Could someone then please give me a solid defenition of "subgenus"?
I think that Abott's (to stay with strombs) rather obscured the phylogeny of
strombids then enlighten it in his monogrpahs. Recent research has shown
that the genus Strombus sensu Abbott is polyphelitic, and the only way to
avoid that is to put all species of Lambis into the genus Strombus, which by
then in no way would reflect the line of descend in Strombidae.
Eustrombus was described as early 1940 and Tricornis as early as 1886. One
could also argue that most subsequent authors (including me) were foolish
enough not to adopt these names in a generic sense, but maintained them for
a very long period as subgenera (except for some Japanese authors in the
1950's, and some contemporary authors. If research would reveal that the
genetci distance between Strombus (type species: Strombus pugilis) would be
to big to justify the maintenance of Strombus gigas Linnaeus, 1758 in the
genus Strombus, then it should be transferred to asnother genus.
The aspect of stability is of importance, but that point was rather adopted
into the code to avoid the sudden raise of a (what one would name earlier
"nomen oblitum" -that is a forgotten name) in some obscure publication of
which all copies but one or two were lost, no-one knew about their
existence, but new taxa in it (and the work as a whole) would meet the
requirements of the Code.

Gijs

----- Original Message -----
From: "M. J. Faber" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: Triplofusus?


> > Taxonomy is all about putting names to organisms which reflect ther
> > accurate relationshiups. It absolutely rightly has nothing to do with
> > endangeredness, amateurs' ideas of esthetics or the convenience of
> > collectors. Therefore when new information comes along which
> > indicates that an older name is the correct one to use, or that a
> > species actually belongs elsewhere than its present placement, we
> > must go along... IF the move is objective (and it sure ain't
> > necessarily so).
>
> Dear Andrew, I believe you are missing my point here. Regarding species
> level names, your opinion simply is NOT true. Stability prevails. That's
> what the new 1999 ICZN code, more than ever, is about.
> Regarding genus level names, these remain strictly a matter of personal
> opinion, you're either a lumper, or a splitter, and that's fine. However,
> there are a few species (at least in malacology) that have an importance
in
> scientific literature well beyond that of taxonomic malacology alone.
Think
> of Dreissena polymorpha, Achatina fulica, Strombus gigas, Helix pomatia,
> Partula spp. etc.
> These are the kind of names that ought to be preserved too. In each case,
a
> change in specific epithet would be dreadful, but a transfer to another
> genus would be equally problematic. That's why I think general usage
(thus:
> stability) should prevail in such cases as well.
> Fortunately there is an elegant way out of this controversy: if one is of
> the opinion that, for instance,  S. gigas should be Eustrombus g. or
> Tricornis g., then one may use Eustrombus or Tricornis as a subgenus;
> Strombus (Eustrombus) gigas. Then you have the best of both worlds.
>
> Marien
> www.mollus.nl