Vanessa movements and Peck's skipper

Chris J. Durden drdn at mail.utexas.edu
Fri Jun 8 03:34:42 EDT 2001


Bill,
   I think the field guide use of *peckius* is merely reluctance to accept 
the argument of Evans, and its subsequent endorsement in the Miller & Brown 
checklist.


At 05:33 PM 6/7/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Chris,
>       Thanks for responding to the second question of my post concerning 
> Peck's
>skipper. I was beginning to think that my taxonomy query got swept up in the
>"sound and fury" of the Vanessa migration (irruption, emigration, whatever?).
>       So if I understand correctly it is a nomenclatural issue for Pyle, who
>apparently believes that Polites peckius and P.coras are conspecific and P.
>coras would take precedence, having been validly published first?  I 
>suppose we
>could guess that Glassberg does NOT believe they are conspecific, but then
>again maybe he just uses the more familar taxon since it is ONLY a field
>guide.  Which brings me to the question  ; Does zoological nomenclatural 
>policy
>make exceptions to rules of precedence the way Botanical nomenclature does if
>the committee votes it in? Is this getting too technical here? I'm starting to
>feel like I'm pulling ticks off a dead elephant.

In Zoology the use of a committee ruling to railroad suppression of an 
ignored senior name is exceptional but not unheard of. It is a big deal. I 
don't think there are nearly as many of these exceptions to priority than 
there are in Botany. A good thing too!

    Nothing wrong with pulling ticks off a dead elephant as long as it is a 
mammoth in permafrost and both it and the ticks have fairly fresh DNA.
............................Chris Durden

>                                               Anyway thanks again for the
>response,
>,
>
>                                                                  Bill Yule
>



 
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