The Name Psammochares versus Pompilus

Abstract

JN CONNECTION with a monograph of some Nearctic spider wasps, I recently had occasion (1957, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., 209:2-3) to discuss the choice between Psammocharidae and Pompilidae as the proper scientific name for the family, which names are based on the generic names Psammochares Latreille, 1796 and Pompilus Fabricius, 1798. Professor J. Chester Bradley has published an article (1957, Syst. Zool., 6:101-106) criticizing the views expressed there. My taxonomic paper gave only a statement of my general position, but with the publication of Bradley's article there is reason to go into more detail. Bradley and I are of opposite views on the desirability of nomina conservanda as administered by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, and this is the cause of the disagreement brought out in Bradley's article. It happens, however, that the International Commission has never made a nomen conservandum of Pompilus, even though Opinion 166, on which Bradley has based his argument, presumes that it did. If it can be shown that Opinion 166 is spurious and not valid, it automatically follows that Bradley's view is not valid under the International Rules and Opinions, and that the only question remaining is whether an appeal to the Commission to make a new, valid, Opinion favoring Pompilus over Psammochares would be in the interests of sound and stable nomenclature. This legalistic approach was not taken in my earlier discussion because I considered that the nomenclatural questions had been settled more than a century earlier than Opinion 166, by the original proposals of the names and selection of their genotype *. According to this view any subsequent action is quite irrelevant, regardless of involved discussions or legal phraseology, and the only reason for going into the validity of Opinion 166 would be the practical importance of bringing agreement on a scientific name, even if by different routes of reasoning. Most of the nomenclatural facts on the Psammochares-Pompilus question were thoroughly discussed by Pate in 1946 (Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc., 72:123-128). His conclusion was that the genotype * of Psammochares is Sphex fusca Linnaeus (designated by Latreille, 1803) and that the genotype * of Pompilus is Pompilus viaticus Fabricius, which is the same as Sphex viatica Linnaeus (designated by Latreille, 1810). Neither Bradley nor I disagree with Pate's conclusions on the genotype * of these two names under the International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature. Our disagreement centers on Opinion 166 of the International Commission which is rejected by Pate and me but accepted by Bradley. Opinion 166 proposes, under suspension of the rules of nomenclature, arbitrarily to suppress Psammochares and to change the designated genotype * of Pompilus from Sphex viatica (a sphecid) to Pompilus pulcher Fabricius (a psammocharid). My reason for rejecting this Opinion, regardless of the question of its authenticity,