Zoological nomenclature: Suggestions to increase stability and facilitate the naming of Clades.

Zootaxa

Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales COCIBA, Laboratorio de Biología Evolutiva, Campus Cumbayá, Casilla Postal 17-1200-841, Quito 170901, Ecuador..

Published: July 2020

Taxon names are at the core of communication related to biodiversity. Thus, systems that regulate such names should prevent unnecessary changes. Unfortunately, the current regulatory codes have some articles that produce confusion or, even, generate name instability. To promote nomenclatural stability, while maintaining a system that effectively conveys information about biological diversity and its evolution, we argue in favor of emendations to the current International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). We propose that taxon names should be created within an evolutionary framework; ideally, this would mean including a phylogenetic tree or, at the very least, formulating a hypothesis in words based on explicit arguments (homologous traits) for the evolutionary relatedness of taxa, avoiding subjective perceptions. Additionally, we consider that some relatively minor changes of the ICZN would greatly increase name stability; the most relevant modifications that would facilitate long-term stability are: (i) immutability of the species epithet of species names, (ii) intercalation of unranked taxa between formal Linnaean ranks, (iii) elimination of homonyms in taxon names at the genus-group level, and (iv) inclusion of flexible phylogenetic definitions when supraspecific taxa are named.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4820.1.10DOI Listing

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