(62) A proposal to amend Art. 11.6 to give autonyms priority over their validly published homotypic synonyms

Abstract

Prior to the Tokyo Code, little difficulty was experienced in the application of Art. 22 and 26 with respect to autonyms. Once the name of any subordinate taxon not including the of the name of the higher (principal) taxon had been validly published, an autonym was considered to have been established, and had priority over the name that established it. Whether or not the of the name of the higher taxon was included in the subordinate taxon did not depend on the relative dates of valid publication of the name of the subordinate taxon and of effective publication of the nomenclatural act typifying the name of the higher taxon. Any name of a subordinate taxon that did include the of the name of the higher taxon, but did not repeat the epithet of the name of the higher taxon unaltered, was to be considered not to have been validly published, and could therefore be ignored for all purposes of priority, irrespective of the relative dates of establishment of the name and of effective publication of the typifying nomenclatural act. For example, Kobjakova (in Trudy Prikl. Bot. 23(3): 487. 1930) validly published two subspecific names under Lagenaria vulgaris Ser. 1825, subsp. asiatica Kobjakova and subsp. afrikana Kobjakova, encompassing the entire circumscription of the species, and without any indication that one or other of them included the of the name of the species. Jeffrey (in Milne-Redhead & Polhill, Fl. Trop. E. Africa, Cucurbitaceae: 51. 1967) lectotypified Lagenaria vulgaris (a replacement name for Cucurbita lagenaria L. 1753) by specimen No. 1151.1 in the Linnaean Herbarium, London (LINN), referable to L. vulgaris. subsp. afrikana, thus became the type of L. vulgaris. In consequence, the name L. vulgaris. subsp. afrikana had then to be considered as not validly published. The simultaneous publication of the other subspecific name, L. vulgaris subsp. asiatica, automatically established L. vulgaris subsp. vulgaris. The correct names for the two subspecies would therefore have been L. vulgaris subsp. vulgaris and L. vulgaris subsp. asiatica, and L. vulgaris subsp. afrikana would have been a non-name without nomenclatural status. In order to prevent the possibility of names being rendered invalidly published retrospectively by a subsequent act of typification, new paragraphs (Art. 22.2 and 26.3) were introduced by the Tokyo Congress and appear in the current edition of the Code. These stipulate that names of subordinate taxa that include the of but do not repeat unaltered the epithet of the name of the higher taxon are to be treated as validly published if, in the case of names of subdivisions of genera, they do not include the original or all elements eligible as or the previously designated type; or if, in the case of names of infraspecific taxa, they do not include the holotype or all syntypes or the previously designated type, of the adopted, legitimate name of the genus or species respectively, unless the author clearly indicated that the taxon so named included the element of the name of the higher taxon. Consideration of the Lagenaria case just mentioned will illustrate the effects of these changes. When, as by Kobjakova, L. vulgaris is considered to be the accepted,