Ixion Alderslade, 2001 and Ixioninae Alderslade, 2001 (Coelenterata: Octocorallia: Xeniidae): correctio errorum

Abstract

In 2001 a Festschrift was published in the Bulletin of the Biological Society of Washington to honour Frederick (Ted) Bayer, preeminent octocoral taxonomist and Zoologist Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, on his 80th birthday. The volume was edited by Stephen Cairns and Charles Messing and contained papers and articles by many of Bayer’s colleagues and past students. The contents included a paper by the first author (Alderslade 2001), within which a number of new genera were described and a new xeniid subfamily was proposed. Not long after the volume was published a nomenclatural problem in the paper was brought to the attention of the first author. Sometime after this a second problem became apparent; one of imperfect technique that also has nomenclatural implications. Despite good intentions for prompt action to correct the situation, the task slipped furtively into the first author’s “must-not-forget-to-do-that” receptacle: a container already over-full and seemingly with very limited attention-holding ability, all too easy to blame on “Busy Life Syndrome” (Miriam R.). This very belated note finally addresses the nomenclatural issues.