … should be restricted
to the nomenclature of cultivated plants… The proposer suggests such epithets are
arguably disallowed under Art. 60.11, although if they are not given Latin terminations
Rec. 60C.1 does not apply. In view of these issues, and so as not to encourage emulation
of the epithets in Ex. 27 (‘barbro’ and ‘jenny’), deletion of the Example is proposed.”
He added that the proposal also called for an introductory sentence to restore the
wording in the St Louis Code. He summarized it as an attempt to prevent the appearance
of epithets of that sort.
Van Rijckevorsel agreed that there were indeed two separate issues, which were closely
linked. Firstly, Art. 60 Ex. 27 was an example of something that should not be followed.
In that sense it is already undesirable. Secondly, there was the question of the introductory
sentence of Rec. 60C.1. He would like it to be restrictive, modelled on Rec. 60B.1,
which was quite unambiguous. He did not know how many names would be affected, and
noted that that would have to be determined, but thought it was a limited number of
names, guessing a few dozen. He felt that this would give great clarity.
McNeill queried as to whether Van Rijckevorsel was discussing the other proposal.
Van Rijckevorsel clarified that he was proposing that the introductory sentence of
Rec. 60C.1 be modelled on Rec. 60B.1.
Knapp noted that the proposal was actually that it returned to the phrasing of the
St Louis Code, which she did not happen to have with her.
McNeill thought it was “When personal names are given Latin terminations in order
to form specific [and infraspecific] epithets, formation of those epithets is as follows”.
Knapp noted that that was in the Vienna Code.
Van Rijckevorsel thought that going back to the phrasing of the St Louis Code would
not solve the problem.
McNeill suggested that, if it did not work, the Section could vote against it and
another proposal could be made at a later point.
Van Rijckevorsel suggested that he could amend the one under discussion.
McNeill commented that the suggestion that Ex. 27 was there as an example to be followed
was not the point, but rather it was there as an example of something that was indeed
validly published under the Code.
Knapp thought that rather than continually amending things from the floor it was necessary
to stick with what had actually been proposed.
Challis did not think that the example of an epithet “jenny” was a problem. She thought
the epithet should be accepted as the author wanted to publish it unless it was orthographically
incorrect.
Knapp asked if she was speaking against the proposal.
Challis was speaking against it and thought things should be left as they were.
Gereau also spoke strongly against the proposal. He argued that names used as nouns
in apposition as epithets were uncommon but were scattered throughout botanical history
and gave a few examples. When Léonard named
Ancistrocladus
likoko
, he did it explicitly for a game guard named Likoko. When C. B. Clarke named
Cyperus
ajax
, he had in mind the mythological person, Ajax. When Carl Luer named
Pleurothallis
jupiter
, he didn’t call it “jupiteri”. He maintained that these instances were scattered;
there was a tradition of them and there was no reason to regulate them.
Prop. J was rejected.
Prop. K (15: 49: 41: 2), L (62: 12: 31: 0), M (66: 6: 35: 0) and N (42: 8: 55: 0)
were ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prud’homme van Reine commented regarding Prop. L, that there was no reason to expect
that Schmidt would honour only one of the two Gepps that were the specialists for
Codium
at that moment. He felt it was a good Example that appeared in the Berlin Code and
had been followed by all phycologists working with tropical marine macroalgae, for
Codium
geppiorum
was a very common species.
Knapp thanked him and pointed out that it had been referred to the Editorial Committee,
not deleted. She was sure that the Editorial Committee would receive that advice from
algologists and would act accordingly.
Van Rijckevorsel, regarding Prop. K, wished to convert the Example to a rule.
[This was not accepted as an amendment but as a new proposal and there were no seconders
so it was not discussed.]
[The following short comment, pertaining to a new proposal from Nagamasu and discussion
of a new proposal from Davidse & Ulloa on Art. 60, took place during the Tenth Session
on Friday afternoon.]
Nagamasu’s proposals
McNeill introduced two proposals on Art. 60, the first was by Nagamasu and it related
to Art. 60.1. The present wording was “The original spelling of a name or epithet
was to be retained, except for the correction of typographical or orthographical errors
and the standardizations…” etc. The proposal was to remove “or orthographical”. He
added that it was not what it said [on the screen], but that was what it meant.
Knapp noted that there were not four seconders to the proposal; therefore the proposal
was not discussed.
McNeill went on to the second of Nagamasu’s proposals, which was to delete Art. 60
voted Ex. 5.
Knapp noted that again there were not four seconders; therefore the proposal was not
discussed.
McNeill added that there was a rider to the proposal that was addressed primarily
to the Editorial Committee, which was to add some Examples of orthographic errors;
and he thought that also need not be discussed.
Davidse & Ulloa’s proposal
McNeill introduced a new proposal from the floor by Davidse & Ulloa relating to Art.
60.6 regarding the use of the diaeresis, suggesting to change “is permissible” to
“is to be discouraged”. [Laughter. The motion was seconded and supported by three
others.]
Demoulin noted that there had been a proposal to encourage, now a proposal to discourage,
but he thought a very good wording had been adopted that should close the discussion
of diaeresis for good now. He would certainly vote “no” to the proposal.
Davidse outlined the proposers view that, as Greuter had eloquently explained, the
diaeresis served a function for pronunciation and had nothing to do with nomenclature
as such, and, as had also been discussed previously, it did still occasionally cause
problems for people in databases. He was not suggesting outlawing it necessarily,
because it had a long tradition, but at least discouraging it would be helpful.
Greuter felt that, as worded, the amendment had no place in an Article; it was clearly
a Recommendation. “Discouraged” was a Recommendation wording, so if it was felt appropriate,
which he did not think it should be, it would have to be proposed as a Recommendation
separate from the Article. However, he did not see why it was necessary. Database
people, having been told that this was a pronunciation device and not part of the
orthography, could just leave it off, hopefully, in their own interest, because it
was not part of the name, and those who for good practical reasons wanted to put it
in should not be discouraged from doing so.
Stevens called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Davidse & Ulloa’s proposal was rejected.
Recommendation 60C
Prop. A (51: 29: 29: 0).
McNeill moved on to Rec. 60C Prop. A, which was to amend Rec. 60C.1 relating to the
derivation of infraspecific epithets from acronyms. He noted that it had quite good
support in the mail vote: 51 in favour, 29 against, 29 referring to the Editorial
Committee.
Greuter referred to somewhere in the Code, he thought in the earlier Articles, where
it said that an epithet could have any form whatever. Firstly, he argued that this
proposal was trying to meddle with things—in a destabilizing way—that had never been
questioned and he strongly opposed it. He felt that the proposal was to add acronyms
where they had no place, epithets formed from personal names as acronyms were not
personal names and he thought it already muddled the issue from the start.
Secondly, he added that codesuri had been generally accepted and done no harm so he
wondered why this should not be allowable.
Thirdly, he happened to be a secretary of an organization known as OPTIMA, which was
an acronym, and there were at least three species generally known and correctly named
optimae. He pointed out that this would not be allowed under the proposal and thought
it was ridiculous.
Challis agreed with Greuter, adding that he had brought up several points that she
was going to make, only [he had done so] more cogently.
Demoulin had spent a lot of time on Art. 60 and agreed entirely with Greuter that
this was absolutely unacceptable. He felt that there were already too many things
that were supposed to be corrected by the back door and there was no reason at all
to put acronyms in the Recommendation dealing with personal names.
Prop. A was withdrawn.
Recommendation 60H
Prop. A (31: 68: 8: 0).
McNeill introduced Rec. 60H, which had received a heavy but not destructive “no” vote
in the mail vote: 31 in favour, 68 against. The proposal was recommending greater
use of the diaeresis.
Gereau was absolutely against the proposal. He agreed with everyone who had said that
the diaeresis was a nuisance in databases and everywhere else, and thought that its
use should be completely discouraged or disallowed, but acknowledged that was not
on the floor.
Kellermann did not understand why databases could not cope with that in the names
of plants because they have to cope with umlauts and accents in the names of authors.
Wiersema, as someone who was heavily involved in a database that would use such names
and would have to insert this diaeresis, felt that this would create problems for
sorting and searching because it would be necessary to search on two alternatives
rather than one in order to find it.
McNeill noted that the Section had just decreed earlier in the morning that it was
not part of the spelling of the name.
Wiersema thought it was preferable to discourage its use rather than encourage it.
Alvarado thought that the diaeresis was a problem because not all browsers supported
all sorts of those alternative writings.
Knapp deemed that she was not hearing anything particularly different, so moved to
a vote.
Prop. A was rejected.
Recommendation 60I (new)
Prop. A (34: 52: 22: 0) was withdrawn.
Article 61
Prop. A (10: 54: 40: 0) was ruled referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. B (9: 67: 33: 0).
Gandhi explained that in the Example given, initially the subgeneric name was spelled
as
Petrophytum
, but when Rydberg elevated it to generic rank, he changed the ending to
Petrophyton
, which was quite a common procedure in those days, changing either an um ending to
an on ending or an on ending to an um ending. This led to the problem of how to treat
Rydberg’s generic name: as a status novus or as a new generic name? It involved not
only IPNI but also ING. He reported that finally all involved had agreed, with discussion,
to treat Rydberg’s generic name as a status novus. He believed in such cases having
an Example would be quite useful.
McNeill noted that it had a quite heavy defeat in the mail vote. He suggested that
it really did not particularly belong in this position and would need to be reworded
and it could be referred to the Editorial Committee, as it was just a Note.
Gereau felt that the presentation of the Note was far too confused, beyond the remit
of the Editorial Committee to clarify. He added that the entire meaning was already
implicit in Art. 7.4, so felt there was no need for it whatsoever.
Gandhi asked if he could respond to that.
Knapp said he could not and that there was not going to be an argument about it, she
was not going to let people get into discussion here on the floor and she moved to
a vote.
Prop. B was rejected.
Article 62
Prop. A (21: 60: 25: 0).
McNeill moved on to Art. 62 Prop. A, which was to delete provisions that had been
in the Code for about 12 years, perhaps 18, establishing the names ending in ites
as masculine. He elucidated that it was established particularly for fossil plant
names, which generally were masculine, and it was to make clear that they all were,
but there were one or two recent nonfossil plant names that were generally treated
as feminine. He outlined that the proposers wanted to get rid of the provision although,
in fact, the tradition of some being feminine was rather changing on account of the
existence of this Article. He reported that the mail vote was rather negative: 21
in favour, 60 against, 25 referring to the Editorial Committee, although he noted
that in the last case it would be a little difficult for the Editorial Committee to
do anything.
Christine Barker gave the background that until 1975 established usage dictated the
gender of generic names ending in ites, but a Recommendation came in in 1975 that
these names should be treated as masculine. The Recommendation became an Article in
1988 but, as mentioned, the discussions were focused on the names of fossil taxa without
much consideration of the effect on the names of extant plants. She noted that since
the ruling had come in, it had been largely overlooked and littleapplied to the names
of extant plants.
She argued that it was in conflict with current practice in a lot of cases as there
were about 300 ites names, including some wellestablished and economically important
ones that were treated as feminine and were documented extensively in the literature
with feminine endings. For example:
Aleurites
moluccana
;
Balanites
aegyptiaca
, the desert date;
Odontites
verna
and
Galactites
tomentosa
, which were both common European taxa. She felt that enforcement of this overlooked
ruling would be disruptive to the names of extant plants and acceptance of this proposal
would allow established usage to dictate gender.
Knapp asked for comments and identified someone “who was a fossil person”. [Laughter.]
She corrected herself to “a person interested in fossils”.
Herendeen wondered if she had called him a fossil. As he understood it, the proposal
as written would cause significant disruption to fossil plant names, so if it were
to be accepted an exception would be needed for fossil plants. He proposed an amendment
that added “fossil plant names excepted”, or something to that effect, so that it
did not apply to names of fossil plants. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Demoulin spoke in support of the proposal as he had never been happy with the rule
and could not get
Rozites
caperata
out of his mind.
Greuter agreed that the community had been slow to become aware of this rule. However,
as the Rapporteurs correctly commented, in the last 10, 12 years it had been increasingly
implemented. He noted that it had been adopted in floras, school floras and in gardens
in labelling. He suggested that what we were now asked to do was to tell all those
who had been applying the Code, hey, come back, bear the expenditure of making new
labels, whereas those who had not been applying it were laughing. He did not think
that was wise, he thought it inappropriate.
McNeill had thought it was actually 18 years but corrected that to 24 years since
this was a rule. He thought that the Section should be well aware that this was a
very long time for a rule to be in and then to be changed.
Davidse strongly endorsed what Greuter had said, adding that many databases had in
fact changed the names and he hated this pingpong back and forth. He suggested sticking
with the rule that was being implemented, although in some cases very slowly.
Wiersema pointed out that the remedy of conserving gender of any of those special
cases that would be disrupted by this was still available so he thought we should
stick with what had been established and fix those other cases through conservation.
It was just pointed out to Herendeen that the proposal had “fossil plants” and it
also covered fossil algae and fungi, so the amendment would need to be modified so
that it was not specifically about fossil plants.
Knapp thought that was editorial.
Gandhi thought that within the IPNI plant database several generic names had the masculine
ending and some not and based on the conclusion from the Section, they would be changed
accordingly.
Christine Barker wished to add that it was very easy to change the endings in the
databases, but in the literature there were many instances of feminine endings. It
was through following the Code and altering the endings in IPNI that this all came
to light. She had encountered some backlash from Martin Sands, who published a monograph
of
Balanites
in 2001. She explained that he had taken
Balanites
as feminine, so he was wondering why the endings had been changed in IPNI.
McNeill noted that the change was because she had, very sensibly, followed the Code.
Kirk felt that the effect of changing orthographies to the accumulated literature
was nothing compared with the changes in taxonomy and misapplications, so it was a
non-entity.
Knapp queried as to whether he was speaking for or against the proposal.
Kirk clarified that he was referring to the question that said that it would be a
problem for incorrect orthographies in the literature.
Knapp thought that was more of a comment, and asked again whether he was speaking
for or against the proposal.
Kirk was against the pingpong.
Barrie called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Prop. A was rejected.
Demoulin’s proposal
Demoulin moved a proposal from the floor, a small amendment to Art. 62, that he thought
in Australia would be considered an important one. He explained the background that
Art. 62 had been introduced in Berlin as approximately the only thing that came out
of the Orthographic Committee appointed in Sydney, which had generated tons of papers
but a single proposal that made it. In the original proposal, Laurie Johnson, who
was one of the most active and, he thought, rational members of that Committee, always
insisted on treating the case of
Eucalyptus
and asserting that
Eucalyptus
should retain its feminine gender attributed by botanical tradition.
But this wording, which had unanimous support in Berlin, had been changed because
Paul Silva had some personal ideas about what botanical tradition was and did not
want to retain the Berlin wording. His proposal was to find some way to respect Laurie
Johnson’s wish and emend the entry. He assured the Section that this would not change
anything in practice, simply the way it was worded, as he felt that nobody understood
the Article anymore. He suggested changing the wording of the phrase dealing with
Eucalyptus
to something like: “
Eucalyptus
, even if this is a relatively young tradition, has a botanical tradition that gives
it, as the author originally did, the feminine gender”.
Knapp added that this was regarding Ex. 1.
Demoulin agreed, pointing out that it was a voted Example at the top of Art. 62. He
noted that he had had to do a lot of research to understand how this ununderstandable
thing had crept into the Code. He clarified the proposal to replace the words “
Eucalyptus
L’Hér., which lacks a botanical tradition” by “
Eucalyptus
L’Hér., which had a botanical tradition, even if limited in time”. He felt this was
an important thing, as Laurie would never have accepted it.
McNeill noted that it might need editorial attention, but thought that the core amendment
was clear. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Thiele called the question.
Knapp deemed it necessary to have to have one bit of discussion.
May commented that in discussions about this when it came up in the Committee for
Fungi
, they were very confused about what “botanical tradition” meant because how can a
name that was described around 1800 lack a tradition onwards from there? The confusion
was about whether it was lacking a botanical tradition because it did not have a classical
usage. He suggested that the Example did need to be reworded and thought it should
be referred to the Editorial Committee to sort that out, because it was not just about
the gender.
Glen felt that one could, of course, say that
Eucalyptus
, being feminine, was in a very much longer botanical tradition, thinking of all the
classical names of mainly Mediterranean trees that were masculine in form and feminine
in gender. He had no problem with
Eucalyptus
being feminine.
Funk called the question. [There was a sufficient majority in favour of voting.]
Knapp asked all those in favour of voting, to please raise their hands and all those
against voting at this time, to please not raise their hands. [Laughter. Someone’s
mobile telephone rang]
Knapp asked all those in favour of answering the phone… [Laughter.] She moved to a
vote on changing the wording of Art. 62 voted Ex. 1 to be slightly nicer to the Australians…
[Laughter.]
McNeill suggested it was to be slightly nicer to botanical tradition.
Demoulin’s proposal was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Tenth session
Friday, 22nd July, 2011, 13:30–16:30
McNeill, before starting, emphasized that if people had proposals that they were planning
to make in the “other business” section to make sure they had given him a piece of
paper saying what it addressed, in order to order them sensibly.
Funk had two Special Committees she wished to propose that related to Division III,
so she thought this was an appropriate place. The first of these would be a Special
Committee to compose by-laws for the Nomenclature Section and the second one would
be one to examine institutional votes.
Knapp thought they should probably be taken as separate proposals. The first would
be a proposal to establish a Special Committee to write by-laws for the Nomenclature
Section. She explained that by-laws were the rules on voting that governed meetings.
[The motion was seconded and supported by three others.]
Barrie noted that there had never actually been any written procedures before; there
had always been these traditions as set down. He thought that this time the Bureau
had done an excellent job of explaining exactly what was going to happen at the beginning,
so everyone knew what the procedures would be. However, he also thought it would be
a good idea to look at the procedures and see if something could be put down in writing
so everyone would know beforehand what was going on. He added that there were several
proposals coming up that would also address the issue. He would much prefer to go
to a Committee than have those proposals passed, so he was in support of the Committee.
Knapp moved to a vote on whether the Section would like to have a Special Committee,
established to write down procedures in a place where everyone could look at them
at one time, which was to draft by-laws. She noted that it was a procedural vote so
it required a 50% majority, because it was not a proposal to change the Code.
A new Special Committee was established [the Special Committee on By-laws for the
Nomenclature Section].
Knapp passed to the other proposal, which was to establish a Special Committee on
Institutional Votes. [The motion was seconded and supported by three others.] She
invited Funk to say a little bit about what the Committee might do.
Funk outlined that there had been a lot of discussion over the last three or four
years about how institutional votes were assigned: do we need that large of a number
for anybody; what were the criteria that should be used? It seemed to her that it
would be a really good time to set up a Committee where anybody who was interested
in being considered to be on those Committees would be able to sign up offering a
very open format where people could bring their ideas to the table and the Sections
might reformat how the issue was dealt with.
Sebsebe Demissew thought it was a very good idea and that it was time that the institutional
voting system was revised. He thanked Funk for raising the issue.
Knapp added that at the end of the meeting she would highlight the Special Committees
for which there were signup sheets, and people would be invited to come down and sign
up.
A new Special Committee was established [the Special Committee on Institutional Votes].
Division III
Prop. A (77: 6: 5: 11).
McNeill proceeded with the first proposal in Division III from Stotler and Isoviita.
He reported that they were proposing that the Committee for
Bryophyta
change its name to the Committee for Bryophytes. He explained that
Bryophyta
taken these days apparently applied to what otherwise would be called
Musci
, whereas the
Marchantiophyta
were the liverworts, but apparently the English word “bryophytes” had not narrowed
its scope in the same way as
Bryophyta
had, so it would be a welcome change, of which the Committee for
Bryophyta
, which would be now Bryophytes, was unanimous in support.
Prop. A was accepted.
Herendeen’s proposal
McNeill decided to deal with one of the proposals from the Floor at the same time,
because it was so cognate, and that was that there was a proposal that the Committee
for Fossil Plants change its name to the Committee on Fossils.
Herendeen explained that for a variety of reasons the Committee found it necessary
to change the name. He added that there had been consultation among the members of
the Committee here and by e-mail and all were in agreement that Committee on Fossils
was the most succinct appropriate name for the Committee.
Knapp asked for four seconders and noted great support for “our fossil”. [Laughter.
The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Herendeen’s proposal was accepted.
Prop. B (93: 14: 2: 0).
Knapp moved to Prop. B, which was a proposal from Landrum to insert a new paragraph
under the first paragraph that “Changes in the Code require 60% or higher positive
vote of the Nomenclature Section of the International Botanical Congress”. She suggested
that in the light of the fact that a Committee had just been set up to address the
issue, it would seem wise that it be referred to that Special Committee.
Prop. B was referred to the new Special Committee on By-laws for the Nomenclature
Section.
Prop. C (81: 28: 1: 0).
McNeill commented that the second proposal was a similar procedural issue, that approval
of actions by Committees as recommended by the General Committee would require a 60%
or higher positive vote in the Nomenclature Section of the International Botanical
Congress, which again would seem as though it should go to the Committee on By-laws.
Prop. C was referred to the new Special Committee on By-laws for the Nomenclature
Section.
Prop. D (18: 85: 2: 1) was ruled rejected.
Landrum’s proposal
McNeill noted that there had been a more than 75% majority “no” vote on Prop. D, but
that there was an amendment that the proposer had submitted even though he was not
present. He thought that this would be the time to take the amended version. He explained
that it was dealing with who was entitled to vote at a Section, and thought it might
be that it should be referred to the Special Committee on Institutional votes.
Lewis said that Les Landrum had asked him to put in the amendment to his own proposal
so that it was on the floor, but given what had just taken place he was sure the proposer
would be happy for this also to be passed to the new Special Committee.
Buck queried as to whether, if the Section voted “no”, the proposal was just killed;
he wanted to know if “yes” sent it to Special Committee, “no” killed it.
Knapp presumed that the Special Committee would probably consider the issue anyway.
Buck wondered what a “no” vote meant then.
Knapp suggested that a “no” vote meant you didn’t care. [Laughter.]
Demoulin thought it should mean that you did not want that proposal.
Knapp went on that a “no” vote meant that it should not be passed to the Special Committee.
McNeill added that the proposal was then dead… or approved here.
Knapp continued that a “yes” vote meant the Section would like the proposal, although
it had been defeated in the mail vote…
McNeill realized that the proposal being discussed was something other than what was
heavily defeated in the mail vote, as it was apparently a new version replacing the
one that was defeated in the mail vote.
Knapp thought that it was substantially different from the proposal that Landrum had
put in, so suggested that four seconders were needed to put this from the floor.
Turland felt it was not really relevant to the Special Committee.
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Knapp clarified that the discussion was not about the proposal that was defeated in
the mail vote, but about a new proposal on Div.III.4(b), that the final vote at the
Nomenclature Section would be by all officially enrolled members and that the Nomenclature
Section would be conducted over the World Wide Web.
Barkworth thought that this would also need to go to the Special Committee, the one
on by-laws rather than the one on institutional votes.
Greuter wondered if anyone could tell what “the final vote” meant in this context.
Knapp felt obliged to say, as the proposer was not present, that it was a question
that was not answerable.
Demoulin commented that there had been a proposal heavily defeated by the mail vote
not to have any more institutional votes. He felt that was a very important issue
and it was now being replaced by a quite different proposal dealing with introducing
virtual meetings. He thought it was certainly totally appropriate to refer the new
concept to a Special Committee, but he thought it also important to rule that the
proposal deleting the traditional votes was rejected.
Knapp pointed out that it was rejected by the mail vote.
McNeill clarified that that portion of it was rejected but there was an addition to
try to make it more palatable by having electronic participation. He went on to say
that the one that was defeated had been defeated and could be forgotten. The new proposal
incorporated part of that [defeated proposal] but added an additional component relating
to electronic participation.
Prud’homme van Reine confirmed that the Section had the right to say “no” to this
as well.
Knapp agreed.
McNeill confirmed there would be a chance.
Knapp asked if there were any objections to voting to send the proposal to a Special
Committee.
McNeill pointed out that he thought some people wanted to actually reject it outright.
Knapp explained that if there were no objections to voting to send it to a Special
Committee a “yes” vote would mean the proposal would go to the Special Committee from
this Section, as commended by this Section. A “no” vote would mean the Section did
not commend the proposal and would prefer not to send it to the new Special Committee,
but it would be a mandate from the Section as to which way the Special Committee should
act.
Thiele was unclear, because in the previous votes to send proposals to a Committee
he did not regard that as an endorsement of those proposals to the Committee.
Knapp concluded that it would not be considered an endorsement, it would be that the
proposal would be sent to the Committee or not.
Thiele suggested that if the majority voted “no” to sending it to the Committee, then
the proposal should be voted on.
Knapp thought that would be perfectly in order, and thanked him for the suggestion.
[There was a simple majority against sending the proposal to the Committee.]
Landrum’s proposal was rejected.
Prop. E (35: 54: 12: 4) was referred to the new Special Committee on By-laws for the
Nomenclature Section.
Prop. F (57: 36: 6: 5).
McNeill moved on to Div. III Prop. F, by Hawksworth & al., which was to amend Div.III.2
to provide for the election of the Permanent Nomenclature Committee for
Fungi
by an International Mycological Congress as opposed to by an International Botanical
Congress. He reported that this had been considered by the Committee for
Fungi
and received a 71% “yes” vote: 10 in favour and 4 against. It also was supported in
the mail vote 57 to 36.
Applequist asked the proposers if this was really how they wanted to do business,
why were they here? She wondered, once the title of the Code had been changed and
all the provisions put into it that the mycologists wanted and the botanists did not,
what reason there was to believe that “we were ever going to see any of you guys again”?
McNeill pointed out that the discussion was solely about the way in which the Committee
was established, not discussing where decisions on mycological matters come; that
followed in Prop. G and H, not in Prop. F.
Demoulin had a general suggestion concerning the three proposals on mycological nomenclature.
He thought that they should be reconsidered in the light of what had already been
decided at the Congress. He thought that the change in title of the Code should lead
to a reconsideration of how to handle the governance of mycological nomenclature.
He suggested that the IAPT meeting next might consider this, since it was now a Code
for three equally ranked groups and the Nomenclature Section was something that was
really independent from the Congress. For plants there were the classical [Botanical]
Congresses, for fungi the Mycological Congresses and for algae the Phycological Congresses.
In his opinion the Nomenclature Section should be associated with something else in
the framework of a BioCode, but at the moment, given the title change, he thought
it may change the opinion of some of the fundamentalist mycologists if the Nomenclature
Sections would take turns between the three congresses. He offered this thought for
the proposers and the IAPT people, but at the moment he considered the proposals premature
and would vote against them.
Hawksworth thought one way forward for the three proposals might be to have a Special
Committee. He proposed a Special Committee on the Governance of Mycological Nomenclature.
McNeill asked if he would want it to be as broad as Demoulin had suggested, which
would involve examining the authority of the Code, in other words, permitting a different
Congress to ratify changes.
Hawksworth felt that if it was the wish of the Section that it was broadened out,
it could be part of a bigger exploration.
McNeill clarified that the Special Committee would just be concerned with the mycological
component, not phycological and other things.
Hawksworth confirmed that was correct.
Knapp summarized that a Special Committee had been proposed on the governance of mycological
nomenclature. [The motion was seconded and supported by three others.]
Gereau felt that if part of the mandate of such a Special Committee was to be to consider
mechanisms by which Mycological Congresses could effect changes in the common Code,
then the answer was absolutely not.
Greuter suggested that it should be a subcommittee of the Committee just appointed,
so as not to have completely unrelated procedures drawn up and to force them to keep
in contact. [This was accepted as a friendly amendment.]
Knapp clarified that it had been amended to be a subcommittee on governance of mycological
nomenclature, which would be reporting to the Special Committee on By-laws for the
Nomenclature Section.
A new Subcommittee of a Special Committee was established [the Subcommittee on Governance
of the Code With Respect to
Fungi
, to report to the new Special Committee on By-laws for the Nomenclature Section].
Prop. F, G (27: 64: 3: 6) and H (28: 61: 3: 7) were withdrawn on the understanding
that they would be considered by the new Subcommittee on Governance of the Code With
Respect to
Fungi
, within the Special Committee on By-laws for the Nomenclature Section.
Article H.1
Prop. A (20: 73: 7: 2) was withdrawn.
Article H.2
Prop. A (19: 72: 8: 1) was withdrawn.
Article H.6
Prop. A (18: 69: 11: 2) was withdrawn.
McNeill noted that the three proposals on the hybrid Appendix had been withdrawn as
they had substantial negative votes in the mail vote and the proposer did not think
it was good use of our time to fight a losing battle.
Knapp and McNeill thanked him for that.
Appendix III
Prop. A (45: 7: 53: 0) was referred to the Editorial Committee.
Prop. B (54: 6: 43: 0).
McNeill introduced Prop. B and C, which were quite independent of anything considered
before and added some new terms and abbreviations, because there were a number of
generic names of which the gender was conserved and there was a suggestion that that
should be indicated in the Appendices. He reported that Prop. B had good support in
the mail vote.
Greuter noted that “gend.” was not a Latin abbreviation. He moved an amendment to
say “gen. masc.” or “gen. fem.” or “gen. neut.” [followed by] “cons.”
Knapp thought that was probably editorial.
McNeill agreed, adding that it was very important, as it was not conserving the gender,
but conserving the gender of the name.
Prop. B was accepted.
Prop. C (52: 5: 46: 0).
McNeill indicated that Prop. C was suggesting explaining in the introduction to App.
III, as opposed to simply in the Glossary, what nomen illegitimum, “nom. illeg.”,
meant. The proposal was to add another sentence to the introduction of App. III, explaining
what a nomen illegitimum was.
Demoulin was not sure that it was correctly worded and suggested referring that to
the Editorial Committee.
McNeill agreed that the wording could be modified, but it was a matter of the principle
of whether it should be included there or whether it was deemed sufficient to have
it in the Glossary.
Prop. C was accepted.
Prop. D (30: 18: 57: 0).
McNeill considered that App. III Prop. D and E were editorial consequences of Art.
14 Prop. A, which had been accepted.
Perry questioned if the proposals were really editorial.
McNeill acknowledged what she was saying and concluded that it was implicit but not
explicit.
Perry wondered whether they really were editorial, because it involved retroactively
conserving names.
McNeill clarified that it made clear that the decision taken on Art. 14 Prop. A applied
to existing conserved names as well as to ones in the future, which, as the Code was
generally retroactive, might be presumed, but this made it very explicit. He added
that it would be, incidentally, extremely valuable to have because there were names
in there for which, without such provision, conservation would be useless.
Prop. D was accepted.
Prop. E (31: 18: 56: 0) was accepted.
Appendix IV
Prop. A (52: 2: 45: 0) was accepted.
Appendix VII
McNeill noted that earlier in the day there had been a proposal to refer all the proposals
in App. VII to the Editorial Committee. He wondered if that person still wanted to
make that proposal.
Barrie was not sure if McNeill was referring to him, but he would certainly like to
see all of the proposals referred to the Editorial Committee en masse. [The motion
was seconded and supported by many more than three others. Laughter at the large numbers
of seconders.]
Buck was in favour of this but wanted to make an amendment to exclude Prop. Q from
that, because he thought it was actually erroneous: “monotypic genus … for … a single
binomial is validly published”. He argued that there could be 20 synonyms, with many
validly published names, but there was only one taxonomically accepted species in
the genus; that was typically what it meant by monotypic. As an editor and as an author
he had changed that to monospecific because it was obviously not talking about one
type.
Knapp was sure that the Editorial Committee would take that in mind. She also pointed
out that suggesting that the proposals were all referred to the Editorial Committee
did not mean they were boring or useless. It meant that they were something that was
very useful to have in the Code but the Section thought that they could be dealt with
by an Editorial Committee.
McNeill responded to Buck’s comment by saying that the Editorial Committee had been,
and would continue to be, very careful with the previous editions of the Glossary
that there was a precise concordance between the wording of the Code with regard to
that term and the wording of the Glossary. Even if a word had wide parlance in the
particular sense in taxonomy, if that was not how the Code used it, that was not how
it would appear in the Glossary.
Prop. A (10: 12: 87: 0), B (17: 5: 88: 0), C (7: 17: 87: 0), D (13: 1: 94: 0), E (6:
14: 89: 0), F (11: 10: 89: 0), G (5: 16: 89: 0), H (14: 0: 95: 0), I (8: 12: 89: 0),
J (20: 0: 89: 0), K (10: 10: 89: 0), L (8: 11: 91: 0), M (6: 13: 91: 0), N (11: 9:
89: 0), O (20: 0: 88: 0), P (12: 9: 87: 0), Q (7: 9: 93: 0), R (7: 11: 91: 0), S (12:
1: 96: 0), T (7: 1: 101: 0), U (10: 10: 89: 0), V (7: 11: 91: 0), W (8: 12: 88: 0),
X (7: 6: 97: 0), Y (9: 11: 88: 0), Z (9: 10: 90: 0), AA (16: 37: 50: 0) and BB (13:
32: 55: 0) were all referred to the Editorial Committee.
Other proposals
Sanctiotypification debate
[The following discussion about the set of new proposals relating to sanctiotypification
took place during the Sixth Session on Wednesday afternoon.]
McNeill noted that consideration of a series of proposals dealing with the typification
of sanctioned names had been deferred. He reported that there had been meetings discussing
the nature of the current Art. 7.8 on typification of sanctioned names and there was
an agreement.
Demoulin was the chairman of the Committee for
Fungi
and considered himself one of the few persons who had followed the whole story since
its beginning. He offered some background to the issue and would then let one of the
main proposers, Redhead, explain the details of what was planned—he emphasised that
it would not be too much detail.
At the Sydney Congress there was a major event for fungal nomenclature, which was
to delete the later startingpoint. The proposal itself did not deal with typification,
but the people who met informally at that time, including Hawksworth, Demoulin and
Korf, felt that the issue should be addressed because otherwise too much opposition
for the new proposal would come from people like Rolf Singer, who had been used to
typifying agaric names according to Fries’s volume one of the Systema, with an 1821
startingpoint.
Thus Korf raised a proposal from the floor that was supposed to be a compromise between
those like Singer, who had been typifying according to Fries 1821, and people like
Donk, who always considered that the main emphasis should be to the real original
author. It was supposed to be a gentlemen’s agreement that, with the new system, as
little as possible of what had been done before would be changed. That is, if agaricologists
had been typifying according to Fries, that typification would stay. For other mycologists,
those [names] for which there was a special status of protection if they had been
accepted in volumes two and three of the Systema, but nothing about typifications
of names were validly published somewhere else, and so they were not typified with
any inference of Fries, they would keep their types as they were and everybody could
keep doing things the way they were used to doing them.
But the wording was rather vague; it was allowing everybody to do whatever they wanted.
There had been some attempt to make it more accurate for the next Congress in Berlin,
with a lot of discussion inside the fungal Committee [the then Committee for
Fungi
and Lichens], but because there were those two schools that went back to the ’50s
of typifying according to original authors or Fries, no consensus was reached and
Singer was still present at the Berlin Congress. So there was no agreement and no
major change came from the Committee. The Editorial Committee did some modification
but of course not major modification.
Then for 20 years things did not move until this winter, when independently Perry,
as somebody who was very accurate in trying to find things in the Code that should
be straightened up, saw that it was not possible to keep this rather vague rule and
made proposals. And, on the other hand, a group of mycologists led by Redhead also
made proposals and eventually alternative proposals. The result was that there are
three alternative proposals for the main vote in some issues. None was accepted. Some
were rather heavily rejected. Others were moderately rejected but with a possibility
to take up discussion.
Since all proposers were present, as well as people who knew the whole story, such
as Hawksworth and himself, and they had strong objections to some of the aspects of
the published proposals, it was decided to try to find out if it was possible to come
to an agreement. He added that Singer was dead and Korf no longer attended Congresses,
so many people had forgotten what it was all about and much more precise instruction
was necessary.
He felt that there should still remain some gentlemen’s agreement that introducing
the term sanctiotype should not be considered as encouraging using this possibility
for things where it had never been used. That is, ascomycete names in volumes two
and three of the Systema, for example. He was sorry about that, as he would have liked
to be able to do with the vocabulary available, but there seemed no way out, and while
he felt the introduction of a new word—sanctiotype—was unfortunate, he believed it
was necessary for the situation.
Redhead thanked Demoulin for the background. He went on to add, for those who were
not familiar with fungal taxonomy and history, that the existence of the proposals
went back to the fact that the starting date for fungi was not 1753. It used to be
1821 with Fries’s Systema, for certain fungi, and Persoon’s Synopsis in 1801. The
Systema spanned several years, which was a problem, and at one point the dates were
artificially moved forward to 1821. Then the span of years was allowed, and then it
was finally decided that the startingpoint for fungi would go back to 1753. To stabilize
the decisions made in nomenclature in fungal taxonomy, it was decided that the names
in these two original starting-point publications would be sanctioned names. Then
there were questions on how to deal with typification and existing typification. So
there was an Article, Art. 15, on sanctioning and there was also an Article on the
typification in the sanctioning works. These, for the most part, affect only fungal
names.
So the wording of Art. 7.8 was a bit vague in places and it allowed for dual interpretation.
Norvell and Pennycook and himself had published a series of proposals to modify the
Article. Perry had published another set of alternative proposals and he and his colleagues
had also published an alternative set of proposals. One was to just delete Art. 7.8
and one was to modify it with the introduction of a new type of term. It was pointed
out to them by the Rapporteur that they had all actually incorrectly attributed certain
generic features to the Articles on species and vice versa. So they had got together
to try to rework that with Perry and others like Demoulin and Hawksworth, and they
had revised what had been submitted and the formal proposals.
The upshot was that they were withdrawing all of the original proposals and replacing
them with a new set of proposals. Should they be approved they intended to refer all
the accompanying Examples, some of which were independent proposals, to the Editorial
Committee.
So the first part was the typification of names in the sanctioned works, and he outlined
that they had come up with a particular wording, which allowed mycologists to typify
things in sanctioning works that may include elements that were not in the protologues
of the names that were sanctioned. They had run into problems in doing so in that
there was a conflict with the definition of protologue and original material. Typifications
that were allowed via the sanctioning works could not be lectotypes. They had had
to come up with a new term, and arrived at sanctiotype—it was either sanctotype or
sanctiotype—so they had defined that in Art. 9, and they had added various notes to
further define that.
Then they had had to get to the level of genera and subdivisions [of genera] and had
moved to Art. 10 to cover those situations. They had defined them in such a way that
they thought it would work better than it was now and they had reached agreement.
He did not think there was any dissent amongst the mycologists and did not think Perry
was against it, so they presented it as a kind of a package to the Section and he
threw the floor open for discussion.
McNeill commented that in the process of editorial and Congress clarification of Articles,
Art. 7.8 moved to a situation in which its only reasonable interpretation was that
typification was entirely from the sanctioned work—actually, as Demoulin put it, the
Singer position—which was clearly unacceptable to the broad mycological community.
He noted that the key proposal that Redhead was making was these changes to Art. 7.8.
and, apart from the introduction of a new term, everything else fell from that. He
suggested that if there was any discussion, he imagined it should concentrate on that.
Redhead thought for procedural purposes—because it was a substantive change—it should
be put forward as substitutes and would require the relevant number of seconders.
[The motions were seconded and supported by three others.]
Buck was sorry but, since it was just proposed and he had not had a chance to see
it all, he had a quick question based on what he had read. It seemed as if you could
have both the sanctiotype and a lectotype for a single species. He wanted to know,
if you did have both and they turned out to be different, did one have precedence
over the other? He suggested it would be nice to print the new proposals out and distribute
them so the Section could read it and digest it overnight.
Demoulin agreed that it would be necessary that people could read everything.
Nic Lughadha thought that all of the non-mycologists were disposed to try and help
mycologists to the extent that they could, but that they did need to at least have
an attempt to understand, and to do that they did need to be able to read all the
proposals, and not like that [i.e. only on the screen]. She noted that the session
was near a tea break and asked if it was possible to get it printed so that it could
be looked at. It was very difficult to just say “Yes, this is all fine because the
mycologists say so”.
[It was decided that copies would be made to enable the Section to read and consider
the new proposals. Here the record reverts to the normal sequence of events.]
McNeill returned to the one major piece of published business that was withdrawn and
replaced with a new set of proposals, and he understood Lorelei Norvell was going
to speak to that. These were the proposals on the typification of sanctioned names,
which had had much discussion by core groups of people over the last few days.
Norvell introduced herself. [Computer buzzing sound.]
Knapp concluded that it meant that she had to answer the question now! [Buzzer.] Now!
Norvell [Laughing while being interrupted by repeated buzzing and with the screen
still blank] suggested just hooking up her Mac while the proposals were being searched
for, because they were on that.
Knapp solved the issue of buzzing and blank screen by wiggling a cord.
Norvell’s set of proposals
Norvell outlined what the group that had proposed the so-called sanctiotypification
proposals were withdrawing or addressing. She noted that the new set of proposals
would affect Art. 7 Prop. H–I, Art. 9 Prop. J–M, Art. 10 Prop. C and Art. 15 Prop.
A–C. She confirmed that Perry was also going to withdraw Art. 7 Prop. J and Art. 9
Prop. I. All of those proposals would be replaced by the new package displayed on
the board. The people who worked on the solution were: Redhead, Pennycook, herself,
Perry, Greuter, Demoulin and Hawksworth.
She reported that essentially what they were proposing to do was eliminate Art. 7.8,
reword it and insert it after Art. 8.1 as Art. 8.1bis: “The type of the name of a
species or infraspecific taxon adopted in one of the works specified in Art. 13.1(d)
and thereby sanctioned (Art. 15), may be selected from among the elements associated
with the name in the protologue and/or the sanctioning treatment.”
She planned to go through the whole package and then it could be taken either en masse
or individually depending on the wishes of the Section.
She moved on to the second item to add a sentence to Art. 9.2, which would read: “For
sanctioned names, a lectotype may be selected from among elements associated with
either or both the protologue and the sanctioning treatment.”
She moved down to subgeneric names, where the proposal was to remove [Alternative
1], as it was for their purposes and she had forgotten to take it out. She outlined
that essentially what was being proposed was to amend Art. 10.2, such that a colon
and “(a)” would be inserted after “unless” about four lines down, and then after a
semicolon the following would be added: “(b) the name was sanctioned, in which case
the type may also be chosen from among the types of species names included in the
sanctioning treatment”. The comment “or associated with a name in a sanctioning treatment”
would be appended at the end of that, which she noted may be somewhat redundant.
She went on to the next amendment to Art. 10.5, to which would be added “The author
who first designates a type of a name of a genus or subdivision of a genus must be
followed, but the choice may be superseded if (a) it can be shown that it is in serious
conflict with the protologue (or, for a sanctioned name, typified under Art. 8.1bis,
with the sanctioning treatment)”—the new part that had been introduced—“and another
element was available which is not in conflict with the protologue (or sanctioning
treatment)”.
They proposed to add a new Article, Art. 48.1bis: “Where a sanctioning author accepted
an earlier name but did not include, even implicitly, any element associated with
its protologue, or when the protologue did not include the subsequently designated
type of the sanctioned name, the sanctioning author is considered to have created
a later homonym, treated as conserved under Art. 15.1”.
She explained that the reason they were doing this was that, as the Section knew,
there was a change in starting dates, and up until that time mycologists were referring
to the works of Elias Fries, and the starting date there would have been 1821, and
things not covered by Fries—rusts, smuts and
Gasteromycetes
—were then also referred to Persoon, an 1801 publication. When the starting date was
thrown back to 1753, mycologists had to ferret out all of the original works that
those two authors had cited and it caused a fair amount of a kerfuffle—it affected
about 4500 names, so it was no minor thing.
She assured the Section that mycologists really did deal with this daily and were
looking for a way to make it very clear how to lectotypify. She added that the proposals
were called the sanctiotypification proposals because we were going to introduce a
new term called sanctiotype. She had noticed that there was a decided abhorrence of
new terms in the Section and so they thought perhaps it would be kinder to everybody
to work within the confines of the existing Code and that was what the document represented.
Knapp thanked her. [Applause.]
McNeill asked to return to Art. 10.5, because he thought there was a slight problem
with the wording as the portion “and another element was available…” was no longer
in the Article—it had been deleted earlier in the week.
Norvell proffered a tendency to regard an awful lot of amendments as friendly at this
point.
McNeill noted it was not friendly, it was just a fact as it was not possible to amend
something that was not in the Code.
Norvell thought that was very friendly! [Laughing.]
Knapp suggested it was not quite as friendly as proposing it yourself, though. She
opened the floor for comment. [The set of proposals was seconded and supported by
three others.]
Gereau had been unable to understand regarding sanctiotypes why, if there was no original
material associated with the protologue available for lectotypification that was not
in conflict with the protologue, one would not simply choose a neotype and give preference
to selecting that from the sanctioning work. He thought the new proposals were an
improvement, working somewhat more within the confines of the Code, but he felt it
was essentially expanding the definition of original material so that other materials
were available for lectotypification, and he simply did not see why it could not still
be called a neotype, because that was what it was, and give preference in standard
practice to selection of the neotype from the sanctioning work where necessary.
McNeill added a point of clarification about what was in the existing Code: the present
wording of Art. 7.8, taken as literally set out, said for the purposes of typification
of a sanctioned name, an element from the context of the sanctioning work must be
taken as lectotype. In other words, he thought that the new proposal was actually
being broader and using the protologue more. He added that, in effect, under the existing
Code, the original material was the material in the sanctioning work, which turned
out not to be what most mycologists actually wanted. He interpreted this as a change
that was actually moving more back to the protologue than the current wording of the
Code.
Knapp instructed the microphone runner not to give Redhead the microphone unless she
said he could have it. She allowed him to have it. [Laughter.]
Redhead pointed out that if you looked at what was being replaced, which was Art.
7.8, it had fuzzy wording, which had allowed people to go in several directions. The
intent was to make this more precise as to what may be selected and what may not be
selected, because you may have material in the sanctioning work that had been designated
as type, but it was not in the protologue, and if this allowed you to typify them
effectively on that, then what was the material? If it was not in the protologue then
it could not be a lectotype, unless the definition of lectotype was changed, which
was basically what was being done. He explained that that was how they had come up
with the alternative term “sanctiotype”, but in this case the preference was to modify
slightly the definition of what a lectotype was rather than introduce a new term,
and then eliminate Art. 7.8 and replace it with the changes that were here.
Knapp suggested that it was necessary, as a Section, to decide on whether to vote
on the proposals individually or to vote on them as a package. She chose to use the
Chair’s prerogative and moved to a vote on whether to consider the proposals as a
package and vote on them once or whether to consider them one by one and vote on each
one. She added that as there were two alternatives the vote would be a simple majority.
[There was a majority in favour of voting on the proposals as a package. Laughter.]
Norvell’s set of proposals was accepted.
[Discussion of a new proposal by Prud’homme van Reine, concerning Art. 8.4, occurred
here and has been moved to the normal order in the Second Session on Monday afternoon.]
Wiersema’s set of proposals
McNeill moved on to an amendment to Art. 18.3, a proposal that he had initiated but
Wiersema was going to present on his behalf.
Wiersema explained that the proposal came about because 12 sets of proposals involving
some 86 family names that were deemed to be illegitimate came to Taxon for editing,
and the reason they were illegitimate was because of the current provisions of Art.
18.3 and 6.4, because at the time that these families were created the genera upon
which they were based were themselves illegitimate. So a name of a family based on
an illegitimate generic name was illegitimate unless it was conserved. These families
were not conserved at that time, and in fact most of them were not conserved now.
They were mainly bryophyte, algal and fungal families and one gymnosperm family included.
The package also dealt with Art. 6.4, which stated “A name which according to this
Code was illegitimate when published cannot become legitimate later unless it is conserved”.
These family names, not having been conserved, would remain illegitimate unless something
was done about it. The new wording was suggested in order to resolve the issue, by
making conservation of the genus name also create the conserved family name or override
illegitimacy of the family name.
McNeill explained that all of those names were based on what were now conserved generic
names.
Wiersema agreed that the generic names were now conserved but that did not affect
the family names, which remained illegitimate unless the suggested wording was added.
The only way that this could cause a problem was if people were actually aware of
this and had dismissed the use of these family names and adopted later ones, but since
no one had ever been aware of it he thought that they were using most of these family
names. He concluded by saying that for the family names to remain available the suggested
action was necessary.
[The set of proposals was seconded and supported by three others.]
Van Rijckevorsel was missing something in the wording. He suggested that perhaps it
could be attended to editorially but it seemed redundant because a generic name that
was conserved could not be illegitimate.
McNeill responded that it was based on an illegitimate generic name and that name
had since been conserved and was now not illegitimate, but the point was although
the rules were retroactive the status of a name was not retroactive, so when the family
name was published it was illegitimate.
Van Rijckevorsel understood that, but felt that the way it was phrased it did not
read that way. He thought it was redundant because “is illegitimate” and “is conserved”
are in present tense.
Funk suggested that it be referred to the Editorial Committee as she did not think
the Section wanted to sit here and argue about present tense.
Knapp suggested that the Section could argue about the past though, as “we’re very
good at that”. [Laughter.]
Wiersema pointed out that Art. 19.5 dealt with names of subdivisions of families in
the same way, so that the situation could not arise where the family name had been
fixed but the name of the subdivision of the family that was based on the same type
as the family name could end up still being illegitimate if the changes were not made.
Barrie had two points. He felt that this was an extremely efficient way of handling
the problem and it should be passed. The other was that the issue could not simply
be referred to the Editorial Committee because the changes had to be voted in and
then the Editorial Committee would clean up the language.
Knapp assured him that she was not going to let it just be referred to the Editorial
Committee.
Barrie replied that he trusted her.
Cameron suggested that the word “or” simply be removed before “the generic name” in
the Art. 18.3 amendment, because to him it would read correctly and would take account
of the concern that some people had. He felt that that was simply a grammatical amendment
and knew it would be addressed by the Editorial Committee.
Knapp asked if he was proposing that as a formal amendment.
Cameron was just wondering whether it would influence people’s view if the Editorial
Committee accepted that that was a possible way of amending it.
Knapp recognized the woman who was waving her arm around.
Funk tried again. She apologized for suggesting the proposal go to the Editorial Committee
but wondered if it was possible to just get a sense if everybody approved the essence
of what was trying to be accomplished here, in a vote and it could then go to the
Editorial Committee.
Knapp thanked her and moved to a vote on the package of additions. She assured everyone
that the Editorial Committee would take account of details of tense and things with
this proposal from the floor.
Wiersema’s set of proposals was accepted.
Lendemer’s proposal
McNeill introduced a new proposal to make a modification to the new component of Art.
14 that had been accepted on Thursday with regard to the conserved list of names.
Knapp asked for the microphone for the man in red and commented that he had learned
that if he wore a red jumper she would be able to find him.
Buck [?] suggested that this was just like Nancy Reagan.
Lendemer agreed it was just like Nancy Reagan. He intended the new proposal to be
a new Article within Art. 14. He noted that the numbering was subjective and available
for alteration by the Editorial Committee. He felt it was mainly the content and essence
of the text being approved by the Section that he and the mycological community were
looking for. He added that the proposal had been passed out as hard copy, although
there were a few minor modifications. He outlined that what had changed was the removal
of Art. 59, because lichens were already exempted from Art. 59 as the new version
that was passed yesterday and he did not want to go and open that can of worms yet
again. He had also added “taxonomically” after “with them” to qualify that it would
apply to lichenized fungi and the fungi that have traditionally been associated with
them taxonomically, and there was a reason for that, which he would explain at the
end.
He gave a short explanation of why the changes were needed. On Thursday the Section
had passed sweeping changes to the rules that govern pleomorphic fungi. Unfortunately,
because lichens were not exempted from the new rules, when they had been before, there
was a significant potential for broad destabilization of lichen nomenclature at all
ranks, including the most common species and genera, such as
Parmelia
,
Physcia
,
Usnea
and some of the most common species in these genera. He explained that it stemmed
from the fact that lichenologists never considered the state of a type—whether or
not it was an anamorph or a teleomorph—when determining priority. Nor did they consider
sterility, but he dismissed that as another mess. The point he wished to make was
that Art. 59 had never applied to lichens and the new Art. 59 did not apply to lichens,
but all of the subsequent Articles that were proposed to deal with containing the
mess made by removing the old version of Art. 59 did not exempt lichens, when they
should have.
He had included “other taxonomically similar fungi” because there were some groups
of fungi that were not lichenized but were traditionally treated by lichenologists
and not by mycologists, and he felt it was important to realize that dual nomenclature
had never happened in these groups. Just because other groups of mycologists used
dual nomenclature did not mean that lichenologists did and the
Mycocaliciaceae
was an excellent example. This was a group that was embedded within an otherwise lichenized
group and they were treated with lichens traditionally but were not lichenized fungi
and had never had dual nomenclature applied, had never had separate anamorph and teleomorph
names. He had sent the amended version of the proposal with the Articles that had
been passed yesterday to the lichen LISTSERV with 482 recipients. Of course, it was
midnight in most of the world where lichenologists reside, but he did have correspondence
with a colleague from the Field Museum, who supported it.
[The proposal was seconded and supported by three others.]
Reveal suggested a friendly amendment that at the end, where it said Art. “14”, it
would refer to Art. “14(new.1)”. [This was considered a friendly amendment.]
Hawksworth thought that a lot of it was not actually necessary because the lichen
thalli were not pleomorphic in the sense that it was used. He felt that it was a misunderstanding
that some people evidently had. He was very much against having the reference to Art.
14(new.1). He suggested that there may well be cases where lists included lichenized
and non-lichenized species that may need to be protected, so he could not see that
caused any problems at all. He added that really the only thing, if those were concerned,
was Art. 57.2, where that could easily be dealt with just editorially; he felt it
did not necessarily need a separate Art. 14(new.2).
Redhead agree with Hawksworth that it was unnecessary for most of the Articles. He
suggested that the concerns about the non-lichenized fungi could be amended or taken
care of by simply amending the new Art. 57.2 by saying “non-lichenized pleomorphic
fungi”.
McNeill asked if he was proposing that as an amendment.
Redhead confirmed that he was. He was worried about the suggested wording, fearing
that it was very fuzzy in saying “fungi traditionally associated with them”. He thought
that with lichenized fungi it was a very slippery slope with very imprecise wording,
so it would not be possible to know which fungi would apply or not apply there. He
felt that was opening the door to something that should never have been…
McNeill asked Redhead to confirm that his amendment was to replace what was on the
board by an addition to Art. 57.2.
Redhead confirmed that that was correct and it would say “in non-lichenized pleomorphic
fungi.” [The amendment was seconded.]
Knapp pointed out that as an addition to Art. 57.2 it was not actually an amendment
to the proposal, it was a suggested different way to deal with the issue.
Buck [?] suggested it was a separate proposal.
McNeill pointed out that Madam Chairman could rule it as a separate proposal and give
notice that it was going to happen.
Knapp thought that it could not be treated as an amendment to Lendemer’s proposal,
because that was to add something to Art. 14 and the proposed amendment to deal with
the same thing was something added to Art. 57. It was decided that it would be much
simpler to deal with them separately.
Price wished to clarify something, because she believed that on Thursday the addition
of the lichens was proposed and voted down by the Section, and now it was being re-proposed.
She wanted to make sure that this was actually acceptable, because it was proposed
on Thursday and was refused, which was the reason why the new proposal had been introduced.
Knapp agreed that that was correct and added that at the point when Redhead was going
to make the proposal, she was going to tell him that it was not possible to revisit
something that had been voted against, unless the proposal to revisit it came from
the losing side.
McNeill did not think it was revisiting it…
Unknown speaker called the question on the Lendemer proposal. [There was a sufficient
majority in favour of voting.]
Lendemer’s proposal was accepted.
McNeill noted that therefore the other proposal became irrelevant.
[Discussion of a new proposal by Cameron & Prud’homme van Reine, concerning Art. 32,
occurred here and has been moved to the normal order in the Eighth Session on Tuesday
afternoon. A short discussion of a new proposal by Herendeen, concerning Art. 11.8,
took place here and has been moved to the normal order under Art. 11 in the Third
Session on Tuesday morning. Discussion of a new proposal by Marhold, concerning Art.
37bis, occurred here and has been moved to the normal order in the Seventh Session
on Thursday morning.]
Barrie & al.’s proposal
McNeill thought that this was the suitable point to introduce another proposal from
the floor to establish a Special Committee on the registration of names other than
fungi in the names of Barrie, Stevens, Funk, Cafferty and Greuter. [The proposal was
seconded and supported by three others.]
Barrie added that the reason they were proposing this was because it had become pretty
obvious to many that, as electronic publication was coming in, there would need to
be a mechanism for keeping track of the names, and the best one they could come up
with was registration. With the Special Committee they wanted to look into the possibilities
of registration, how to construct it, the mechanism and where to put it, and report
to the next Congress. At that point he figured the Section should have a better idea
of what was going on, and there would also be the experience of the mycologists to
see how theirs [their system of registration] had worked.
Marhold commented that that had been his alternative suggestion after the result he
had expected [of his new proposal on Art. 37bis], but he wondered whether it was possible
to put into the mandate of the Special Committee to try to establish some voluntary
registration, which was actually the argument by the fungal community—that they were
able to come to this Congress and say “Hey, look, it works”—because he suggested that
if the Committee came to the next Congress with just the proposal and then there was
the same argument of “we do not see it running”, then 12 years would already have
been lost. He felt that another six were going to be lost and did not want to lose
another 12 years.
Barrie & al.’s proposal was accepted and a new Special Committee was established [the
Special Committee on Registration of Algal and Plant Names (including fossils)].
[Discussion of a new proposal by Nagamasu, concerning Art. 60.1, occurred here and
has been moved to the normal order in the Ninth Session on Friday morning. Discussion
of a new proposal by Davidse & Ulloa, concerning Art. 60.6, occurred here and has
been moved to the normal order in the Ninth Session on Friday morning. Discussion
of a new proposal by Hawksworth, to amend the conservation of names under Art. 14
to all ranks, occurred here and has been moved to the normal order in the Fourth Session
on Tuesday afternoon. Discussion of a new proposal by Veldkamp, concerning Rec. 32B,
occurred here and has been moved to the normal order in the Fourth Session on Tuesday
afternoon. Discussion of a new proposal by Reveal, concerning Art. 46, occurred here
and has been moved to the normal order in the Seventh Session on Thursday morning.
Discussion of a new proposal by Norvell, to amend the title of the Code, occurred
here and has been moved to the original discussion about the title in the Second Session
on Monday afternoon.]
Hawksworth’s proposal
McNeill moved on to the last proposal he had, which was to approve the formation of
a Special Committee on the BioCode. [The proposal was seconded and supported by three
others.]
Hawksworth noted that there was a situation where proposals to further develop the
BioCode were progressing. He reported that there was a lot of progress made at the
International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology in Berlin in February
and the revised draft was out for discussion. He felt the Section needed a mechanism
to have an authoritative botanical view put into that discussion about the document
and what, if anything, should be done with it.
Gereau suggested that in the published documentation on the development of the BioCode
there were a number of provisions that were counter to the direction in which many
members of the Section, in his discussions, wanted to go. He thought the Section should
have nothing to with it and was completely against the establishment of this Committee.
Hawksworth’s proposal was rejected.
Knapp used the Chair’s privilege to add a point of information and pointed out that
if people wanted to comment on the BioCode there was a mechanism that had been set
up through the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, where there was
a website and a commentary page.
Dorr moved to adjourn the Nomenclature Section for the Congress.
Knapp said no, there was still business to do.
McNeill agreed that it was premature, there was still some business, although he had
no more proposals from the floor regarding the Code, or indeed any procedural matters,
but of course there remained the normal business of Committee reports.
Report of the Nominating Committee
McNeill noted that the report of the Nominating Committee had been distributed and
he invited the Chair, Barbara Briggs, to say something to the background and introduction.
Briggs wished to say that the main work towards the recommendations had been done
by the secretaries and members of the relevant Committees, and that was acknowledged,
although the names in the nominations were not always completely identical with their
lists. She added that one name, that of Buck for the Editorial Committee, was omitted
by mistake from the typed copy and the electronic version given to the Rapporteurs
and had been written on the distributed hard copies. The Committee had made a few
comments on the matters they thought important, but as that was all in the distributed
hard copies she did not feel the need to speak about them.
Redhead noted that, in the Committee for
Fungi
, “Tony May” should be changed to “Tom May”.
Knapp assured the Section that the name Committee for
Bryophyta
would be changed to Committee for Bryophytes, following the earlier decision once
all decisions were ratified by the International Botanical Congress.
Karen Wilson had a question of clarification: under the General Committee, was “Francisco”
Zuloaga intended to be Fernando Zuloaga?
Knapp confirmed this was the case.
Briggs apologized for the typos.
The Report of the Nominating Committee was approved unanimously.
Reports of the Permanent Nomenclature Committees
Committee for
Algae
McNeill asked the secretaries of the Permanent Nomenclature Committees to be quite
brief in highlighting the main elements of their six years’ work.
Prud’homme van Reine was not expecting to have to give a report.
Knapp reassured him that he did not have to say anything.
Prud’homme van Reine was pleased and responded “Okay, fine!” [Laughter.]
The Report of the permanent Committee for
Algae
was approved.
Committee for
Fungi
Norvell summarized the six years thus: “Much controversy, many votes, everything settled,
we’re happy”.
The Report of the permanent Committee for
Fungi
was approved.
Committee for
Bryophyta
(Committee for Bryophytes)
Klazenga was also not expecting to give a report either. He noted that they had had
very few proposals, only 10 or so and there was nothing really controversial.
The Report of the permanent Committee for
Bryophyta
was approved.
Committee for Fossil Plants (Committee on Fossils)
Herendeen felt that he could not be creative: the Committee had published two reports
and their activities were reported in those reports. He had nothing more to add.
The Report of the permanent Committee for Fossil Plants was approved.
Committee for Vascular Plants
Applequist reported that in the past six years, during which Dick Brummitt was serving
as secretary of the Committee, the Committee for Vascular Plants had processed over
300 proposals to conserve or reject names, in addition to a small number of requests
for rulings on nomina subnuda and confusable names.
The Report of the permanent Committee for Vascular Plants was approved.
Editorial Committee
Turland had just a few words on the Editorial Committee as was the tradition. He stated
that it was the report of the Editorial Committee on the Vienna Code, the red Code,
which was produced according to the decisions made at Vienna and had been approved
at the start of the [Melbourne] Section as the basis for discussions.
He wanted to remember Guanghua Zhu from the Missouri Botanical Garden, who was appointed
by the Vienna Nomenclature Section to the Editorial Committee, but sadly died in November
of 2005 before the Editorial Committee meeting.
The Editorial Committee had met in St Louis in January 2006 for one week. John McNeill,
the Rapporteur, had very carefully prepared an edited and marked-up copy of the St
Louis Code with all of the Vienna changes tracked, which served as a basis for their
deliberations. Eventually this led to a final PDF—so he noted that they were ahead
of the game with PDFs—submitted to the printer on exactly the 25th of July 2006 and,
according to the letter from the distributor inside John McNeill’s copy, it was mailed
on the 21st of September 2006, which he supposed must be the publication date. It
was published as Regnum Vegetabile volume 146.
He wished to acknowledge in particular: Paul Silva, who produced the first draft of
the Glossary, now App. VII; also Dan Nicolson, who provided the information for the
Appendices; Gea Zijlstra, Vincent Demoulin and Paul Silva, who checked the Appendix
entries for bryophytes, fungi, and algae, respectively; also the members of the Special
Committee on Suprageneric Names, who checked and submitted the corrections for App.
IIB; also all of those who submitted ideas for Examples and editorial improvements
in the Code.
The Report of the Editorial Committee was approved.
General Committee
McNeill introduced the final report of the General Committee, which was distributed
at the Section but was also already [electronically] published in Taxon [Taxon 60:
1211–1214. 2011].
Barrie noted that everyone should have had a copy of it in their Congress packet.
He wished to point out a few lines that were omitted from the printed copy, although
they were in the published copy. These were from Report 61 for the Committee for Vascular
Plants. One was that
Brugmansia
aurea
was a name that came up for consideration and whether or not the description was adequate.
The General Committee approved the Vascular Plant Committee’s recommendation that
this was an adequate description, but there were several others that were still under
debate:
Monorobea
esculenta
and
Agave
noah
, which failed to get majority votes in the Committee, so they were still sitting
in the General Committee, not referred back or approved, so they continued to be under
consideration.
He also wished to say first that Dan Nicolson—who had been the Chairman and had resigned
in November 2010—deserved to be mentioned and remembered for all his contributions
to botanical nomenclature over the years and to note that he was certainly missed.
[Applause.]
There were 20 reports published by the other Permanent Committees, but only 17 of
them included proposals to conserve or reject or rulings under Art. 32.5 on nomina
subnuda or Art. 53.5 on confusability. The other three were simply recommendations
on the proposals to amend the Code, and the General Committee did not review those.
The one thing that he wished to point out was that the General Committee was going
to work with the Editorial Board of Taxon to see that criteria were set up for publishing
proposals under Art. 32.5, nomina subnuda, and Art. 53.5, confusability. Obviously
Art. 53.5 was new from Vienna, so it was a novelty, but confusability had been in
the Code for a long time. He was not sure which original Code it appeared in, but
it had been there for quite some time. People were permitted to send in name sets
and ask if they were confusable, but it was extremely infrequent in the past and the
tradition had built up of merely mailing them to the secretaries of the relevant Committees
involved. While they worked very well as communication between the author and the
Committee, the problem was that the rest of the botanical community had no idea that
these issues were being adjudicated. So from now on the plan was to try to get them
published instead of simply done through correspondence.
The Report of the General Committee was received.
Barrie made the recommendations as voted by the Committee in the report and submitted
them to the Nomenclature Section.
The Report of the General Committee was approved.
Other business
McNeill had only one further item of business. In order that the work of the past
week not be lost and run into the sand he moved the following motion: “The Section
instructs the Rapporteur-général to present a resolution to the Resolutions Committee
of the XVIII International Botanical Congress, to the effect that that Congress approve
the decisions of the Nomenclature Section.” [The motion was seconded.]
[The motion was approved.]
McNeill noted that that concluded the formal business. He thought that there were
a lot of people to express enormous appreciation to.
Knapp started by first thanking Pauline Ladiges and all her team of students and microphone
handlers, and the University of Melbourne for providing a really fabulous place to
hold the Nomenclature Section that made having the deliberations much, much easier.
[Applause.] She had one more thing that she wished to add personally, because when
John had asked her to chair the meeting she had said “No, no, I don’t know anything
about nomenclature”, and he said “No, you don’t need to know about nomenclature. All
you need to do is be able to keep order”. She said “I’m not sure I can do that either”.
But having done this for the whole week, her admiration for her colleague Dan Nicolson
was huge and she wanted the Section to also thank him not only for all the years of
service he gave to botanical nomenclature but also for having done this job, which
she was not sure anybody could do more than once—although Hervé Burdet did. She wanted
to say that her appreciation for Dan had increased 100-fold.
She also wished to thank all of the participants for behaving themselves and felt
that a round of applause was well earned. [Applause.]
The last bit of information that she imparted was that the sign-up sheets for the
Special Committees that had been established were available at the front of the lecture
theatre: Special Committee on Institutional Votes; Special Committee on Harmonization
of Nomenclature of
Cyanophyta
/
Cyanobacteria
; Special Committee on Publications Using a Largely Mechanical Method of Selection
of Types (Art. 10.5) (especially under the American Code); Special Committee on By-laws
for the Nomenclature Section (with a Subcommittee on Governance of the Code With Respect
to
Fungi
); and Special Committee on Registration of Algal and Plant Names (including fossils).
Karen Wilson proposed a vote of thanks to Sandy as President, to John as Rapporteur-général,
to Nick as his Vice-rapporteur, and to the Recorders, Brendan Lepschi, who had unfortunately
already had to leave, and Anna Monro, who had been labouring away valiantly. She felt
that the whole group had formed a very good team and had helped the Section get through
all of the business. She concluded that it had ended up being a momentous Nomenclature
Section, in fact, because there were some big changes made. She thought that everyone
was going to greatly appreciate what went on in Melbourne in July 2011. [Extended
applause.]