Synonymy and its Discontents: Alfred Russel Wallace's Nomenclatural Proposals from the ‘Species Notebook’ of 1855–1859

Abstract

Abstract. Alfred Russel Wallace made fundamental contributions to biogeography and the establishment of evolutionary thinking. He was also a working collector who spent a total of twelve years traveling in Amazonia and southeast Asia, his immense collections yielding hundreds of new species. Wallace was, accordingly, intimately familiar with the diversity of species and varieties, and was attuned to fine shades of morphological difference in a geographical context. In identifying, preparing, labelling and cataloguing his myriad specimens Wallace often confronted nomenclatural issues, foremost among them keeping track of taxonomic synonyms. In the absence of internationally recognized codes of taxonomic nomenclature, synonyms proliferated in the 19th century. In Wallace's ‘Species Notebook,’ the most important of his field notebooks kept between 1855 and 1859 during his travels in southeast Asia, Wallace devoted several pages to addressing synonymy and related issues. I discuss Wallace's far-ranging propos...