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Title: (000) A proposal concerning the valid publication of suprageneric “autonyms”

Author
item Wiersema, John
item GREUTER, WERNER - Mediterranean Herbarium, Palermo Botanic Garden

Submitted to: Taxon
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/17/2016
Publication Date: 6/24/2016
Citation: Wiersema, J.H., Greuter, W. 2016. (262) A proposal concerning the valid publication of suprageneric “autonyms”. Taxon 65:652.

Interpretive Summary: The International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants is revised every six years to incorporate decisions of the Nomenclature Section of successive International Botanical Congresses (IBC) on proposals to amend the Code. The proposal in this paper will be considered at the IBC in Shenzhen, China in 2017, and seeks to clarify some confusion involving a current provision of the Code. The confusion involves names between the level of genus and family, such as subfamily or tribe, and whether or not certain of these would be considered as properly published according to the rules. A note is proposed for addition to the Code to indicate that such names should be considered as properly published. Because some of these names may be in use, the confusion about their status will be eliminated by this new provision.

Technical Abstract: The International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants is revised every six years to incorporate decisions of the Nomenclature Section of successive International Botanical Congresses (IBC) on proposals to amend the Code. The proposal in this paper will be considered at the IBC in Shenzhen, China in 2017, and seeks to clarify some confusion involving a current provision of the Code. Suprageneric names of subdivisions of families that, when published, included the type from which the family name was formed, were similarly to be formed from that generic name according to the Berlin Code of 1988, where these were termed autonyms. But the status of suprageneric names that included the type from which the family name was formed, but were not formed from that generic name, was unclear in that Code. The term autonym remained in use in subsequent Codes for infrageneric and infraspecific names, but no longer for suprageneric names, and names that included the type of the genus or species but were not autonyms are not validly published. Whether a similar interpretation applied to analogous suprageneric names remained unclear in Art. 19.4, which dealt with such names, so a Note was proposed to indicate that such names may be validly published.